By Jackson Posey | Sports Editor
Baylor men’s basketball is surging. It could be too late.
The Bears (15-15, 5-12 Big 12) opened conference play 1-7, their worst start in two decades, before eventually revving the engines. They’re 4-5 in their past nine games against Big 12 opponents. Three losses came down to free throws, and Baylor led No. 7 Houston for much of the night Wednesday before allowing a late run.
“Every year in the Big 12, why it’s the best conference is there’s no off nights,” head coach Scott Drew said after the 77-64 loss to the Cougars. “You can’t circle, ‘This team, we’re winning by 30.’ And that’s what makes it so competitive.”
Baylor chances at becoming one of 37 automatic qualifiers for the NCAA Tournament. The Bears rank No. 51 in the NET ratings; even if the Bears ran the table to the Big 12 championship game, it’d be difficult to get in without a title. The Bears’ six straight March Madness appearances are unique in program history — and a mark the coaching staff won’t surrender easily.
“The more games we win leading up to the conference tournament, it still gives us a lot better chance in the conference tournament,” senior center Caden Powell said last week, before the Bears split matchups with UCF and Houston. “Really just taking each game as it is and seeing it as a, ‘We have to win it. We have to do whatever it takes to win.’”
Powell, who grew up a Baylor fan in Waco, expressed some mild enthusiasm for the rest of the season.
“Going through the ups and downs of the year, obviously we’re not where we want to be right now,” Powell said. “There’s still opportunity for us. So the door’s still open. Even though it may be extremely challenging, the door’s still open.”
Powell said the team is focused on “staying the course.” The Bears have faced significant injury issues this season, including season-ending injuries to center Juslin Bodo Bodo, guard JJ White and forward Maikcol Perez. Senior wing Dan Skillings Jr. missed two weeks with a lower-body injury and fifth-year guard Obi Agbim has battled nagging issues for weeks.
The Bears’ only realistic path to making the NCAA Tournament may be a Big 12 Tournament title.
It would take history. Baylor men’s basketball has never won the Big 12 Tournament, with its three appearances (2009, 2012, 2014) ending in a pair of losses to Missouri and a third to Iowa State.
Even before Baylor’s national title run, in 2020-21, it dropped the semifinal game to Oklahoma State 83-74. The loss was the Bear’s second, and final, of the season.
The Bears are all but guaranteed the No. 13 seed. Given the most likely outcomes of this week’s games, here’s how their path would fall.
Baylor would face No. 12 seed Arizona State in the first round, a team the Bears beat two weeks ago, before turning to No. 5 seed Iowa State off a bye. The Cyclones are ranked No. 6 in the AP Top 25 poll and Baylor was widely lauded for keeping things close during a three-point loss in February. The Bears have lost four straight to Iowa State stretching back to 2024.
Should they survive, No. 4 seed Kansas awaits off a bye. The No. 14-ranked Jayhawks won an 80-62 blowout in Allen Fieldhouse in January, kickstarting a four-game losing streak for Baylor.
Then comes the semifinal match, most likely a bout with top-seeded Arizona, which has hung around the No. 1 spot in national polls all season. The Wildcats have already clinched the Big 12 regular season title and will likely be favored to win the conference tournament as well. They needed multiple key rebounds down the stretch to escape a major upset in Waco on Feb. 24.
Then the Big 12 title game looms. No. 2 seed Houston (ranked No. 7 nationally) would be favored to take the other side. The Cougars have won their two matchups with Baylor by a combined 35 points this season.
The road would be grueling, and a more reasonable outcome is a berth in the College Basketball Crown, a new competitor to the NIT which offers six-figure NIL pools for teams that make the finals.
The Crown will invite the top two non-NCAA Tournament teams from the Big 12 — which could be West Virginia and Cincinnati, per ESPN’s latest Bracketology, though Baylor outranks the Mountaineers in the NET.
Baylor’s odds at the NCAA Tournament look like a longshot, and an invite to the Crown may be optimistic. Whether the Bears would be willing to compete in, say, the NIT, remains to be seen. But the team keeps harping on destiny.
“We control our own destiny as long as we’re playing,” Drew said after the loss to Arizona. “We’ll keep getting better and keep fighting.”
