By Michael Haag | Sports Editor
No. 17 Baylor men’s basketball head coach Scott Drew and No. 9 University of Kansas head coach Bill Self have seen a lot as coaches in the Big 12. Self and Drew are tied for the longest-tenured head coaches in the conference, as they are both in the midst of their 20th season in 2022-23.
Big Monday’s matchup between the two coaches’ current squads produced a tight contest between two of the most successful programs in the country over the last few seasons.
“You look at the last three years, us and Kansas [are] the winningest Power Five programs in the country and [the] last two national championships,” Drew said.
The Jayhawks (16-4, 5-3 Big 12) have dominated the Big 12 conference since Self arrived in 2003. Self owns a record of 556-124 (81.8%) at KU and averages 29.3 wins per year. Kansas has won 16 total league titles under Self, nearly the same number of total losses (17) KU has let up when playing from the comfort of Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence, Kan.
Drew built the Bears (15-5, 5-3 Big 12) from the ground up and put the team on the national scene. After Baylor’s win on Monday night, the team is 12-1 versus Associated Press top-10 opponents. It’s the best record over a 13-game stretch in the AP poll era. The win over the Jayhawks marked the third-straight time the Bears have knocked them off in Waco.
Baylor has now won four of the last seven head-to-head games against the Big 12’s bully, Kansas.
“It’s really gratifying when you do win because you’ve had to earn it,” Drew said.
Self said he has a lot of respect for the program Drew has built. He said he does believe Baylor-Kansas has become a top-scale matchup year in and year out due to how good both schools have been atop the conference.
“We won the last two national championships,” Self said. “The year before that, we were both one-seeds when the season got called off. I think you can make the case that Baylor is big on everyone’s schedule, certainly on ours as well.”
The results of Monday night left those two most recent national champs — who have sat at the top of the Big 12 over the last three seasons — on completely different trajectories. The Bears have won five-straight games after an 0-3 start to conference play and the Jayhawks have lost three-straight following a 5-0 start against Big 12 competition. Kansas has only lost three consecutive games three times (2004-05, 2012-13, 2020-21) under Self.
Despite the rough stint, Self isn’t panicking.
“There is time to be reactive in a negative way if your team’s not doing well,” Self said. “This is not one of our times. We have been beaten. And granted, we got beat by a team that was projected to win the league tonight [who’s] really good and they went through the same crap we’re going through right now.”
Drew knows exactly what Self and KU is going through as the Bears had to climb out of their own 0-3 hole. What makes it hard is how competitive the conference is from top to bottom, according to Drew.
“Every coach would rather have the winning streak rather than the losing streak, but at the same time you know how quick things flip in the Big 12, and that’s why it’s such a tough conference because it’s hard to get long win streaks,” Drew said. “There’s success, adversity, success, adversity. You’ve got to be strong willed to battle through both of those.”
60% of the league was ranked in the latest AP Top 25 Poll and nine of the 10 programs are rated in the top-40 of KenPom’s adjusted efficiency margin. Four Big 12 schools rank in the top 15 of that same statistical category, and only the Big East has more than two in that same range.
Baylor and Kansas, the cream of the crop in recent years, sit in fourth and fifth place respectively on the Big 12 standings. The strength of the conference has pitted the 2021 and 2022 national champs as middle of the pack programs.
Self knows that the competition has increased and that Baylor, along with several other schools, have met KU head on to compile arguably the best men’s basketball league in the nation.
“Our league is that good,” Self said. “It’s going to be a grind. Our team isn’t talented enough that we can be disappointed when teams of equal talent play better than us and get frustrated with it. We don’t have as much margin for error as we’ve had in years past and that’s OK.
“The other teams in the league are a lot better, it makes it tough. So, the difference in our league and in the past, there’s just no games that you can look at and say ‘We can get well here.’ There’s none of those games.”
