The Rauf Report breaks down the biggest takeaways from the week of NCAA basketball, including why Baylor’s defense may already be a cause for concern.
It’s so nice to have you back, college basketball.
The sport’s opening week has provided plenty of solid action so far, with teams making notable statements — in both positive and negative ways — about what they will be this season. I’ve covered a handful of them in my new Rauf Report videos over on the Sleepers Media YouTube channel, including a look at BYU freshman Egor Demin’s incredible opener as well as why Villanova has continued to struggle under Kyle Neptune.
Elsewhere: Duke’s freshmen look legitimate, many of the nation’s top teams look to be in midseason form, and we have a slew of high-profile matchups on tap this weekend. We already saw one of those blockbuster games, late on opening night when Baylor went to Spokane to face Gonzaga — which turned into one of the biggest blowouts of the young season.
Mark Few’s squad won 101-63 in a game that felt every bit the beatdown the final score indicated. It was a very impressive performance from this veteran Gonzaga group, which showed it should be considered among the national title favorites. Baylor was expected to be in that mix, too, yet its performance indicated it has a ways to go.
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Gonzaga looking this good already is certainly notable, but Baylor’s rough start was equally eye-catching. However, the reason the Bears struggled — poor defensive play — is now a multi-year problem in Waco. The defense has limited Baylor’s ceiling the past two seasons, and it looks to be happening again.
And that is where we’ll start this Rauf Report:
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Baylor’s defense was a major issue — again
Defense led the charge when Baylor won the national championship in 2021. Its consistently stellar displays on the defensive end made the difference in the NCAA Tournament (61.7 ppg allowed).
Since then, however, Baylor’s defense — particularly on the perimeter — has dropped off dramatically.
On Monday night, Gonzaga got into the lane whenever it wanted and exploited Baylor’s lack of interior size. Sloppy rotations and poor closeouts also kept the Bears from keeping up with the Zags’ ball movement. Scott Drew’s defensive strategy has been to switch on virtually everything, which Gonzaga continually exploited to get open shots or matchup advantages.
“Gonzaga returning eight (of its top nine players) looked like that. And us, with one returning starter, looked like that,” Drew acknowledged after the game. “They really exploited our [defensive] switching.”
He later added: “For Baylor fans that stayed up, I promise you, we will get better, and we will give you a better effort than this.”
It’s fair to question how much better the defense will get, though. The Bears struggled while having more interior size last season, and they still lack a true rim protector to mitigate the poor perimeter defense. Jeremy Roach projects to be a slightly better perimeter defender than anyone from last year, but there is no lockdown defender. Freshman VJ Edgecombe, the team’s projected star, has a long way to go defensively, but he’ll need to play heavy minutes because of what he brings offensively.
Gonzaga can dissect some of the best defenses in the country, so giving up 101 points isn’t the issue. However, this isn’t a one-off performance for the Bears — it’s the continuation of a trend that could keep Baylor from reaching expectations.
It could be a VERY strong season for the sport’s top teams
Broadly speaking, the quality of a college basketball season largely comes down to three questions: How good was the freshman class? How exciting was the NCAA Tournament? And how many truly elite teams were there at the top of the sport?
The level of play across college basketball has always been variable given eligibility restrictions, and the current amount of annual roster turnover via the portal and draft defections has taken a toll the past few seasons. UConn has stood out as a juggernaut, of course, but there was also a lack of true contenders to its throne atop the sport, Purdue perhaps being the lone exception.
Over the last five seasons, only seven teams have finished with a KenPom adjusted efficiency margin of 30 or higher. For context, five teams cleared that threshold in 2018-19 alone.
The 2024-25 campaign may see a similar number of elite teams atop the sport. Alabama and Kansas, the preseason No. 1 and No. 2 in the AP Top 25, looked every bit the part of national title contenders in their blowout openers. We’ve discussed what Gonzaga did to Baylor. Auburn beat a top-100 Vermont team by 51 points — and Houston is still No. 1 on KenPom! Meanwhile, there’s also Duke’s talented roster, UConn and its back-to-back titles, and teams like Iowa State and Arizona that could get in the mix.
A lot of teams looked like contenders on paper this offseason, but things on paper don’t always translate to the court. I know we’re only a few days into the season, yet everything we thought in the preseason (aside from Baylor) has translated to the court. I think we could be in for a very special, very fun season.
Florida’s role players look the part
The Gators came into the season as a sleeper, both in the SEC and to potentially make the Final Four, because of the return of Walter Clayton Jr. to Gainesville. It was enticing to think what could happen if the role players around him were all to take collective steps forward.
Through two games, it looks like that has happened.
Clayton is playing like the SEC Player of the Year candidate he is, dropping 26 points in a season-opening win over South Florida only to follow it up with a seven-assist performance in a blowout of Jacksonville. Star FAU transfer Alijah Martin has provided a steadying hand as well, averaging 14.0 points, 5.0 rebounds and 3.5 assists.
Those two were relatively proven commodities, though. If Florida is going to hit its ceiling, Will Richard and Alex Condon must be productive players — and that has been the case thus far.
Richard went for 25 points against USF and added four steals on the defensive end, and he spearheaded the early second-half run that helped the Gators gain control. His defense remained on point against Jacksonville (three steals), while Condon stole the show with a game-high 23 points to go along with a pair of blocks.
We may not find out more about Florida until its nonconference schedule gets tougher later this month, but early returns indicate the Gators have a versatile core group that can match just about anybody.
Georgetown might have a young core to build around
It’s been a while since Georgetown basketball has been relevant in the Big East, let alone nationally. Ed Cooley was brought in to resurrect the program — and Year 1, famously, did not go according to plan.
Looking at the Hoyas’ narrow 85-77 victory over Lehigh in their opener, it would be easy to think the program is in for more of the same this year. There was a major difference between last season’s group and the one we saw on Wednesday, however: this team has some core young players to build around.
Harvard transfer Malik Mack, a sophomore, was one of the most sought-after players in the portal. Mack looked like the long-term solution at point guard, leading the team in minutes and putting up 15 points and five assists.
Meanwhile, freshman big man Thomas Sorber’s performance went far beyond what anyone expected.
The 6-10, 255-pounder put up 20 points and 13 rebounds and also made several late plays to preserve the lead. The inside-out duo of Sorber and Mack looks to be the first true keystone in Cooley’s rebuild.
“He has a chance to be one of the special young players in the country, but I’m going to challenge him to get in tip-top shape,” Cooley said of Sorber, pointing out three missed layups he thought were the result of poor conditioning. “If he does that, I’ve told everyone from Day 1, this kid is definitely going to be someone to reckon with.”
Veterans Micah Peavy (20 points) and Jayden Epps (17 points) played to expectations and looked the part of reliable complementary pieces. If Mack and Sorber can consistently play at this level in the Big East, Georgetown may have some legitimate optimism about what the next couple of seasons will look like.
Opening night was too much quantity over quality
Everyone tends to have their own complaints about the college basketball schedule. My biggest pet peeve is that there are too many MTEs (multi-team events) around Thanksgiving and not enough around Christmas. Late December is the perfect opportunity to give more publicity and light to the events that are annually buried by the sheer number of games during Feast Week, but I digress.
The real point: Monday night felt too busy. There were nearly 200 games involving Division I teams in a single day, making it virtually impossible to keep up with even half of them, let alone the entirety.
Now, a number were blowouts against non-Division I opponents, so you can discount those. But if you wanted to watch Duke’s star freshmen play, or wanted to see how Kentucky would look under Mark Pope — or really, get your first look at any real offseason storyline — you had to divert your attention away from Purdue struggling with Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, or UNC nearly losing to Elon, or virtually every Big East team flirting with disaster.
By the time we got to the games of the night, Texas-Ohio State and Gonzaga-Baylor, it was exhausting. (Also, 11:30 PM ET start time for Zags-Bears? Really?)
I know that Tuesday was Election Day, but the rest of the week has been barren of high-profile matchups, too. It’s a bit puzzling as to why more of those 200 games weren’t more spaced out. It doesn’t have to be an even number of games per day by any means, nor do we need a ton of ranked-vs.-ranked contests every day. But there has to be a much better option than to give fans whiplash with 200 games on Monday, followed by 90 combined over the next three days.
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