WHERE THE HELL DID THESE GUYS COME FROM?

by T, The Angry T

Hopefully this shocks you as much as it shocked me, Baylor is the #25 team in college basketball. That rank will only improve after a five OT victory against #18 Texas A & M last night.

This is the same team that was barred from playing any non-conference games in 2005-2006 in the wake of the Patrick Dennehy murder scandal and recruiting violations. The school was placed on probation until 2010, coach Dave Bliss was fired for lying to investigators, among other things, and current NBA players John Lucas III and Lawrence Roberts both transferred out. The program started completely from scratch.

But low and behold, only two seasons later, Baylor is back in the NCAA tournament picture. A lot of the credit should go to coach Scott Drew, son of Homer and brother of Bryce, who literally pulled the program from the ashes and brought it back to not only respectability, but made them into contender in the Big XII. As a Michigan fan, I have to wonder how a program with virtually no basketball tradition can become a contender that quickly. Somehow, Drew convinced some pretty solid prospects to come to Baylor, even though he was recruiting against perennial Top 25 teams in Texas, Texas A & M, and Oklahoma and Oklahoma State.

Baylor will get four legitimate tests in a row in the next two weeks when the play Oklahoma, Texas, Texas Tech and Kansas. Those games will go a long way in determining whether their 15-2 star, their best since 1948-1949, was legitimate.