By Dylan Fink | Sports Writer
If a time-traveling college basketball fan from 1976 journeyed 50 years to the future to 2026, they wouldn’t be able to recognize the current landscape of the sport.
In a world full of NIL money, minimal transfer restrictions and former NBA draft picks playing at the university level, Baylor basketball is anything but removed from the troubles of the modern game.
Sitting at just 1-5 in conference play, the Bears (11-7, 1-5 Big 12) are currently a long shot to make the NCAA tournament in ESPN’s Bracketology, with their chances to make the big dance seemingly dropping daily. While there’s still is a lot of season left to be played, the 2025-26 year is on pace to be chalked up as the Bears’ worst record since 2017-2018.
“We need to start winning conference games,” head coach Scott Drew said after an 80-62 loss at Kansas. “At the end of the day, that is what is on our mind.”
The struggle for the Bears this year has been one that programs across the country are battling. With confusion over rules and regulations rampant in the current model of collegiate sports, teams are clawing to find a way to compete among a “win-now” mentality.
Drew’s squad came into the season with zero returning players from the 2024-25 team after losing a handful of guys who were expected to return. The Bears now are attempting to find wins as an inexperienced team with only a few months of play together under their belt in the most difficult conference in college basketball.
“You’re never out of the fight,” Drew said after a 92-73 loss to Texas Tech on Tuesday. “We’re never going to stop fighting.”
Certain teams have found success by getting their hands on diamonds in the rough. The Florida Gators saw big contributions from high-impact transfers such as Walter Clayton Jr. during their national championship run in 2025, but were primarily led by players developed in-house. In recent years, most successful teams have consisted of a deep rotation with multiple years of experience playing with each other and for the program.
The Houston Cougars, for example, have won back-to-back Big 12 championships with the lowest number of transfers per season in the conference. Big 12 basketball has begun to run through the bayou, led by a team reliant on developed upperclassmen.
Baylor has struggled to find that perfect combination since its 2021 national championship season.
“Offensively we have some limitations, but defensively we really need to get that together,” Drew said.
While facing a troublesome transfer landscape, the Bears also haven’t been able to escape the injury bug in recent seasons in their pursuit of immediate success.
“We’ve had a couple of guys go in and out recently,” Drew said. “Coaches look a heck of a lot better when all their guys are healthy, and we really need to get on that course.”
As the season’s win-now mentality sits on a cliff’s edge daring to topple, the Bears are looking ahead, hoping that their ragtag combination of transfers, a five-star freshman and a former NBA draft pick find their footing sooner rather than later.
“In this conference, we have had to play against a lot of top-10, top-15 teams,” Drew said. “Right now, we obviously are not a top-15 team.”
If the Bears can’t figure it out this season, the decision of whether to pursue immediate wins looms. If not, it could be time to return to a similar blueprint to the one that already took Drew’s Bears to the top in 2021.
