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College basketball rankings: Baylor makes statement with win at Oklahoma State, moves up in Top 25 And 1 – CBS Sports
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Baylor began the season as the Big 12 favorite — then began the Big 12 portion of its schedule with three straight losses. It wasn’t an ideal start. But Scott Drew’s Bears have been mostly excellent since that rough stretch, improving to 12-3 in their past 15 games late Monday with a 74-68 victory at Oklahoma State, which is now the first team out of Jerry Palm’s latest projected bracket for the 2023 NCAA Tournament.
“We don’t dance around this stuff — we show them the standings, this is where we are, this is what we’ve done, this is what we have in front of us,” Oklahoma State coach Mike Boynton said after his Cowboys lost a fifth straight game that pushed them to the wrong side of the bubble in Palm’s Bracketology. “If you’re a basketball player, that’s what you think about, and you’re one of the teams that people are talking about being on the line. That’s why I don’t pretend that it’s not a real thing.”
What’s also a real thing is Baylor looking like a legitimate national championship contender for the fourth consecutive season, this time largely thanks to a trio of guards as good as, if not better than, any other trio of guards in the sport.
Only two of them played in the victory at Oklahoma State, though.
That’s because projected NBA Draft lottery pick Keyonte George was sidelined during Saturday’s win over Texas by an ankle injury, which played a role in Baylor closing as an underdog at Oklahoma State. Regardless, the Bears pretty much controlled the game from start to finish. They never trailed for a single second, led by as many as 19 points and got a combined 28 points, eight assists and eight rebounds from George’s backcourt mates LJ Cryer and Adam Flagler.
“With Adam and LJ, it makes it easy to sleep at night,” Drew said.
Baylor, now in possession of 11 Quadrant-1 wins, is No. 8 in Tuesday morning’s updated CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 daily college basketball rankings. The Bears moving up two spots caused Marquette and Gonzaga to be pushed down one spot each, no fault of their own.
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