Jared Butler’s return boosts Baylor hoops. Do Bears supplant KU as favorite?
Uncertainty continues to cloud college sports, but the process of shaping seasons continues, even beyond football and other fall sports.
Monday marked the deadline for players to withdraw their names from the NBA Draft and maintain college eligibility, and on this front Baylor received some good news. All-conference guard Jared Butler said he was returning for junior season.
“Baylor, I’m coming back,” Butler said in a video announcing his return. “Let’s go win a national championship.”
The odds of that increased with Butler’s decision. He and the program had a breakout 2019-20 season. After splitting their first two games, the Bears won 23 straight — a Big 12 record — and spent five weeks ranked first in The Associated Press poll. The top ranking was a first for coach Scott Drew’s program.
There could be more this season. With the decision to return by Butler and teammate MaCio Teague last week, Baylor welcomes back its top two scorers and four starters from the team that finished 26-4 and was headed to a top seed in the NCAA Tournament before the 2019-20 season abruptly ended because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A year after being named honorable mention All-Big 12 as a freshman, Butler became a go-to and averaged 16 points, 3.2 rebounds and 3.1 assists last season.
The Bears and Kansas likely would have been No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament, with the Jayhawks winning the Big 12 with a 17-1 record.
Preseason hype about the conference in 2020-21 should start with those two.
With the return of Butler, the Bears might supplant KU as the coaches’ poll favorite for the first time in a decade.
Baylor returns a veteran team and Kansas replaces Big 12 player of the year Udoka Azubuike and fellow consensus second-team All-America point guard Devon Dotson.
The league figures to be top-heavy. One college basketball rating system ranked five Big 12 teams in the preseason top 10, with West Virginia and Texas 1-2. The Mountaineers return two of the nation’s top frontcourt players in Oscar Tshiebwe and Derek Culver.
The Longhorns return all 12 scholarship players from last season and added one of the nation’s top prospects, forward Greg Brown III.
Texas Tech, the 2018 national runner-up, remains in the mix with a terrific newcomer class of transfers like Marcos Santos-Silva (VCU) and freshman Micah Peavy and Minari Burnett.
The Big 12 also landed the nation’s top-ranked prospect, Cade Cunningham, a 6-7 point guard who is attending Oklahoma State.
Will there be a season this winter? Or will the start of the season perhaps be delayed? While those questions may hang out there for a while, the business of college basketball continued in another way Monday: The NCAA announced that the ticket-application system for the 2021 Final Four in Indianapolis is now open.
The NCAA’s message: “We look forward to witnessing one of the biggest comebacks in history when the NCAA Final Four returns to Indianapolis April 3 & 5, 2021.”
Big 12 predicted order of finish (on Aug. 3)
1. Baylor
2. Kansas
3. West Virginia
4. Texas Tech
5. Texas
6. Oklahoma
7. Oklahoma State
8. Iowa State
9. TCU
10. Kansas State
This story was originally published August 3, 2020 at 12:31 PM with the headline "Jared Butler’s return boosts Baylor hoops. Do Bears supplant KU as favorite?."