2020-21 Baylor Bears: Imposing their style and adapting
Baylor steamrolled through their NCAA Tournament opposition by playing to their strengths better than anyone else did theirs, and adapting to a new type of roster building
The 2020-21 Baylor Bears will go down as one of the top teams of the past decade or so in college basketball. They finished 28-2 and were the only team to topple Gonzaga. They finished with the 3rd best KenPom rating for any champion since 2002, behind only 2008 Kansas and (slightly behind) 2019 Virginia. Per BartTorvik.com’s Game Score metric, their worst two games of the season came right after their COVID-19 pause, including 1 of their 2 losses. If not for their COVID-19 pause, there’s a chance we would have seen 2 unbeaten teams facing off in the title game.
Their NCAA Tournament run was the culmination of a largely dominant season. Aside from the 2 games immediately after their pause, Baylor had a total of 5 games all season decided by less than 10 points. 2 of these were road games against top-20 opponents Texas Tech and West Virginia, and 2 were strangely poor performance in the Big 12 Tournament. That conference tournament showing consisted of a 6 point escape against a bad Kansas State team and a 9 point losses to Oklahoma State, which hinted at some possible vulnerability. Baylor instead responded by winning each of their ensuing NCAA Tournament games by double digits and never trailing during the final 10 minutes of any tournament game.
Sometimes a team gets hot at the right time and finds a different gear during a tournament run; this season’s UCLA team or the 2011 and 2014 Connecticut teams fall into this category. Baylor instead just kept leaning on their strengths and imposing their will on better and better opponents until nobody else remained.
Pioneering basketball analyst Dean Oliver popularized the concept of “Four Factors” in basketball: shooting, rebounding, turnovers, and free throws. Each has an offensive and defensive components, for 8 total factors. Among these 8, Baylor was in the top 10 nationally in 3 per KenPom:
7th in Effective FG% on offense
4th in defensive turnover %
3rd in offensive rebounding %
You might think that the best teams each season are elite in a few categories, and Baylor’s performance was typical…but no! The last team I can find who ranked in the top 10 in 3 different Four Factor components per KenPom was 2016 Michigan State. Those Spartans infamously lost to Middle Tennessee State in the first round, so being great at a lot of things doesn’t always lead to postseason success, but it beats being terrible at things.
Baylor also was consistently good at these things:
Their effective FG% was due to leading the nation in 3 point shooting at 41%; Baylor only had 4 games all season where they hit less than 30% of their threes
The Bears forced turnovers on 24.4% of opponent possessions for the season, and only had 4 games were than 18%
Baylor collected over 37% of their own misses for the season; only 5 times did they collect less than 27%.
So, Baylor opponents had a pretty slim chance that the Bears would only be about 3/4 as good as their best in these areas. The chances that Baylor would have an off night in even 2 of these 3 areas was almost none; that happened exactly once, in the Big 12 Tournament against Oklahoma State. Baylor hit only 6 of 28 threes (21%) and only forced a turnover on 17% of Oklahoma State possessions. Not coincidentally, Baylor lost that game by 9 points. The only other time they even got close to having poor games in 2 of these categories were their loss to Kansas following their COVID pause and an 11 point win over a bad Iowa State team on January 2. The rest of the season, Baylor tended to be really good in at least 2 of these 3 areas each game and racked up victory after victory.
Baylor’s strength in these 3 areas (3 point shooting, offensive rebounding, forcing turnovers) kept carrying them even as the competition got stiffer. In their two Final Four victories, Baylor posted the best offensive rebounding rate by any Houston or Gonzaga opponent all season. They also tied for the best 3 point shooting performance by any Houston opponent and were the only Gonzaga opponent to force the Zags into a 20% turnover rate while hitting 40% of their threes. Per KenPom, Baylor had the best offensive performance of any Gonzaga or Houston opponent all season, and the best defensive performance by any Gonzaga opponent. They flat out dominated with what carried them all season.
Much of Baylor’s success came from having 4 complementary guards who all were very efficient on offense while also bringin defensive chops. Between Jared Butler, Davion Mitchell, MaCio Teague, and Adam Flagler, Baylor had 4 guards who were in the top 200 in offensive rating per KenPom. Butler acutally had the worst offensive rating of the 4, but was 106th in assist rate and 42nd in steal rate.
Baylor almost always played 3 of these guards together. This used to be called “smallball” back when 3 guard lineups were novel and nobody knew what bitcoin was. Baylor played Mark Vital as Schroedinger’s power forward, who was simultaneously undersized (6’5”) and not undersized (250lbs) at the same time. Vital was certainly not a stretch 4, as he went 0-6, but his role was largely as a defensive ace who ranked in the top 300 in both block rate and steal rate.
If you want to categorize “3 guards + a non-traditional PF” as smallball, then smallball became more of the norm for successful teams this season. Of the Sweet 16 teams, 12 of them primarily featured:
A third guard or smaller wing (6’5” or less, 200 lbs or less) playing in lieu of the traditional “small forward”
An undersized (smaller than 6’8”) power forward who either brought significant outside shooting or defense
For example, Gonzaga started 6’5” 180lbs Joel Ayayi at the 3 and 6’7” 220lb Corey Kispert at the 4, and Kispert was a shooter and definitely not a rebounder. Every Sweet 16 team did something similar except for Michigan, Florida State, Syracuse, and USC, who each played larger power forwards and a more typical 6’6” to 6’8” small forward. Even some of these teams had bigs who could shoot from the outside (USC) or played smaller frontcourts before injuries changed their rotation (Michigan).
This wholesale shift to more success for undersized teams could be a complete fluke this season, but it wasn’t the norm even 2 years ago in the 2019 tournament. Virginia and Texas Tech featured undersized lineups in the title game, but other teams who made deep runs like Duke, Michigan State, UNC, Florida State, and even Gonzaga had bigger lineups in 2019. Gonzaga started Corey Kispert at small forward in 2019, but moved him to power forward this season, for example. I honestly don’t know if this season was the tipping point in prioritizing skill, playmaking, versatility, and shooting over typical positional definitions and length. Next season might see a handful of teams win by playing big lineups and rebounding their opponents to death. However, it feels like the increase in transfer freedom might result in elite teams having more skilled and veteran guards. Big men who can run the court, defend, and shoot tend to leave for the NBA more quickly than smaller skilled guards, which means that the transfer portal tends to be guard-heavy. In fact, 13 of the Sweet 16 teams started a guard who transferred into their program. As transfers become more common and the best ones tend to be guards, more and more teams will likely move to more undersized and versatile lineups like Baylor did this season. In turn, frontcourt players will need to be more complementary players who can rebound, defend, and stretch the floor as opposed to being post-up machines.
Baylor was a truly deserving champion, and imposed their will on nearly every team they played this season. Their use of the transfer portal and creative lineups to maximize the effectiveness of their talent should also show the way for other college basketball programs who want to have success with this changing landscape. Congratulations to the Baylor Bears, and I’m already looking forward to next season.