Big 12 Insider: How long will Baylor’s chase for perfection last?
A Big 12 program hasn’t run the table in conference play since Kansas went 16-0 in 2001-02. That Jayhawks team is the only to post a perfect regular season mark in league play since the Big 12 started play in 1996.
Baylor has a chance to become the second team to do it and end the 19-year drought. Yes, the No. 2 Bears are that good and improved to 15-0, including an 8-0 mark in Big 12 play, with a dominant 107-59 victory over K-State on Wednesday night in Waco.
Nobody expected K-State to stun Baylor, of course, but the game showed how quickly the Bears can take over a game. The game was tied 2-2 after two minutes and, a little more than four minutes later, the Bears had a 20-2 lead.
K-State didn’t score its 10th point until there was six minutes left in the first half. Baylor had doubled K-State’s point total by halftime, taking a 54-26 lead into intermission.
“There’s not much I can say,” K-State coach Bruce Weber said. “They kicked our butts again. ... They’re a team that’s going to play late into March and into April, I would expect.”
Baylor has the team to do just that. It also has the ability to make some history along the way.
It won’t be easy to do as the Big 12 is arguably the best basketball conference in the country and the Bears face a difficult stretch next month.
Following a Big 12/ SEC Challenge matchup against Auburn on Saturday, Baylor will face five ranked teams in its first six games to open February. The Bears are at No. 5 Texas on Feb. 2, home against TCU on Feb. 6, at No. 24 Oklahoma on Feb. 10, home vs. No. 10 Texas Tech on Feb. 13, at No. 11 West Virginia on Feb. 15 and home against No. 11 West Virginia on Feb. 18.
The guess here is the Bears stumble in that stretch, particularly when traveling to Morgantown for a game two days after playing Texas Tech.
For now, Baylor’s dream of perfection remains a possibility. And what a way that would be to win its first Big 12 regular-season title, and the program’s first since 1950 as a member of the Southwest Conference.
Tourney talk
An interesting tweet popped in the timeline this week from college basketball insider Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports. Rothstein encouraged conference commissioners to let folks know sooner than later if they planned on canceling their league tournaments in March.
“Your regular season will instantly become more interesting because of the race for an automatic bid,” Rothstein wrote.
Say, what? I didn’t know league’s canceling conference tournaments had become a conversation topic.
As it turns out, it isn’t a topic as far as the Big 12 is concerned.
“That hasn’t been discussed,” a source said.
Plans remain the same to play the Big 12 tournament in Kansas City from March 10-13.
Baseball poll
Texas Tech is the favorite to win the Big 12 title this spring. The Red Raiders were voted as the top team by the league’s coaches on Thursday followed by TCU, Texas, Oklahoma State and Oklahoma.
Tech made consecutive trips to the College World Series in 2018 and 2019.
TCU returns a lot of pieces and expects to make a run, even if it was shut out of preseason All-Big 12 honors earlier this week.
Women’s hoops
The Big 12 has only two teams ranked in the latest AP poll with No. 9 Baylor and No. 24 West Virginia. TCU is in the midst of facing both ranked teams in back-to-back games.
Baylor rolled to an 82-49 victory over TCU in Waco on Tuesday. West Virginia comes to town for a 1 p.m. game Saturday at Schollmaier Arena.
TCU has played better at home, winning its last two Big 12 games in Fort Worth.
