After one other heartbreaking loss, this time a 97-95 additional time thriller by the hands of the Kansas State Wildcats, the Baylor Bears and their followers are left shaking their heads as they see an Zero-Three convention report subsequent to their title.
For a staff that began with a rating no. 5 within the preseason and was picked to win a 3rd straight Huge 12 championship, what went flawed?
The reply appears easy, the Bears have scored 87 and 95 factors of their final two video games and misplaced each by a mixed three factors. The protection hasn’t been anyplace close to the extent we have come to count on from a Scott Drew staff, however that is not the one flaw.
By defensive numbers, there are two gamers who aren’t on the sector on the similar time, LJ Cryer and Flo Thamba. Cryer remains to be a wonderful shooter and offers a lot offensive worth for this staff, however for the minutes he performs (30 per recreation), he’s an excessive amount of of a weak hyperlink defensively.
At 6’1″ and 185 kilos, he is not as bodily as Baylor’s different guards and his Field +/- has dropped massively from eight.Three final yr to 2.Zero this season. Even the numbers his defensive bests from final yr are a bit inflated as a result of he performed hardly any convention video games.
The opposite participant who wasn’t the horse we anticipated defensively is Flo Thamba. Within the 2021 title recreation, Thamba had Drew Timme in his again pocket and continued that defensive dominance final season, main many to consider he would be the anchor within the center once more this yr.
Thus far, Thamba has regressed, with Field +/- dropping from four.9 to a horrible 1.2 this season and including seven factors to his defensive ranking, the best since his rookie season.
Not like years previous, Thamba did not have a tall, bodily defender to assist his weak aspect. Mark Important and Matthew Mayer had been wonderful off-ball defenders and had the proper measurement and physicality to assist the massive males within the paint. With out that, Baylor does not have a deterrent within the paint, and the paint is an issue on each ends of the court docket.
Whereas the Bears had been outscored simply 38-32 within the paint towards Kansas State, they had been outscored 52-24 towards TCU the earlier recreation.
Defending the paint has been such an enormous ability for the Bears in years previous and the shortage of that side is unhealthy sufficient, however when a staff cannot even get on the board offensively, it opens you up for a drought.
On Wednesday evening towards TCU, the Bears went 9 minutes and not using a discipline objective within the second half, permitting the Horned Frogs to utterly erase a 17-point lead and win the sport.
The excellent news for Bears followers is that this staff nonetheless has a whole lot of expertise, and so they’ve battled these sorts of points earlier than. Final season, James Akinjo wasn’t a defensive world participant on the similar place as Cryer and nonetheless gained the Huge 12 and earned a No. 1 seed within the NCAA Match.
Even with these shortcomings, the expertise on this staff should not have allowed them to drop their first three convention video games, however that may really be a optimistic for followers.
Having expertise and having a Corridor of Fame coach and three starters with nationwide championship rings means there is a rattling good likelihood he’ll determine all of it out. With the weapons they’ve of their arsenal, “figuring all of it out” might imply a very deadly run for this staff.
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