NCAA Basketball: Way-too-early top-25 power rankings for 2021-22 season

When a team wins the national championship, there’s an expectation that many players are going to be gone, mainly due to their respective NBA Draft stock soaring. That’s the case especially for Davion Mitchell, the star point guard that is not a projected lottery pick. Final Four Most Outstanding Player Jared Butler is in the same boat, while both MaCio Teague and Mark Vital are graduating seniors.

So that’s four starters very likely gone and Matthew Mayer may just follow if he gets the right evaluation. For teams not named Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina, or Kansas, that usually means that a rebuild is in order. But for those who still don’t believe in head coach Scott Drew, he already had a plan in place.

Baylor has a top-10 incoming recruiting class, led by five-star shooting wing Kendall Brown. Langston Love is one of the best pure shooters in the 2021 class, while Jeremy Sochan is a 6’8 power forward ranked in the top-100. There also are some top-100 talent that couldn’t be part of this season’s rotation in LJ Cryer and Dain Dainja.

This is a talented young core of Bears and with Adam Flager and Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua back and taking a much larger role as starters, this team will remain not only Big 12 favorites but legit threats of winning a national title. And by the way, don’t think they won’t use this national attention to their advantage by going into the transfer portal, the same way they landed Mitchell.