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Baylor Basketball

BREAKING: MaCio Teague to Return For Senior Season

July 29, 2020
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MaCio Teague is returning for his senior season.

The Baylor guard—who entered his name in the NBA draft in April—made the announcement Wednesday afternoon during a Zoom call with Stadium reporter Jeff Goodman.

“We have a pretty good team here at Baylor,” Teague told Goodman. “We’re returning a lot of players. We have a chance to do something special next year. I feel like Baylor is a good fit.”

A UNC-Asheville transfer, Teague averaged 13.9 points and 4.6 rebounds last season for a Bears squad that went 26-4 overall and 15-3 in Big 12 action. He shot 40 percent from the field overall and 35.5 percent from three-point range. The Bears won a school record 23 straight games and were ranked No.1 for five straight weeks.

Teague said the challenges presented by COVID-19 made the pre-draft process difficult.

“It was definitely a strange process,” Teague said. “We were doing interviews at home on Zoom. We didn’t get a chance to go work out (or) fly out and meet guys at the workouts and play against people and compete. It was definitely a strange year to do anything.”

Baylor is now awaiting the decision of leading scorer Jared Butler (16.0 points), who also entered his name in the draft. If Butler returns, the Bears will bring back four starters from its 2019-20 team and will likely be ranked No. 1 entering the season.

Check back later today for more on Teague’s decision.

UPDATE: Here are some quick thoughts from Baylor coach Scott Drew on Teague’s announcement:

“The staff is extremely excited. Not only because of the obvious stuff on the court, but because MaCio is a great teammate, a great leader. He makes going to practice that much more enjoyable because of the energy he provides every day. He's an energy giver.

We definitely trusted MaCio and his family. He's got a great inner circle, a great family. He's a thinker. He's not going to make a quick decision. He's not going to do something he hasn't prayed about or make a choice he hasn't put a lot of time in effort into making.

From a selfish standpoint we all wanted him to come back. But if he found or heard what he was looking for with the NBA, we'd have been happy for him in that realm, too. But this year was such a different type of year. With no workouts or no in-person stuff, it was hard to move up in the draft.

This helps our team so much. Basketball-wise, he's very fundamentally-sound. He can score in a variety of ways. He's somebody that the defense has to account for each and every minute. His passing really got better. On the defensive end, before his injury, he was really making strides. Rebounding-wise, too. Those two facets were huge as far as getting us in transition.

Everyone is excited. Everyone loves MaCio and everyone knows he's a great player. This gives us a chance to finish what we started last year. Besides the playing part, this team is so close. He is one of their brothers. They didn't want to lose him. He's such a huge part of this family. We're glad he's going to be around for another year.”

*Note: Drew said Teague is currently rehabbing his wrist in his hometown of Cincinnati. He should be back to Waco soon and should be cleared for contact in a few weeks.

 
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