Zero votes in the preseason AP Top 25 is what happens when voters read last spring’s obituary instead of looking at the roster Scott Drew actually built in Waco. Last season, Baylor stumbled to a 17-17 finish and watched the NCAA Tournament from the couch. Across five days in October, that unranked group walked onto a neutral floor in Jacksonville to beat preseason No. 1 Florida 82-76 in overtime on October 18, then marched into State Farm Center in Champaign on Friday night and dropped No. 3 Illinois 95-91.
People love to wave off October basketball because the box scores do not attach to an NCAA Tournament resume. Florida head coach Todd Golden leaned right into that cushion after his Gators shot 4-of-29 from three-point range and lost the bench battle 33-3 in Jacksonville, saying, “I think there’s a reason why you play these exhibitions.” In Champaign, the excuse is already gift-wrapped for the Illini faithful: preseason All-American forward David Mirkovic sat out in a walking boot, while Andrej Stojakovic, Zvonimir Ivisic, and Tomislav Ivisic all exited with head and knee injuries that kept them out for most or all of the second half.
Here is the problem with hiding behind second-half injury reports and the exhibition label: Baylor led Illinois for 39 minutes and buried the Illini 63-44 before halftime. You cannot blame a walking boot or a preseason experiment when an unranked visitor hangs 1.62 points per possession in your building over the opening twenty minutes. My verdict on the AP poll’s collective blind spot is simple: voters priced in Baylor’s 17-17 hangover and completely missed the best two-way guard rotation and offensive-glass ambush in the Big 12.
Isaac Williams IV Turned Champaign Into A Crime Scene
Brad Underwood did not bother sugarcoating what happened to his third-ranked roster in that opening half. “That was awesome; that’s really good to get punched and then punched again,” Underwood told the Daily Illini. “If the first half didn’t end, we would still be getting punched. Hats off to Baylor. They’re good. Guards are terrific, but it was very much a wake-up call.”
Look at the tape and the numbers from that first half, because what junior guard Isaac Williams IV did to the Illini perimeter defense was an act of basketball vandalism. Entering the game at the 15:17 mark with Baylor up 10-6, Williams reeled off 16 consecutive Baylor points by himself… two triples, two free throws, three layups, and a tip-in off his own miss. He finished with 28 points on 11-of-20 shooting, while junior guard Brett Decker Jr. cashed five three-pointers before intermission as the Bears went 11-of-18 from deep in the opening period.
Pair Williams with sophomore guard Kayden Mingo, and my problem with leaving Baylor off the national radar becomes undeniable. Five days before dropping 24 points, four rebounds, and four assists in Champaign, Mingo torched No. 1 Florida for 31 points, eight rebounds, and four assists while shooting 9-of-15 from the floor and 11-of-15 at the stripe. When two guards combine for 46 points against the preseason No. 1 team and 52 points on the road against No. 3 in the same week, their backcourt ceiling belongs in the second weekend of March.
The Offensive Glass Mechanism That Saved Baylor When The Arc Dried Up
The real proof of Scott Drew’s schematic blueprint showed up in the second half on Friday, when Baylor went 0-for-7 from three-point range and Illinois ripped off 47 points behind freshman Quentin Coleman’s 20-point debut and Stefan Vaaks’s 16 second-half points. A fragile team folds when the perimeter faucet shuts off and a top-three opponent cuts a 22-point lead down to 87-84 with under four minutes left. Instead, Baylor survived by weaponizing the exact structural advantage that defined Drew’s best Waco title contenders: relentless wedge rebounding and second-chance volume.
Baylor outboarded Illinois 47-38 and ripped down 22 offensive rebounds, turning those extra possessions into a 20-18 edge in second-chance points while outscoring the Illini bench 43-37. “Coach Underwood always does a great job in crashing the glass, and I know that if you give a team with their kind of firepower, two and three opportunities, they’re going to make you pay,” Drew said afterward. “I think we got the big lead because of our second-chance points (and) eliminating theirs.”
Underwood has built his entire reputation at Illinois on physical, rim-rattling rebounding margins, and he stood at the podium admitting his group got bullied in their own paint. “Yeah, we got busted tonight,” Underwood said, adding, “I haven’t been beat that bad on the offensive glass in a long time.” When Underwood also notes that “90% of our mistakes are just simple communication” on the defensive end, I hear a top-three program that got exposed by Baylor’s pace, spacing, and rotational physicality before the calendar even flipped to November.
I look at those two box scores and see a battle-tested rotation where Isaac Celiscar can chip in 15 points and Mingo can float in the dagger with 36 seconds left after going 9-of-10 at the overtime free-throw line against Florida five nights earlier. Baylor opens the official regular season on Monday, November 2 against Northwestern State at Foster Pavilion, and every AP voter who left Scott Drew off the preseason ballot has a short window to figure out how an unranked roster already owns head-to-head takedowns of the No. 1 and No. 3 teams in America.
