Gameday Thread: #15 Baylor (14-4; 3-2) vs TCU (14-5; 3-3)

BearTruth13 said:

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Why I've never liked the one and done approach. Our best teams ever were 2010 and the 2020/2021 squads.

Senior laden teams with talented but not highly recruited talent.

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We won a title with the "get old, stay old" strategy and abandoned it immediately. Baffling, really.

Unfortunately, some coaches get enamored by splashy freshmen -- often to their own detriment. It would appear we have one of them.

Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant, Michael Beasley and Anthony Davis aren't going to walk through your door very often. More often, you're going to get Quincy Millers, Kendall Browns and Keyonte Georges, who leave your program without making any meaningful impact on it.

Quinton said:

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bear2be2 said:

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Quinton said:

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It's valid but hard to plan for. You have to start intentionally recruiting guys who simply aren't as good but you're confident will be in program 3 to 4 years.

Hard to project like that while insuring you aren't getting a bunch of duds. The system isn't strong enough to control for that. Now if the staff brings on excellent defensive specialists (with intensity) I could see that strategy.

I get the point and worth debating. Often the teams that pull this off have a "negative " aspect of their program that keeps the most elite tier talent away. Ex.. hard nosed defensive obsessed coach.. or system coach that doesn't like to "feature " individual play makers.

Their identity does the work for them as they can't typically get top players. Just very hard to execute when only a few teams in the country can get better recruits.

No way does J Wright take a role but would love to pay him to come and help this staff in the offseason. Self isn't helping us and he's the only one better than Wright. Then hire a defensive vet. These guys on staff aren't getting it done. We need a great defensive teacher and motivator on staff

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None of the best teams in our league are built with one-and-dones. Everyone who is beating us right now or is ahead of us in the standings seems to have mixed the right impossible cocktail.

We clearly made a choice to go after more splash guys. It's been a failure. It is what it is.

I would take Iowa State, Texas Tech or TCU's roster over ours. All are infinitely tougher teams than ours is.

We have been Charmin soft the last two years, and it's hard to fix that with physically immature freshmen.

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The point is none of them can recruit like us. Iowa St, Houston, Tcu, Tech have all whiffed on a ton of prospects they wanted. That is the critical point here.

They are not deliberately declining players they like. They simply can't get them so they settle into top 100-200 type guys who happen to fit their system. It works better for them but it's not completely on purpose. Some but not all. Iowa st and Houston have gone 2 for 20 on top prospects they actually pursued over several years. Meaning they tried and failed to get them over and over.


Different scenario when we actually can them and get stuck in this strange no man's land with no identity. I agree this isn't working. It's a combo of less talented 22/23yr old rosters vs talented but green 18 yr olds..and extremely poor defensive coaching.

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And my point is "recruiting like us" isn't a good thing.

Having access to one-and-dones is fool's gold. You build better teams with two-, three- and four-year players. Our own conference has been proving this for years now.

The team with the best freshman almost never wins big.

Everybody talks about Cade Cunningham. His team didn't make it past the first weekend. And Trae Young led one of biggest meltdowns in recent Big 12 memory. And going back further, even Kevin Durant's Texas team was a giant disappointment in March, and Michael Beasley's K-State team lost in the round of 32.

Freshmen aren't equipped to lead elite college basketball programs. The best programs are starting veterans and developing freshmen, not promising freshmen 25-30 minutes a game and prominent on-court leadership roles.

BUCANDOIT82 said:

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bear2be2 said:

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Quinton said:

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It's valid but hard to plan for. You have to start intentionally recruiting guys who simply aren't as good but you're confident will be in program 3 to 4 years.

Hard to project like that while insuring you aren't getting a bunch of duds. The system isn't strong enough to control for that. Now if the staff brings on excellent defensive specialists (with intensity) I could see that strategy.

I get the point and worth debating. Often the teams that pull this off have a "negative " aspect of their program that keeps the most elite tier talent away. Ex.. hard nosed defensive obsessed coach.. or system coach that doesn't like to "feature " individual play makers.

Their identity does the work for them as they can't typically get top players. Just very hard to execute when only a few teams in the country can get better recruits.

No way does J Wright take a role but would love to pay him to come and help this staff in the offseason. Self isn't helping us and he's the only one better than Wright. Then hire a defensive vet. These guys on staff aren't getting it done. We need a great defensive teacher and motivator on staff

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None of the best teams in our league are built with one-and-dones. Everyone who is beating us right now or is ahead of us in the standings seems to have mixed the right impossible cocktail.

We clearly made a choice to go after more splash guys. It's been a failure. It is what it is.

I would take Iowa State, Texas Tech or TCU's roster over ours. All are infinitely tougher teams than ours is.

We have been Charmin soft the last two years, and it's hard to fix that with physically immature freshmen.

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I agree, Missi and Walter totally cost us this game.

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It's not about the individual players. It's about the impact you can expect from these players in one season -- during which they're almost guaranteed to be physically overmatched by their older, more mature peers.

If your goal is deep tournament runs, and mine is, it's very difficult to make a case that the juice is worth the squeeze.

I'll tell VJ he's not needed next year.

EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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I'll tell VJ he's not needed next year.

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Be as snarky as you want to. Just remember this post when VJ comes and goes without a trip to the Sweet 16.

bear2be2 said:

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EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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I'll tell VJ he's not needed next year.

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Be as snarky as you want to. Just remember this post when VJ comes and goes without a trip to the Sweet 16.

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So you want to go get a bunch of pretty good guys and hope that in three years we get a veteran team that might make a run because it happened once before? TCU has the most veteran team and they're no better or worse than us.

No, we're not finishing games. Yes, we're weak on D and we're missing shots. But if we had made three more shots in the last three games, this board, you included, would be talking about how gritty we are and how we're set up for a 1 seed. No one would be talking about our deficiencies.

So I'm going to stay on this bandwagon because we're literally three plays away from a completely different season. As I said before UConn went 2-6 in January last year, and they weren't last second losses. Some of them were blowouts. Are we last year's UConn? Probably not. But in season where nearly everyone is suffering weird losses, I'm willing to support this team, freshman 5-stars included, no matter what happens. I hope that doesn't come off as snarky.

I'm not ready to tell the McDonald All-Americans we don't want them anymore.

Mitch Henessey said:

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Sochan and Missi weren't recruited as one and dones. No one had them as first round picks, and certainly not lottery guys. The coaching staff developing these guys ahead of schedule came back to bite them. I don't blame Drew and Co. for that.

The roster having holes is due to catastrophic injury (EJ) and rapid development.

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We've also had three straight one-year guards who have accounted for 50 percent or more of our ball-handling, ensuring that we'd be completely starting over at the most important position in our offense.

This isn't all an accident. We've stopped building and started resorting to shortcuts. Shortcuts don't work in college basketball.

Transfers, like freshmen, are almost always better their second year on a team. We saw it with Royce O'Neale, MaCio Teague, Davion Mitchell, Adam Flagler, etc. Experience within your system matters, and we've stopped even trying to accumulate it.

EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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bear2be2 said:

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EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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I'll tell VJ he's not needed next year.

---

Be as snarky as you want to. Just remember this post when VJ comes and goes without a trip to the Sweet 16.

---

So you want to go get a bunch of pretty good guys and hope that in three years we get a veteran team that might make a run because it happened once before? TCU has the most veteran team and they're no better or worse than us.

No, we're not finishing games. Yes, we're weak on D and we're missing shots. But if we had made three more shots in the last three games, this board, you included, would be talking about how gritty we are and how we're set up for a 1 seed. No one would be talking about our deficiencies.

So I'm going to stay on this bandwagon because we're literally three plays away from a completely different season. As I said before UConn went 2-6 in January last year, and they weren't last second losses. Some of them were blowouts. Are we last year's UConn? Probably not. But in season where nearly everyone is suffering weird losses, I'm willing to support this team, freshman 5-stars included, no matter what happens. I hope that doesn't come off as snarky.

I'm not ready to tell the McDonald All-Americans we don't want them anymore.

---

I appreciate the appeal to patience. I'm going to try practicing it, as well. The difference between our January slump and UConn's last year was that they looked like the best team in the country prior to that slump. We've been elite on offense, at best, and downright braindead at worst.

EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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bear2be2 said:

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EvilTroyAndAbed said:

---

I'll tell VJ he's not needed next year.

---

Be as snarky as you want to. Just remember this post when VJ comes and goes without a trip to the Sweet 16.

---

So you want to go get a bunch of pretty good guys and hope that in three years we get a veteran team that might make a run because it happened once before? TCU has the most veteran team and they're no better or worse than us.

No, we're not finishing games. Yes, we're weak on D and we're missing shots. But if we had made three more shots in the last three games, this board, you included, would be talking about how gritty we are and how we're set up for a 1 seed. No one would be talking about our deficiencies.

So I'm going to stay on this bandwagon because we're literally three plays away from a completely different season. As I said before UConn went 2-6 in January last year, and they weren't last second losses. Some of them were blowouts. Are we last year's UConn? Probably not. But in season where nearly everyone is suffering weird losses, I'm willing to support this team, freshman 5-stars included, no matter what happens. I hope that doesn't come off as snarky.

I'm not ready to tell the McDonald All-Americans we don't want them anymore.

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TCU just beat us on our home floor and has a better overall and Big 12 record than us. They're better than us.

Some of you guys are straight up in denial.

We're a good, not great program stuck on a treadmill right now. And we're not going to get off it doing the same things that put us there.

When we play teams with equal or better athleticism, basically EVERY Big 12 team, I am afraid we will be TOAST on defense, both in the half court and in transition. We CANNOT switch everything like we do with this team. I kept saying today, get a stop, get a stop, we rarely did. How about some zone? It cannot be worse than our man right now. Watching our medium to small guards try to check a big 12 6'9" guy is not pretty, but even worse is watching Josh O or Missi guard a skilled big 12 guard. Quit doing that. That switch should be rare, rare. Instead it is every possession. It is not good.

I agree effort is good, we just look lost way too often. They played hard, they really did.

That's fine, we've already covered that. I'm not like some of the others staunchly against what you're saying. I'm open to it.

But the question is do you want the staff to deliberately target lesser players they think will stay 3 to 4 years when they have great chances at the most elite players? That would be the reality on the ground. It's okay if you do but I'm asking the question.

The only programs who have ever done this are Duke early/ mid 2000s (K shunning 1 and dones) and Ku late 2010s (although the probes probably forced their hand).

Villanova with Wright is the blueprint in my view. Had the best balance of talent and experience. They seemed to actively plan for it. Meaning they could recruit top talent (unlike your big 12 examples) but chose to limit it. That's a reasonable strategy.

bear2be2 said:

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EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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bear2be2 said:

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EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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I'll tell VJ he's not needed next year.

---

Be as snarky as you want to. Just remember this post when VJ comes and goes without a trip to the Sweet 16.

---

So you want to go get a bunch of pretty good guys and hope that in three years we get a veteran team that might make a run because it happened once before? TCU has the most veteran team and they're no better or worse than us.

No, we're not finishing games. Yes, we're weak on D and we're missing shots. But if we had made three more shots in the last three games, this board, you included, would be talking about how gritty we are and how we're set up for a 1 seed. No one would be talking about our deficiencies.

So I'm going to stay on this bandwagon because we're literally three plays away from a completely different season. As I said before UConn went 2-6 in January last year, and they weren't last second losses. Some of them were blowouts. Are we last year's UConn? Probably not. But in season where nearly everyone is suffering weird losses, I'm willing to support this team, freshman 5-stars included, no matter what happens. I hope that doesn't come off as snarky.

I'm not ready to tell the McDonald All-Americans we don't want them anymore.

---

TCU just beat us on our home floor and has a better overall and Big 12 record than us. They're better than us.

Some of you guys are straight up in denial.

We're a good, not great program stuck on a treadmill right now. And we're not going to get off it doing the same things that put us there.

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So what do you want to do?

Mitch Henessey said:

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EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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bear2be2 said:

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EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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I'll tell VJ he's not needed next year.

---

Be as snarky as you want to. Just remember this post when VJ comes and goes without a trip to the Sweet 16.

---

So you want to go get a bunch of pretty good guys and hope that in three years we get a veteran team that might make a run because it happened once before? TCU has the most veteran team and they're no better or worse than us.

No, we're not finishing games. Yes, we're weak on D and we're missing shots. But if we had made three more shots in the last three games, this board, you included, would be talking about how gritty we are and how we're set up for a 1 seed. No one would be talking about our deficiencies.

So I'm going to stay on this bandwagon because we're literally three plays away from a completely different season. As I said before UConn went 2-6 in January last year, and they weren't last second losses. Some of them were blowouts. Are we last year's UConn? Probably not. But in season where nearly everyone is suffering weird losses, I'm willing to support this team, freshman 5-stars included, no matter what happens. I hope that doesn't come off as snarky.

I'm not ready to tell the McDonald All-Americans we don't want them anymore.

---

I appreciate the appeal to patience. I'm going to try practicing it, as well. The difference between our January slump and UConn's last year was that they looked like the best team in the country prior to that slump. We've been elite on offense, at best, and downright braindead at worst.

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I'm not jumping off a cliff. I've just come to the conclusion that this team isn't nearly as good as we all hoped it would be.

I think our ceiling at this point is a Sweet 16 at best, and that's if all stars align. More likely, we'll end up an eight or nine seed and lose in the first or second round. That's not good enough.

Our trajectory has fallen off dramatically since the title run. We had four trips to the Sweet 16 or better from 2010-2017 with a single ill-advised one-and-done on those rosters. We've been perennially disappointing since we started producing one or more a year.

I liked our program better when we were feisty overachievers than I do now, but I don't enjoy watching soft/immature/flawed teams that find ways to lose rather than win games.

TXBEAR_bf said:

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That Missi bunny, just so hard to understand not dunking at 7 feet tall. Dunk everything!

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Quincy Acy would have won that game and took home the rim as a souvenir

Quinton said:

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bear2be2 said:

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Quinton said:

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It's valid but hard to plan for. You have to start intentionally recruiting guys who simply aren't as good but you're confident will be in program 3 to 4 years.

Hard to project like that while insuring you aren't getting a bunch of duds. The system isn't strong enough to control for that. Now if the staff brings on excellent defensive specialists (with intensity) I could see that strategy.

I get the point and worth debating. Often the teams that pull this off have a "negative " aspect of their program that keeps the most elite tier talent away. Ex.. hard nosed defensive obsessed coach.. or system coach that doesn't like to "feature " individual play makers.

Their identity does the work for them as they can't typically get top players. Just very hard to execute when only a few teams in the country can get better recruits.

No way does J Wright take a role but would love to pay him to come and help this staff in the offseason. Self isn't helping us and he's the only one better than Wright. Then hire a defensive vet. These guys on staff aren't getting it done. We need a great defensive teacher and motivator on staff

---

None of the best teams in our league are built with one-and-dones. Everyone who is beating us right now or is ahead of us in the standings seems to have mixed the right impossible cocktail.

We clearly made a choice to go after more splash guys. It's been a failure. It is what it is.

I would take Iowa State, Texas Tech or TCU's roster over ours. All are infinitely tougher teams than ours is.

We have been Charmin soft the last two years, and it's hard to fix that with physically immature freshmen.

---

The point is none of them can recruit like us. Iowa St, Houston, Tcu, Tech have all whiffed on a ton of prospects they wanted. That is the critical point here.

They are not deliberately declining players they like. They simply can't get them so they settle into top 100-200 type guys who happen to fit their system. It works better for them but it's not completely on purpose. Some but not all. Iowa st and Houston have gone 2 for 20 on top prospects they actually pursued over several years. Meaning they tried and failed to get them over and over.


Different scenario when we actually can them and get stuck in this strange no man's land with no identity. I agree this isn't working. It's a combo of less talented 22/23yr old rosters vs talented but green 18 yr olds..and extremely poor defensive coaching.


Good analysis. Just want to point out that I'd take a solid but not spectacular 21 year old roster over what we have right now because they will continue to beat us by 3 or 4 points.

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bear2be2 said:

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Mitch Henessey said:

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Sochan and Missi weren't recruited as one and dones. No one had them as first round picks, and certainly not lottery guys. The coaching staff developing these guys ahead of schedule came back to bite them. I don't blame Drew and Co. for that.

The roster having holes is due to catastrophic injury (EJ) and rapid development.

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We've also had three straight one-year guards who have accounted for 50 percent or more of our ball-handling, ensuring that we'd be completely starting over at the most important position in our offense.

This isn't all an accident. We've stopped building and started resorting to shortcuts. Shortcuts don't work in college basketball.

Transfers, like freshmen, are almost better their second year on a team. We saw it with Royce O'Neale, MaCio Teague, Davion Mitchell, Adam Flagler, etc. Experience within your system matters, and we've stopped even trying to accumulate it.

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This is true. Our rental guards be them one and dones or tranfers haven't been good enough. I will also say though even our development transfers looks bad right now. Bridges never progressed to what he should have, Lohner is a complete disaster, Grimes left. That's three roster spots that are incredibly important positions that have all vastly underperformed.

Drew has to get better at roster construction. He hasn't recruited a complete team in a long time.

Even the National championship team was weak at the 5.

EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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bear2be2 said:

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EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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bear2be2 said:

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EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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I'll tell VJ he's not needed next year.

---

Be as snarky as you want to. Just remember this post when VJ comes and goes without a trip to the Sweet 16.

---

So you want to go get a bunch of pretty good guys and hope that in three years we get a veteran team that might make a run because it happened once before? TCU has the most veteran team and they're no better or worse than us.

No, we're not finishing games. Yes, we're weak on D and we're missing shots. But if we had made three more shots in the last three games, this board, you included, would be talking about how gritty we are and how we're set up for a 1 seed. No one would be talking about our deficiencies.

So I'm going to stay on this bandwagon because we're literally three plays away from a completely different season. As I said before UConn went 2-6 in January last year, and they weren't last second losses. Some of them were blowouts. Are we last year's UConn? Probably not. But in season where nearly everyone is suffering weird losses, I'm willing to support this team, freshman 5-stars included, no matter what happens. I hope that doesn't come off as snarky.

I'm not ready to tell the McDonald All-Americans we don't want them anymore.

---

TCU just beat us on our home floor and has a better overall and Big 12 record than us. They're better than us.

Some of you guys are straight up in denial.

We're a good, not great program stuck on a treadmill right now. And we're not going to get off it doing the same things that put us there.

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So what do you want to do?

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Adjust our recruiting approach back to one that prioritizes two-, three- and four-year players over guys who will be here today and gone tomorrow. That goes for both freshmen and transfers. I don't want one-year players. They rarely produce results worth the time or effort it takes to get them on campus, and when they leave, you're left in the exact same situation you were just in.

Experience wins in college basketball, particularly experience together. Putting an entirely new roster on the floor every year is a good way to perennially disappoint. We saw that with Calipari at Kentucky, Coach K at Duke and now us. Relying on freshmen and one-year transfers every year to fill holes left by freshmen and one-year transfers isn't a good way to build a championship caliber roster in college basketball.

bear2be2 said:

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Mitch Henessey said:

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EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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bear2be2 said:

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EvilTroyAndAbed said:

---

I'll tell VJ he's not needed next year.

---

Be as snarky as you want to. Just remember this post when VJ comes and goes without a trip to the Sweet 16.

---

So you want to go get a bunch of pretty good guys and hope that in three years we get a veteran team that might make a run because it happened once before? TCU has the most veteran team and they're no better or worse than us.

No, we're not finishing games. Yes, we're weak on D and we're missing shots. But if we had made three more shots in the last three games, this board, you included, would be talking about how gritty we are and how we're set up for a 1 seed. No one would be talking about our deficiencies.

So I'm going to stay on this bandwagon because we're literally three plays away from a completely different season. As I said before UConn went 2-6 in January last year, and they weren't last second losses. Some of them were blowouts. Are we last year's UConn? Probably not. But in season where nearly everyone is suffering weird losses, I'm willing to support this team, freshman 5-stars included, no matter what happens. I hope that doesn't come off as snarky.

I'm not ready to tell the McDonald All-Americans we don't want them anymore.

---

I appreciate the appeal to patience. I'm going to try practicing it, as well. The difference between our January slump and UConn's last year was that they looked like the best team in the country prior to that slump. We've been elite on offense, at best, and downright braindead at worst.

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I'm not jumping off a cliff. I've just come to the conclusion that this team isn't nearly as good as we all hoped it would be.

I think our ceiling at this point is a Sweet 16 at best, and that's if all stars align. More likely, we'll end up an eight or nine seed and lose in the first or second round. That's not good enough.

Our trajectory has fallen off dramatically since the title run. We had four trips to the Sweet 16 or better from 2010-2017 with a single ill-advised one-and-done on those rosters. We've been perennially disappointing since we started producing one or more a year.

I liked our program better when we were feisty overachievers than I do now, but I don't enjoy watching soft/immature/flawed teams that find ways to lose rather than win games.

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My standards for a successful season is a Sweet 16. This team is good enough to make it there. Once you get to that stage, unless you have a truly dominant team (we did in 2021), the games come down to matchups and frankly, luck.

If this team makes it that far (big "if"), we're a favorable matchup and a little luck away from having a shot at another Final Four. That's about all you can ask in the transfer portal era. In case you haven't looked around, there isn't a dominant team in the country this year. We may have as good a chance as anyone if we can get right.

Quinton said:

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That's fine, we've already covered that. I'm not like some of the others staunchly against what you're saying. I'm open to it.

But the question is do you want the staff to deliberately target lesser players they think will stay 3 to 4 years when they have great chances at the most elite players? That would be the reality on the ground. It's okay if you do but I'm asking the question.

The only programs who have ever done this are Duke early/ mid 2000s (K shunning 1 and dones) and Ku late 2010s (although the probes probably forced their hand).

Villanova with Wright is the blueprint in my view. Had the best balance of talent and experience. They seemed to actively plan for it. Meaning they could recruit top talent (unlike your big 12 examples) but chose to limit it. That's a reasonable strategy.

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I don't think we should target one-and-done players. Full stop. Let them sink or swim with other programs.

I don't want freshmen even starting for my team, much less in starring roles.

I want to get back to being a developmental program that relies on juniors and seniors and uses multi-year transfers to fill holes left by surprise departures or recruiting misses. I don't enjoy developing freshmen who won't be good/around long enough to win while they're here.

IvanBear said:

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bear2be2 said:

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Mitch Henessey said:

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Sochan and Missi weren't recruited as one and dones. No one had them as first round picks, and certainly not lottery guys. The coaching staff developing these guys ahead of schedule came back to bite them. I don't blame Drew and Co. for that.

The roster having holes is due to catastrophic injury (EJ) and rapid development.

---

We've also had three straight one-year guards who have accounted for 50 percent or more of our ball-handling, ensuring that we'd be completely starting over at the most important position in our offense.

This isn't all an accident. We've stopped building and started resorting to shortcuts. Shortcuts don't work in college basketball.

Transfers, like freshmen, are almost better their second year on a team. We saw it with Royce O'Neale, MaCio Teague, Davion Mitchell, Adam Flagler, etc. Experience within your system matters, and we've stopped even trying to accumulate it.

---

This is true. Our rental guards be them one and dones or tranfers haven't been good enough. I will also say though even our development transfers looks bad right now. Bridges never progressed to what he should have, Lohner is a complete disaster, Grimes left. That's three roster spots that are incredibly important positions that have all vastly underperformed.

Drew has to get better at roster construction. He hasn't recruited a complete team in a long time.

Even the National championship team was weak at the 5.

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I wouldn't say Bridges has vastly underperformed. He's been the guy we thought we were getting. He just never took his game to a higher level.

I'd agree otherwise. And I think we can add Nunn to your list as well. He has not been the player we've needed him to be this year.

I can't even imagine though how much worse off we would be this year without him. Who would play his minutes and role on this team?

Mitch Henessey said:

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bear2be2 said:

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Mitch Henessey said:

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EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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bear2be2 said:

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EvilTroyAndAbed said:

---

I'll tell VJ he's not needed next year.

---

Be as snarky as you want to. Just remember this post when VJ comes and goes without a trip to the Sweet 16.

---

So you want to go get a bunch of pretty good guys and hope that in three years we get a veteran team that might make a run because it happened once before? TCU has the most veteran team and they're no better or worse than us.

No, we're not finishing games. Yes, we're weak on D and we're missing shots. But if we had made three more shots in the last three games, this board, you included, would be talking about how gritty we are and how we're set up for a 1 seed. No one would be talking about our deficiencies.

So I'm going to stay on this bandwagon because we're literally three plays away from a completely different season. As I said before UConn went 2-6 in January last year, and they weren't last second losses. Some of them were blowouts. Are we last year's UConn? Probably not. But in season where nearly everyone is suffering weird losses, I'm willing to support this team, freshman 5-stars included, no matter what happens. I hope that doesn't come off as snarky.

I'm not ready to tell the McDonald All-Americans we don't want them anymore.

---

I appreciate the appeal to patience. I'm going to try practicing it, as well. The difference between our January slump and UConn's last year was that they looked like the best team in the country prior to that slump. We've been elite on offense, at best, and downright braindead at worst.

---

I'm not jumping off a cliff. I've just come to the conclusion that this team isn't nearly as good as we all hoped it would be.

I think our ceiling at this point is a Sweet 16 at best, and that's if all stars align. More likely, we'll end up an eight or nine seed and lose in the first or second round. That's not good enough.

Our trajectory has fallen off dramatically since the title run. We had four trips to the Sweet 16 or better from 2010-2017 with a single ill-advised one-and-done on those rosters. We've been perennially disappointing since we started producing one or more a year.

I liked our program better when we were feisty overachievers than I do now, but I don't enjoy watching soft/immature/flawed teams that find ways to lose rather than win games.

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My standards for a successful season is a Sweet 16. This team is good enough to make it there. Once you get to that stage, unless you have a truly dominant team (we did in 2021), the games come down to matchups and frankly, luck.

If this team makes it that far (big "if"), we're a favorable matchup and a little luck away from having a shot at another Final Four. That's about all you can ask in the transfer portal era. In case you haven't looked around, there isn't a dominant team in the country this year. We may have as good a chance as anyone if we can get right.

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That's my standard, too. But we've only reached it five times in 20 years, despite being consistently ranked in the top-20 since 2009. A lot of our fans talk about us like we're Kansas or Duke. We're not. And we've gotten farther away from that level since our title run, not closer, despite supposedly improved recruiting.

True Grit said:

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I can't even imagine though how much worse off we would be this year without him. Who would play his minutes and role on this team?

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Our recruiting strategy has an opportunity cost. Every scholarship given to a one-year freshman or transfer takes one away from a developmental player who might be a multi-year standout in our program.

We're literally starting over every year. There's no continuity whatsoever season to season.

I love Walter, Missi and especially Dennis as players. But it's becoming more and more likely they'll leave Baylor without anything meaningful to show for their time in Waco. I'd have preferred to have tried to build a team and a roster, like we did from 2003-21.

bear2be2 said:

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IvanBear said:

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bear2be2 said:

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Mitch Henessey said:

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Sochan and Missi weren't recruited as one and dones. No one had them as first round picks, and certainly not lottery guys. The coaching staff developing these guys ahead of schedule came back to bite them. I don't blame Drew and Co. for that.

The roster having holes is due to catastrophic injury (EJ) and rapid development.

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We've also had three straight one-year guards who have accounted for 50 percent or more of our ball-handling, ensuring that we'd be completely starting over at the most important position in our offense.

This isn't all an accident. We've stopped building and started resorting to shortcuts. Shortcuts don't work in college basketball.

Transfers, like freshmen, are almost better their second year on a team. We saw it with Royce O'Neale, MaCio Teague, Davion Mitchell, Adam Flagler, etc. Experience within your system matters, and we've stopped even trying to accumulate it.

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This is true. Our rental guards be them one and dones or tranfers haven't been good enough. I will also say though even our development transfers looks bad right now. Bridges never progressed to what he should have, Lohner is a complete disaster, Grimes left. That's three roster spots that are incredibly important positions that have all vastly underperformed.

Drew has to get better at roster construction. He hasn't recruited a complete team in a long time.

Even the National championship team was weak at the 5.

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I wouldn't say Bridges has vastly underperformed. He's been the guy we thought we were getting. He just never took his game to a higher level.

I'd agree otherwise. And I think we can add Nunn to your list as well. He has not been the player we've needed him to be this year.

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No disagreement on Nunn but he's not a development guy yet…

Bridges I rank as a disappointment as he's really the same guy this year as he was last; if not a bit of a step down. He really hasn't progressed this season and continued to be incredibly inconsistent.

Wright (Philly pg recruit) has some perceived pro limitations that could keep him here multiple years. Would be a sweet spot player if true.

Most skilled pg recruit in the country and a great competitor. That would be a start. Probably still too good of a player for your strategy but a pg here multiple years would clean up a lot of issues.

For your method to work we would need to recruit guys with a few aspects pro scouts don't love which would require them to play multiple years to prove themselves.

Our regression in basketball is following our football program. Win the big one and fail to build on what was accomplished. The decline is becoming noticeable.

Mitch Henessey said:

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Sochan and Missi weren't recruited as one and dones. No one had them as first round picks, and certainly not lottery guys. The coaching staff developing these guys ahead of schedule came back to bite them. I don't blame Drew and Co. for that.

The roster having holes is due to catastrophic injury (EJ) and rapid development.

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It's a very good point and one of the reasons all hope isn't lost into the future. I'm one of those down on the staff right now and think we need a shake up. But I can't argue with the facts. What you point out is objectively true.

Victim of their own success in first identifying talent and developing quickly. Sochan and Jon killed roster construction. But now it needs to be fixed.

Quinton said:

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Wright (Philly pg recruit) has some perceived pro limitations that could keep him here multiple years. Would be a sweet spot player if true.

Most skilled pg recruit in the country and a great competitor. That would be a start. Probably still too good of a player for your strategy but a pg here multiple years would clean up a lot of issues.

For your method to work we would need to recruit guys with a few aspects pro scouts don't love which would require them to play multiple years to prove themselves.

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Houston has a team roster of them. It doesn't take NBA talent or measurables to be an elite college player. And those with NBA talent/measurables often aren't.

I want to recruit for the college game, not the NBA draft.