A BUdding Rivalry?

On April 4^th, the Kansas Jayhawks won the NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship with a 72-69 win over North Carolina. One year earlier, KU’s conference foe Baylor won the National Championship with a win over Gonzaga. For the first time ever, one of KU’s conference opponents had won a national championship, and perhaps, the fulfillment of one of Bill Self’s wishes was starting to take some shape. We have to go back to 2012 to find the beginning of this story.

During the summer of 2012, conference realignment took shape in a big way and in the process, Kansas lost its biggest rival, Missouri to the Southeastern Conference. In order to replace Missouri, Bill Self knew he needed a nationally significant basketball power to replace Missouri in the Big 12. His dream was that Louisville would be invited to join the Big 12. Louisville was looking to leave the Big East Conference, so they were available. The Cardinals were coming off a Final Four appearance in 2012 (along with Self’s Jayhawks), and they would go on to win the National Championship in 2013, since vacated. They had a high-profile coach in Rick Pitino, who had already taken three different schools to the Final Four. The Big 12 went a different direction, thanks to the University of Texas, and took West Virginia. West Virginia brought a high-profile coach and competitive teams, but nothing more than what already populated the Big 12. Nothing nationally significant.

Self’s Jayhawks would go on to dominate the Big 12 over the rest of the decade. Kansas State would win a couple of league championships, but would never mount a consistent threat to Kansas. Texas Tech would win a league championship in 2019 (tied with Kansas State), and go to a Final Four, losing the 2019 championship game in overtime to Virginia. But they would take a step back, going 9-9 in the league in 2020. Coach Chris Beard would leave Lubbock for his alma mater, Texas after the 2021 season. The Big 12 fielded strong, competitive teams top to bottom, but nothing nationally significant.

Scott Drew came to Baylor in the summer of 2003, the same time that Bill Self came to Kansas. The coaches came to their respective schools under entirely different circumstances. Self inherited a Kansas team that was loaded and expected to contend for a conference championship and make big noise in March. Drew came to a school that did not know if it would even field a team that first year. Baylor was up to its eyeballs in the worst scandal in college basketball history. What came out of that was a picture of a Baylor basketball program that was out of control and entirely lost under Dave Bliss. As a Baylor alum, I never want to see or hear of Bliss ever again. He thoroughly disgusts me. Drew was left to clean up the mess with 7 scholarship players. He and his assistant coaches went begging for kids on campus to come try out for the team.

Somehow Drew survived and by 2008, he had Baylor in the NCAA Tournament (as an 11 seed). He would take the Bears to the NCAA again in 2010 and 2012, and advance the Bears to the Elite Eight both times. However, he was unable to match that success over the rest of the decade, making it as far as the Sweet Sixteen in 2014 and again in 2017. Drew built the Bears up to a consistently competitive program that won some significant games, but never really competed for conference championships and was never all that nationally significant. The Bears did briefly rise to a Number 1 ranking in the polls in 2017, but that was just for a couple of weeks. The Bears failed to make the NCAA Tournament in 2018. They were picked to finish 9^th in the Big 12 in 2019.

There was no rivalry between Drew and Self, or Baylor and Kansas. Between 2004 and 2019, a period that covered 16 seasons, the two teams played 26 times with Kansas winning 22 and Baylor winning 4. That is not a rivalry, that is a beat down. During that time, Baylor did not win a single game in Allen Fieldhouse while Self’s Jayhawks won 9 times in the Ferrell Center at Baylor.

For Baylor, things began to change with the recruiting class of 2018. Drew recruited a couple of high
school kids, Jerod Butler from Louisiana and Matthew Mayer from Austin. He also brought in an international kid, Flo Thamba. Finally, he added a couple of transfers who would have to sit out a year, per NCAA transfer rules at the time, Davion Mitchell and Macio Teague. None of these kids raised any eyebrows, none made commentators and writers sit up and take notice. But this class formed the nucleus of what would be a national champion. Nobody predicted any sort of greatness, or paradigm shift in the Baylor program with this group. The other notable change for the 2018-19 season was that Scott Drew junked his zone defense, and embraced the type of man-to-man defense that Chris Beard was playing out at Texas Tech. As a Baylor alum, I have long believed that Scott Drew did his best coaching job in the 2018-19 season. The team that was picked to finish 9^th in the Big 12, went 9-9 in the league, finished 5^th and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Tournament before losing to Gonzaga. That was the season where Drew set in place all the things that were about to come.

In the 2019-20 season, Baylor finally beat Kansas in Allen Fieldhouse, and would win a Big 12 record 23 games in a row. After that Baylor loss, Kansas would not lose another game the rest of the season, closing out with a 16-game winning streak. They would need every single one of those 16 wins to edge out Baylor for the Big 12 championship. Kansas would close out the year 28-3, Baylor would finish 26-4. The NCAA Tournament was canceled that season due to COVID-19. Both teams had very high hopes for that tournament. It is reasonable to believe that both teams would have entered the tournament as a #1 seed.

For the 2020-21 season, Baylor would return 4 of its 5 starters from the previous, and they had their sights set squarely on the national championship. In addition to the returners, they added two significant transfers, Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua and Adam Flagler. Again, no one that would make you sit up and take notice.  It was a strange season in college basketball because of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic that limited crowd sizes and had the games played in largely empty arenas. The Bears themselves were hit with a COVID-19 outbreak that forced them to miss about 3 weeks of the season. Even so, the Bears went on to win the Big 12 with a 13-1 record, losing 4 games due to the COVID outbreak that they were unable to make up. They entered the NCAA Tournament as the #2 overall seed (Gonzaga was the #1 overall seed) and a 23-2 record. Baylor had one the greatest NCAA Tournament performances of all-time, and one of the 2 or 3 most dominant Final Fours ever to win its first men’s basketball national championship.

Both teams entered the 2021-22 season with high hopes. Indeed, both teams shared the Big 12
championship with a 14-4 conference record, and the two teams split their two regular season games for the third year in a row. Baylor had a very disappointing 2^nd round exit in the NCAA Tournament while Kansas won its fourth NCAA Championship. Looking ahead to next season, both teams have been ranked in the Top 10 of every “way too early” poll that I have seen so far. Both teams have plenty of returning talent, and an influx of incredible new talent. Next year, we as fans will get treated to two games featuring the last two national champions, and I am excited to see two basketball heavyweights slug it out. I am sure that when the schedules come out, both teams will be the circling the other. And both teams will have every expectation of beating the other.

Beyond next season the big question is whether or not Baylor has staying power. We know Kansas does. KU’s last four coaches have each taken Kansas to at least two Final Fours. They have accounted for 31 conference titles, 12 Final Fours and three national championships. Baylor’s magical 2021 season was their first conference championship in 70 years, their first Final Four in 70 years, and their only national championship. Kansas has won more basketball games than any school in history. Kansas plays in one of the most historic basketball venues on the planet. Baylor is getting ready to break ground on a brand new, state of the art facility that ironically enough is drawing from Allen Fieldhouse for its arena design. It is tradition vs up and comer. I do not know if Baylor has staying power. Scott Drew seems wedded to Baylor, and appears unlikely to ever leave. Will the Baylor program thrive beyond that? I would like to think so. Bill Self and Kansas have waited nearly 10 years for a nationally significant conference opponent. They may finally have what they have longed for. As they say, be careful what you pray for…I can hardly wait to see what this rivalry could become.