College Basketball Futures: Buy Low on the Baylor Bears

Prior to the start of the season, the Baylor Bears were selected by the league's head coaches as the preseason favorite to win the Big 12 regular season title. It's the second time in three years that they've come into the season as the favorite. They earned 77 votes with the Kansas Jayhawks coming in second with 73 votes. However, just a few weeks into conference play the Jayhawks are currently the odds-on favorite, while the Bears have significantly fallen down the board. While it hasn't been an ideal start to Baylor's conference season, +3000 at FanDuel feels like a great buy-low spot on the Bears to win the Big 12 regular-season title.

Baylor is off to an 0-3 start in Big 12 play. The Bears opened conference play on the road with a loss to Iowa State. Then they came back to Waco and gave up a huge first-half lead to TCU, who beat them with a go-ahead shot with just a few seconds remaining. Three days later it was Jerome Tang and Kansas State knocking off the Bears in overtime. Despite these losses, there is still reason to believe that Scott Drew's team has what it takes to win the regular season title.

In their game against Iowa State, Baylor didn't shoot the ball well. They shot 37% from the field and just 22% from deep. For one of the most talented offensive teams in the country, that definitely counts as an off night. On the other side, Iowa State shot 50% from the field in that game. The Cyclones are a much better defensive team than they are offensive, which makes me believe that this is one of the better shooting performances they're going to have all season. Baylor was also without one of their top guards, LJ Cryer.

The TCU loss was a combination of Baylor getting up big and then letting off the gas, and TCU had been playing really well. The same goes for Kansas State, who shot the ball significantly better than the Bears. That's not to say those teams didn't deserve to win those games because they definitely did. However, dropping to +3000 after only three conference games -- and against two of arguably the best teams -- doesn't quite seem right.

Kansas State has far exceeded expectations so far. They've been playing at an incredibly high level, but I just wonder if that is going to be sustainable. The Wildcats were picked to finish last in the Big 12, which makes what Tang has done in his first season with the Wildcats extremely impressive. However, teams are taking note of their success and aren't going to be taking them lightly anymore.

I really like what I've seen from TCU this season, but they're about to run into a tough stretch of games. They play Texas next on the road and then face K-State at home. The same goes for Iowa State, which plays Kansas and Texas in two of their next three games. Baylor, meanwhile, has West Virginia, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech, all of which are winnable games. If they can log a few wins over the next two weeks, while we see TCU, K-State and Iowa State stumble, Baylor is going to be right back in the mix and their odds are going to significantly shrink.

Now is the time to buy low on the Bears.