Scott Drew will not lead Baylor to greater heights

Baylor basketball coach Scott Drew has overcame tremendous odds to get the program where it is today. No, not the current five game losing streak, but to the point where they actually matter. Drew has resurrected Baylor form the Dave Bliss/Patrick Dennehy scandal to three NCAA Tournament appearances including two berths in the Elite Eight and a NIT title.

Drew inherited a program in 2003 that had made only four NCAA tournaments ever and had just been rocked by a scandal rooted in the fact that one player murdered another. The penalties -- among them scholarship losses and a postseason ban -- were so severe that non-league games weren't even allowed one year, meaning this was the mess of all messes, and lots of people thought Drew was dumb to leave Valpo to take the Baylor job.

That's all good, but with the talent Drew has procured in Waco over the years fans and media expect much more. Definitely more than a current 1-6 mark in the Big 12 including Tuesday night's loss to West Virginia, a team that has struggled since joining the Big 12.

Drew had the Bears  near the top 10 with a 12-1 record entering Big 12 Conference play – having only lost to Syracuse and beaten Kentucky and Colorado. Suddenly, this team is second to last in the league standings. Baylor has lost six of its past seven games and five in a row. Six Big 12 teams have NCAA tourney-worthy résumés, but coach Scott Drew's group isn't one of them. This is past the panic button.

I'm not saying that Drew can't coach, but maybe he's just not the guy to lead the Bears to greater heights. He recruits his tail off and gets top high school players to come to Waco, which is an achievement in itself. But I'm starting to get the opinion that Drew can't coach the talent. The Bears have the players to win big, but all too often they disappoint and don't perform up to their ability.

I don't know if the team has tuned Drew out, but maybe it's time for him to go. For all the good Drew has done for the program, he's seen as nothing but  an amasser of talent who recruits as many McDonald’s All-Americans and NBA Draft picks as possible without any regard for team basketball.

Whether you like Drew or not, you must give the man credit. He is responsible for perhaps the most remarkable rebuilding job in college basketball history, the young, vibrant head coach at Baylor has transformed a scandal-ridden program into a Big 12 powerhouse since taking over in Waco in 2003.

But for Baylor to take the program to another level Drew may have to leave, because it's looking like this current edition of the Baylor Bears has plateaued and the season has flatlined.

Art Briles might take the Texas job if it's offered to him

Baylor's Art Briles has made himself one of the hottest coaching candidates in the nation. Briles has turned around programs at Houston and Baylor and has made the Bears a higher profile team. While many speculate on his coaching future with a possible NFL job, the Texas Longhorns could be the tema that wins a possible Briles sweepstakes.

In a report in the Austin American-Statesman, a source says that Briles would be willing to meet Texas athletic director Steve Patterson to interview for the Longhorns job. Briles has not been interviewed but the report says that Briles would take the job if it was offered to him.   

Briles signed a new 10-year contract with Baylor after it clinched its first ever Big 12 championship. A high-ranking Texas source said Briles’ buyout is $4 million, but other reports suggest that it could be much higher than that figure, possibly $12 million, a price the Longhorns would more than likely be willing to pay.

With the high octane offense Briles orchestrates and the talent that annually come to Texas the Big 12 should be very afraid if Briles lands in Austin.

Baylor's Art Briles reportedly open to coaching the Redskins

Many say that Baylor head football coach would not leave the school under any circumstances. That would include reuniting with his former Heisman Trophy winning quarterback, Robert Griffin III, since it's being widely speculated that the Washington Redskins might part ways with current coach Mike Shanahan.

Would Briles be open to Redskins owner Daniel Snyder making a lucrative offer to coach the team. League sources are whispering that it could be possible that Briles could make the jump to the NFL.

Briles, who is currently focused on recruiting at the school, would have interest in the Redskins' job under certain circumstances, sources said, and some believe he could put together an NFL-caliber staff as well, without having to overly rely on his contemporaries at Baylor. Snyder is widely expected to fire coach Mike Shanahan at the end of the season, with his team again at the bottom of the NFL East standings and Shanahan's relations with RG3 in tatters and issues with his staff, and offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan in particular, no secret at Redskins Park.

Briles lacks an NFL pedigree, but Griffin and his parents are big fans of Briles. On the other hand Snyder is probably looking for a coach with NFL experience, which is always hard for him because of his reputation as a meddling owner.

I don't know why Briles would have any interest in any NFL job, especially the Redskins job. He built that program from scratch the way he wanted to. In the NFL he doesn't have a whole lot of say on which players he gets. He's in total control, not having to play a hand he's dealt. At Baylor he's king of Waco as long as he keeps winning. I don't think Briles wants to give that up anytime soon. Besides, he just signed a 10 year extension.

Briles has said he hasn't had any contact with the Redskins and plans to remain at Baylor.

Can Griner compete at the NBA level?

You had to figure it would be Mark Cuban who could turn the NBA World upside down. Cuban said he is thinking about drafting Baylor's super center Brittney Griner with a late round pick. Even if he did not use a draft pick he was thinking about offering her a tryout anyways. The real question is the NBA ready for the invasion of women in the league. The truth is Griner is a special talent and not your run of the mill player. She has proven that she can play basketball at a high level.

Now the question will be asked can she compete with the men in the NBA.. The answer to that is yes and no. Yes she can compete with them, but I think it would be on a limited scale. You cannot expect Brittney Griner to give you 40 minutes a game against men. I think between 15 to 20 minutes she could be very useful. Mark Cuban seems to have that kind of thinking as well. It will be interesting to see if Cuban goes through with what he said of drafting her or at least giving a tryout. No matter what it does make for an interesting draft coming up.

Titans rookie Kendall Wright says Baylor had no playbook

Tennessee Titans rookie receiver Kendall Wright will be learning to do something that he never learned in college. Reading a playbook. Not that he has a learning disability or anything like that, it's just that he never had to read on while he was at Baylor.

Wright says Baylor coach Art Briles never used a playbook and they didn't huddle, opting for signals instead.

“At Baylor we didn't huddle. Everything we did was coming off of signals and off the sideline,” Wright said. “We didn't huddle at Baylor and we didn't have a playbook. If we had a new play or something, we'd just draw it and go out there and run it.



“I think I memorized over 300 plays at Baylor. … We had a lot of plays. We just didn't have a playbook. Coach Briles is a very smart man,” Wright said. “It was the same system. We were in that system for four years. It's kind of a different kind of learning deal. We'd see it visually and we'd just go run it. It just sticks with us when we keep running it a lot.


“We'd watch film and go over a lot of it in our meetings that we had. We'd have a lot of plays on the board, and have different signals. Whatever the signal was would tell us the play.”


Wright knows he'll have to adjust to offensive coordinator Chris Palmer's complex playbook but with the memory he has it might not be as bad as the adjustment some rookies have.


“We didn't have paper at Baylor. We have paper now. There's a lot of different wordings that tell you what to do differently for things like that,” Wright said. “I think we're the only team that didn't have a playbook.”

TCU and Baylor combine for 13 hit batsmen

In college baseball normally there are scores of hits in any given game. Unless there is a truly special pitcher on the mound, games usually result in a 12-10 slugfest. Ok, not all games are like that but it's pretty close.

TCU and Baylor put on the hits Tuesday night but in a different way. The two teams combined to plunk 13 batters in the game. The 13 hit batsmen were more than the hit total which was 12. 10 Baylor batters were hit and three TCU hitters were hit.

"It was ugly, it was just an ugly game," Baylor head coach Steve Smith said in a report on the school's website. "It's hard to watch some of what we do, particularly on the mound. This was not a hard game to pitch, the wind is blowing in the batters' faces, and it's just not that hard."  


There were more batters hit by pitches than hits (12).


There were also a combined 11 walks in the game that took 3 hours, 53 minutes to play.


Baylor leadoff batter Nathan Orf was hit by three different pitchers.


TCU starter Brandon Finnegan threw 4-2/3 innings of no-hit ball, but hit six batters.  

Surprisingly this didn't result in a brawl, but I wonder if there's any bad blood behind it or will it affect future meetings between the two teams.

A Fan Refers To Baylor As "She"

With the demise of the Big 12 nearly coming to fruition, Baylor is determined to be the fly in the ointment. They won't let Texas A&M go without a fight which sets up for an interesting football game. Now Baylor is "confident" they will be able to latch on with the Big East if the Big 12 folds.

There are some, including me, who feel that Baylor is talking out of both sides of their mouth. They weren't talking about preserving decades of Texas football when the old SWC disbanded and left Houston, Rice, TCU, and SMU on the side of the road.

One fan sums up how they feel about Baylor and likens the school to a girl.

artisan3m says:



Sep 8, 2011 4:38 PM

Baylor doesn’t belong in the Big 12 ~ never has and never will be a perennial powerhouse in football. Basketball and baseball/softball, yes. Football, no. She should be in a conference where she has at least an even chance of earning a football championship. That will never happen in a league where Baylor has a hard time finishing 1-4 in its own division on an annual basis. This will not be warmly received, but Baylor is a leech on the state universities she competes with. Her fans are fair weather supporters and if the Bears lose two games before October, it is not unlikely that the visitors will put more butts in the seats than Baylor will. She ought to be in CUSA or MWC and she is hardly a BcS contender in any conference.
 
All of this is football driven and it's true that Baylor wants to save it's own hide and keep their AQ money. The football program would be better served building themselves up in the Mountain West or Conference USA. They might be able to contend in the Big East with their current edition of teams there. The basketball program is up and coming so that could balance out what the Bears lack in football. But in all of this, who cares about basketball? 





    

Baylor Wants The Big 12 To Stay Together

As the Big 12 continues to go down in flames all around them, Baylor is singing like Al Green. It's not too much of a shock that the people at Baylor want the conference to stay together. No one has been pulling at Baylor's coattails, so they've started a campaign to keep things together.

Nothing is more beloved in Texas than Texas football. Entire towns travel to neighboring communities on Friday nights as rivals meet under the Friday night lights; Saturday mornings find families rushing out to pee wee football games and spending their afternoons with friends tailgating or watching some of the most historic and storied football rivalries in the nation; Sunday afternoons see families gathered in living rooms across the state to cheer on the Cowboys or the Texans.



Football in Texas is more than a passing interest, it is a part of the fabric of this great state.


Will Texans stand by and watch hundred-year-old rivalries be cast aside as the state's largest universities align themselves with other states across the country?


Will Texans sit and watch as Texas' flagship universities pledge their loyalties to other states?


Will Texans stand by as our most promising student athletes are lured out of Texas by new rivals?


Will Texans watch as our most precious resources—the great minds of the next generation—are exported to new conference institutions?


Texans must stand up and call the leadership of the University of Texas, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech to clear-headed thinking about the state's future. Texas' flagship institutions of higher learning are the guardians of the state's future—their loyalties must first be to Texas and to her citizens. Ask these leaders to take a stand for Texas and to stop this madness that will lead to the dissolution of the Big 12 and the end of an era for Texas.

This is the only stand Baylor can take or they face being left out of a BCS conference and going at it in Conference USA or the Mountain West and even that's not guaranteed. If it wasn't for Ann Richards, Baylor wouldn't have been in the Big 12 in the first place (Texas Tech also got in for political reasons too).

Now you want to do what's best for "Texas football"? Why didn't you think about TCU, Houston, Rice, and SMU back in the 90's? You didn't stick up for them and now you may be the jilted bride. Of course Baylor wants the Big 12 to stick together. The problem is that the reason they want to stay together is the same reason that nobody will listen to them. They don't have any pull in the conference and nobody has been knocking down their door to invite them into their conference. The were lumped in with the other Texas teams when the Big 8 was expanded to the Big 12 and they will be lumped into Conference USA or something like that. They are starting to come around slowly in athletics but they are still no where close to contending year after year.

Isn't this poetic justice?