Big surprise: It’s Kansas’s conference to lose.
To many, it was billed the matchup of the Men’s Big-12 conference season. A titanic battle between two of college basketball’s premier programs.
No. 8 Baylor (+2.5), the defending National Champion, against No. 10 Kansas, a perennial and (oft-unchallenged) powerhouse of a program. A new rivalry in a basketball conference? Check. Star power? Check. A necessary heat check of a game but a few weeks before the Big-12 tournament starts? Check.
What more could you want from a regular-season game? From any game?
While Bill Self’s Jayhawks came to play, unfortunately, someone (Scott Drew, hello???) didn’t let the Bears know they had to put in a little effort. Any effort at all would have been acceptable, really. This was not a time to tuck their tails and run instead.
In what was supposed to be the matchup of the season, Kansas laid down the hammer in Allen Fieldhouse. Considering Baylor’s status as a top team, this close to postseason play, the “hammer” might even be an understatement. A masterclass by a Kansas team almost looked like it was playing a different game from their rivals describes what happened better. A crux of inevitability swaying toward a blue blood.
I don’t know: 10,000 words might be more apt to describe Kansas’s domination on Saturday. A thousand words couldn’t be appropriate for this outright outclassing. Have I used enough adjectives and means for diagramming a humiliation?
No? Really? Huh. Let’s keep trying!
A 34-point late lead in the second half (Baylor never came closer than a 16-point margin once the second stanza began). Outrebounded (47 to 36). Outshot (51.6 percent to a paltry 29.6 percent). 18 points scored each for Christian Braun and Ochai Agbaji, who quite literally, got whatever they wanted, be it from the paint, from three-point land, or from the stripe. It was a signature performance for Agbaji in particular, who already leads the Big-12 in scoring and is a contender for conference Player of the Year.
And all with only five made three’s on Kansas’s part. Five made treys in a 24-point win. That’s it.
This was Kansas, under Self, near its peak. This was a Jayhawk team clearly ready for a deep March run. And it was a Baylor team that might want to do some soul-searching with how little they seemed prepared for a pivotal moment in the season. A national title team this was not — by any stretch of the imagination. The Bears won’t get a chance at vengeance until Kansas visits later this month. A word of advice: By then, they should remember that they’re defending a title belt.
Meanwhile, it won’t get any easier for Self, Agbaji, and the Jayhawks down the stretch. Two games against No. 23 Texas and that road tilt with Baylor may prove more than a few small slip-ups.
Kansas will be prepared if Saturday was any indication, with hype and a postseason atmosphere in full swing. At a minimum, the Big 12 is theirs to lose. For now, anyway. Perhaps the way it was always meant to be.
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