A lot of people don’t expect much from Baylor. The Bears were picked 9th in the Big 12. They received zero votes in either preseason poll. And Bart Torvik’s rankings have the Bears 77th, with just a 4% chance of making the NCAA Tournament.
There are plenty of reasons to like this team. KenPom has Baylor 40th, and they’re not too far in his metric from being a top 25 team. The Bears have added a ton of new players, and they were a couple of bad breaks from making the dance last season; They beat Vanderbilt and SMU in secret scrimmages.