Florida Man: Baylor, bluebloods struggling, gambling advice
Each week, national basketball analyst and Rivals' very own Florida Man, Rob Cassidy, takes readers around the basketball world, touching on news, notes and developments. This week, he discusses the big weekend that was for Baylor, predicts Mississippi State will soon add to its class and takes a look at at the struggling bluebloods.
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MORE: Rivals Roundtable on Baylor, promising prospects, more
2021 Rankings: Rivals150 | Team | Position
2022 Rankings: Rivals150 | Team | Position
2023 Rankings: Top 30
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EVERYTHING'S COMING UP BAYLOR
It’s a great time to be a Baylor Bear. You’ve got George’s Chicken Fried Steaks a couple miles from campus and your basketball team can literally do no wrong. What’s not to be thrilled about?
Scott Drew has his program sitting at 17-0 and is playing footsie with the possibility of an undefeated season. Oh, and things somehow managed to get even better over the weekend. First, the Bears received a commitment from four-star prospect Dillon Hunter, the No. 60 player in the 2022 class. The day after that, two of the program’s top-ranked commits squared off at the Montverde invitational and both made gigantic impacts on an overtime thriller.
Let’s first address Hunter. The 6-foot-3 point guard earns his ranking by being versatile enough to play either guard spot and showcasing solid range and length. He’s been on the radar of major programs for more than a year already and was generating blueblood interest before choosing Baylor over Florida State, Auburn, Alabama and others. He’s the type of battle-tested guard from a major prep program that can be a bell cow of sorts and serve as the cornerstone of the program's 2022 class.
Hunter joins Langston Love and Kendall Brown, who went head-to-head on Friday, on the list of talented Baylor-bound prospects. Brown and Love combined for 37 points in a matchup that saw Brown’s Sunrise Academy team edge Love’s Montverde squad in overtime. In a game full of high-major prospects, the future Bears managed to turn in two of the day’s most notable performances, proving that neither will be overwhelmed by the Big 12 stage down the road. No program in America had a better weekend than the Bears.
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FUTURECAST OF THE WEEK: Alden Applewhite to Mississippi State
Alden Applewhite recently told the world he plans to announce his commitment on Feb. 26. The finalists to land 6-foot-7 Arizona Compass Prep star are Iowa State, Mississippi State, Wake Forest, St. John’s and Clemson. This smells a bit like an Iowa State-Mississippi State battle, and I’ll give the edge to the Bulldogs as things stand.
Applewhite’s relationship with Mississippi State assistant coach Ben Howland is a tight one and will play a role, but the fact that MSU was able to get the three-star prospect on campus prior to the pandemic may make the difference. Following the visits is typically a wise strategy in the Covid age.
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STAT OF THE WEEK: The bluebloods are broken
None of the top nine winningest programs in college basketball history appear in the current AP Top 25. And that is ... well ... quite a stat, regardless of what it means. Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas, Duke, UNLV, Syracuse, UCLA, Western Kentucky and Arizona have all done their best John Cena impressions in the national poll. And while it’s human nature to try to find a catch-all theory to explain the hyper-rare situation, the truth is the reasons are almost certainly both nuanced and multifaceted.
Oftentimes the truth is boring.
It’s easy to see how an extremely young roster combined with pandemic restrictions could send a program into a tailspin. And that explanation works well for the Wildcats, Blue Devils and Tar Heels, but not for the Jayhawks and teams such as the Orange or Michigan State. From empty arenas to two-week shutdowns, this season is chaos. Attempting to make heads or tails of any trend it brings about is a futile exercise.
People - particularly ones under 20 years old - respond to major life events and the trauma that comes with them in different ways. It’s why resisting the urge to generalize these struggles is probably the correct play.
Sometimes coincidences are just coincidences.
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PARTING THOUGHT ...
Let’s do some gambling advice, shall we? Why wouldn’t you want to listen to a guy that bet the Chiefs -3.5 in the Super Bowl, after all? I’m clearly good at this.
That said, there seems to be some serious value in Illinois +1600 to win the national title. I know we all got together and collectively decided Gonzaga and Baylor are the only good teams in college basketball, but tossing a small wager on what might just be the best team in the country’s best conference seems like a solid risk at those odds.
The Illini have a handful of pros and a coach that has proven capable at multiple stops. The team also boasts veteran leadership. Are they a lock? Of course not. There’s a reason the odds sit at +1600, but I certainly think Brad Underwood’s team has a puncher’s chance, to say the least.