An Enduring Image of the Season

Tipoff

There are images that are heartwarming but in another light make you see something else besides the intended message. Imagine one of those viral images you see from time to time, one with a child that raised a surprisingly large amount of money to support their friend with an illness. Then you think about how sad it is that the child’s family isn’t able to afford treatment. That is how I felt when I saw Alvin Brooks III’s tweet of his two young sons sitting on the curb as he returned home from Indianapolis. Brooks is an assistant coach for Baylor and returned a Champion. The image was very cute. It also made me a little sad.

Brooks, like many coaches, did not see his young children for nearly a month so that we could enjoy Baylor’s run to the National Championship in the men’s basketball tournament this spring. Most coaches did the same. The players were isolated from their families for much longer. They arrived on campus over the summer, in late July or August, and were placed in empty dorms or hotel rooms. They remained in relative isolation from their classmates, attending classes online, practicing, playing games, and so on with limited outside interaction until their season ended. Some teams allowed their players to go home for a week around the holidays. Some players did not see their families and friends in person until after their season ended. In some cases, like the Stanford women’s basketball team, they lived in hotel rooms for more than two months. 

As the transfer portal pushes past 1,300 names, more than a quarter of all players that were on a roster in Division I this past season, we should remember this context. Yes, the offseason is chaotic. The season itself was draining. I have no evidence to back this up, but I suspect the vast majority of players would play the season again knowing what it would be like, spending it in isolation, playing in mostly empty gyms away from families and the rest of the students at their universities. There is no denying, however, that this has been a hard year. The transfer portal looks like chaos right now. Responding to the situation by favoring limits to player choice and freedom, as Dick Vitale and others have suggested, seems to me to be seeing something else besides what players experienced this year.

The Mixtape

The Field of 68 team puts out lots of great content each week. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights.

• On a very special episode of 68 Shining Moments, it’s Final Four Most Outstanding Player Haley Jones of Stanford! She joins Christy Winter-Scott to talk about Stanford’s run to the National Championship. Stanford was on the road for 10 weeks during the season due to COVID restrictions in California. That grit payed off in the Final Four where the Cardinal survived two incredibly close wins. As the late, great Jimmy V once said, survive and advance. This Stanford team exemplified that mantra and lived up to the standards of Head Coach Tara VanDerveer. Hear from Haley Jones about living through this season and ending up on top.

• We rifled through Jeff Goodman’s extensive contacts list to put this one together, a Roast of Scott Drew! We got recordings from 40 of Coach Drew’s friends, former players, coaching staff, and members of the National Championship team to share their favorite moments with the winning coach. It’s a great insight and good fun. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll consider having your young children include Baylor among their finalists before committing.

• Louisville player Charles Minlend joined Jeff Greer on the Floyd’s Street Finest podcast to discuss the Louisville season in the rear view mirror and the one ahead. The Cards dealt with a ton of injuries, including to Minlend, and had a young roster that came up just short of the Field of 68. The offseason promises more than a few changes to the roster. Minlend provides his insights into what went down and what the team can learn moving forward.

Four Point Play

Each Tuesday, we’ll check in with one of our podcast hosts and see what they’re up to in addition to producing compelling content for us at The Field of 68.

This week, we check in with Ashley Hodge, co-host of the Sic ‘Em 365 podcast (available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts).

1. For years, there was a question about whether Scott Drew was a good coach. Those questions were definitively answered last week. When did you realize he is, in fact, a good coach? And what about his approach to coaching impresses you?

• I think the big turn for him was when he spoke with Brad Stevens following the Final Four runs with Butler in the early 2010’s. Brad wanted to “get old, stay old,” and focus on consistency instead of talent. Scott stuck with the zone defense for a few years after this, but he turned to tailoring the talent to his system. When he got Davion Mitchell and Mark Vital, those guys were made for man-to-man defense. After the rebuild following the 2010 Elite 8 appearance, he’s always had a great scoring offense, offensive rebounding, and jump shooting team. I always wondered if the defense would be good enough to win the National Championship and now it is.

2. COVID had a real impact on the season. The regular season Baylor-Gonzaga game was scrapped before we finally got to see them in the National Title game. The Baylor team that came out of its COVID pause in February clearly looked different than the one before it and the one that showed up in the Final Four. If there was no COVID pause, was this Baylor squad going to run the table?

• I think they would have lost a game. It is so tough to run the table. The road environment was very different this year. But I think somebody would have got them. They certainly would have been favored in every game. Coming off that COVID pause against Kansas, they were a shell of what they were before. I think they would have beaten Kansas but somebody else would have got them, like West Virginia. Baylor only played 15 conference games, after all. Scott Drew would have said they were going undefeated, but I think they would have had one loss.

3. This particular Baylor team was a mix of home-grown recruited players, such as Jared Butler, Mark Vital, and Matthew Mayer and his sweet, sweet mullet. The other half of the roster, including Davion Mitchell, Adam Flagler, and others, were transfers. Baylor has a top recruiting class coming in this next season. With the National Championship in hand, that’s going to raise the profile of the program. Going forward, where do you see Scott Drew going? Is he going to continue to rely on a mix of recruits and transfers or more heavily lean on growing his own?

• I think they found a formula that works for them. That formula includes bringing in guys that are hungry and humble. They are incredible workers, like Davion Mitchell being a role player at Auburn. Moving forward without having to sit out anymore, I think they will mainly look at guys that are in that 15-75 range (in their recruiting class). I think it will look very similar to what they do at Villanova, Virginia and what Gonzaga does. There are lots of connections on the staff between those programs. Villanova might be the best example with guys that are potential difference makers but not one-and-done guys.

And one!

4. You are the owner of “the best Baylor site on the internet,” Sic ‘Em 365. The site has a ton of content, including fan forums. Online forums can be a particularly interesting place for fans and spectators alike. Legendary fights and arguments break out over the smallest stuff on these forums. As a moderator, what is a standout moment from your forums? 

• There was an SB Nation writer, two and half years ago, that wrote that Baylor should fire Scott Drew and hire Kelvin Sampson. The gist of his article was that Scott Drew topped out and would never win the National Title. That was a somewhat reasonable take at the time as the backcourt didn’t look very good. Then Scott got MaCio Teague, Jared Butler, and Davion Mitchell. That article caused quite a stir on the forums, a pitchfork mentality. Some people wanted to track this writer down, but cooler heads prevailed. I was surprised by the rallying around Scott Drew. The team was coming off an NIT Title. Most fanbases might have turned on the head coach at that time. Scott is a perfect fit for the fanbase based on his faith and mentality.

Keep an eye on Sic ‘Em 365 over the coming weeks. Jeff Goodman interviewed Scott Drew and the staff over the weekend (see the Roast of Scott Drew in The Mixtape above). We’ll be reaching out to former players, like Tweety Carter. We will also reach out to the incoming recruits soon.