I am one of those "Pollyannas" regarding Collen and, spoiler alert, still am. I love this team and trust this coach.
With that said, the TCU loss was tough. Real tough. I walked into Foster thinking this could be not just a signature win for the season, but a real momentum swing for the program's future. I walked out of the arena feeling we had taken a massive step back.
But I have two thoughts:
1. Our issues are structural, and all related to NIL. First, it's clear that TCU has made a decision that WBB will be a major focus of the their NIL investment, and it is paying off. That doesn't mean they are unbeatable, as has been shown by Utah and Colorado. But it does mean that, over the course of a season, they will prove to be the most elite team in the conference.
Second, from a coaching perspective, I think Collen was an excellent hire, but from a timing perspective, it has come with its challenges. Mack obviously made a decision to go with a coach who could recruit based on her ability to train athletes for the WNBA. And when the hire was made, the WNBA was the most lucrative league a women's player could aspire to. But very quickly that changed. NIL has now made the NCAA the most profitable league for players. So the recruiting advantage switched from coaches who could prepare players for the W to schools that could pay players a lot of money.
I don't believe either of those challenges are insurmountable. We can figure out a way to pay players more to attract better players (both in talent and, I think more importantly, in size.) And Collen is incredibly intelligent, so I believe she can adapt. But not without a financial commitment from Baylor that at least matches the financial commitment TCU has shown it is willing to make.
2. Somewhat unrelated, but it's been a bee in my bonnet for a while, and really came to a head at the TCU game. The Kim Mulkey issue at Baylor refuses to go away. I sat near some older fans whose vocal condemnation of our team when we are doing poorly are always at least twice as loud and intense as their vocal praise is for our team when we are doing well. These fans are still there, which shows they are better Baylor fans than the Mulkey-ites who stopped going to games and, if they show up at all, only show up on these boards to troll. But they still expect Mulkey-era dominance (particularly Griner-Sims era dominance) every game. One of them said on Thursday that "if Mulkey were here, we'd beat this team by 20." I almost lost my s!*t. Mulkey isn't here. She made a choice. It may have been an excellent and defensible choice, but the choice revealed that Baylor wasn't important enough for her to push through whatever issues she had with the institution. I'm ready to say to anyone for whom Mulkey is still a factor in your emotions, commitment, and stance toward this team, just get the f*c% out already. It would be better for your own mental health and the overall environment of our fanbase. I'm not saying that will make our women a better team, but it won't make them a worse team, and the experience will be far better for those of us who are actually Baylor fans.
