PARADISE ISLAND, the Bahamas– Don’t look now, but Baylor might be the third best team we’ve seen this college basketball season.
The unbeaten Big 12 Bears (7-0), who are ranked sixth in the weekly AP poll, may have lost three key starters– including All American guard Jared Butler, lottery pick guard Davion Mitchell and 6-5 defensive stopper Mark Vital– from last year’s national championship team, but they have enough skill, size and depth to challenge mighty Gonzaga again or Duke the title this March.
Point guard James Akinjo scored 15 points and seven players had at least eight points. as the Bears defeated Michigan State 73-58, to win the Battle for Atlantis here yesterday in an 11 a.m. ESPN game at the converted ball room of the resort. The win may have been obscured by Duke’s blockbuster victory over top-ranked Gonzaga in Vegas.
But no one should sleep on Baylor, whose ceiling could be as high as ever. .
“There is no great NBA team with one player,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said. “To win a championship you’ve got to have a team, you’ve got to have a bench. We had a rotation and then the big thing as coaches when you get new players they start to trust each other.”
The new faces have been impressive. Akinjo, who went from Georgetown to Arizona before finding his way to Waco through the transfer portal last spring, ran the offense for 33 minutes, responding to a seven turnover game against VCU in the semi-finals with five assists and three steals and featuring prominently in an 8-0 run when he came up with a steal off an inbounds pass and drained a three to turn a slim two point halftime advantage into a 55-42 lead with 13:57 to play. “It’s a perfect fit for me,” Akinjo said. “I want to be surrounded by great players.”
Michigan State, who shot just 37 percent and was 0 for 7 from three point range in the second half, did not have enough firepower to come back against the “Bears’ sticky defense, which took advantage of Spartan mistakes and is starting to resemble last year’s suffocating monster.
“We were who I thought we were in the second half,” Drew said. “Three games in three days. You got to be mentally tough to get survive that.”
Akinjo was selected the tournament’s MVP but it could have easily been 6-8 2021 McDonald’s All American wing Kendell Brown, who shot 6 for 7 and scored 12 points. The Bears also got 9 points and 8 rebounds off the bench from 6-9 freshman Jeremy Sochan, an English import who attended La Lumiere Academy in Indiana, came off the bench to score nine points and grab 8 rebounds. .
Other players are thriving in elevated roles Sophomore guard L.J. Cryer has gone from averaging 3.4 points to 15.8 while 6-9 senior forward Matthew Mayer, a top sub last year, is a potential double-double player.
“I was really impressed,’ as I was with UConn,” Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. “But these guys seem to do it with a purpose. Nobody cares who scored. They all played pretty hard defensively I’m probably helping their recruiting but it was a nice team to watch. Unfortunately, i had to watch them from the other side.”
A & M is one of the few teams that has depth at every position. They have a huge margin for error when they rotate front court players. they are so deep that 6-10 senior Flo Tamba minimal paying time because Jonathan Tchamwa Tchattchoua Meyer and Sochan were so efficient and too much for MSU’s post players Marcus Bingham Jr. and Julius Marble. The Spartans are back looking for answers at the point after allowing Baylor, much like Kansas in the Champions Classic, to convert 19 turnovers into 22 points, leading Izzo to promise some changes in the lineup, most likely using freshman guard Jaden Akins more often.
“As a coach he harps on coming out, being aggressive, bringing back Michigan State basketball,” MSU wing Gabe Brown said. “The second half, we didn’t do that.”
