Pregaming – Baylor
Teams: Oklahoma State (14-4, 2-2) vs. Baylor (12-5, 2-2)
Location: Ferrell Center – Waco, TX
TV: Big 12 Network
Internet: ESPN3
Time: 3:00 PM CST
AP Rankings: Oklahoma State – N/A, Baylor – N/A
RPI: Oklahoma State – #36, Baylor – #102
Line: Baylor -6
Behind enemy lines: Full Court Press
A fully-rested Baylor squad is coming off a home loss to KU on Big Monday which snapped their 15-game home winning streak. Well, more like it obliterated the streak, but who's counting, right? Baylor's a strange animal (see what I did there?) to say the least. They seemingly have more talent than everybody in the Big 12 save Kansas, Texas, and maybe K-State and yet they've been more flaky this season than an episode of "Keeping Up with the Kardashians." They don't have any great wins and their losses have been to mostly inferior teams: Washington St. and Florida St. in Hawaii, Gonzaga (in Dallas, no less), then at Iowa St. and Kansas at home. Baylor, with Perry Jones, LaceDarius, and Quincy Acy, should not be losing neutral site games to Washington St.
I think it remains to be seen whether or not Scott Drew can coach in the Big 12. I could have coached the squad they had last year with Ekpe Udoh and Tweety Carter to the Elite 8, he's going to have to show me he can do it without a good point guard and without anyone to protect the rim. We know he can dish out cash with the best of them recruit, but whether or not he can make the whole of his team greater than the sum of its parts remains to be seen.
What I'm worried about:
That they can beat anybody in the country on any given night. Perry Jones is a multimillionaire's Mario Boggan (see here) and LaceDarius is the Big 12 active leader in 20-point and 30-point games. The point guard matchups probably cancel out, if only because neither team has a great one so I think it's going to come down to whether or not Baylor decides to play D and if LaceDarius is hot. If he's heat-checking 8 minutes into the game then it's going to be a looooooong day for OSU.
Moses could be big in this one for OSU as Baylor only has one true post player who puts in over 12 minutes a game. They're very much a swing-it-around-the-perimeter and we're going to out-athletic you to death kind of squad. That's very bad for them against Kansas who has two potential All-American big guys but could be good for them against OSU who has two big guys who may or may not enjoy playing together or even like each other. Plus they have more than one guy who can hang with JPO athletically so that means Keiton better be hot and Moses better not get in foul trouble early.
Two random stats that (probably) only interest me:
Baylor has hit a three in 605 straight games, Oklahoma State has hit a three in 337 straight games.
LaceDarius Dunn needs to average 17 ppg the rest of the year (assuming twelve more conference games and one guaranteed conference tourney game) to become the Big 12's all-time leading scorer. We can all celebrate this by beating our girlfriends/wives!
Video to get you ready:
You don't know how difficult it was for me to not post the football highlights from the weekend Baylor thought it was going to insert itself in the Big 12 title race conversation. Hopefully this will suffice instead: