Students returning to campus today for the first classes of the spring semester were greeted with some historic news: Our Baylor men’s basketball team is the No. 1 team in the nation!
Baylor received 55 of 65 first-place votes in the AP poll and 22 of 32 in the coaches poll, comfortably outdistancing No. 2 Kansas, No. 3 Villanova and No. 4. UCLA. At 14-0, the Bears are the last remaining undefeated team from a Power 5 conference — but their work is cut out for them, as they head to Morgantown Tuesday to face No. 10 West Virginia (6 p.m. CT, ESPN2) and Manhattan, Kan. on Saturday to play Kansas State (3:30 p.m., ESPNU).
While the No. 1 ranking may be a first for the men’s basketball program, it’s not new territory for Baylor as a whole. One only has to look as far as the Lady Bear basketball program, which has won two national titles and spent plenty of time ranked No. 1 in recent years. (Head coach Kim Mulkey’s squad is currently ranked No. 2, behind only UConn.) The Baylor equestrian team is also ranked No. 2 in the country entering the spring, while the Baylor acrobatics and tumbling squad will go for a third straight national championship this spring.
And there are plenty of top-ranked programs at Baylor outside of athletics, as well:
- Baylor has been named the nation’s top collegiate orchestra each of the last two years.
- Baylor Law School has the highest percentage of Super Lawyers among its alumni, according to National Jurist magazine, beating out No. 2 Yale and No. 3 Harvard in a 2015 study.
- The Baylor Round-Up was named the best collegiate yearbook in the nation for the second time in four years last fall. (The Lariat also placed fourth among daily newspapers at four-year schools, while Focus magazine ranked eighth among feature magazines.)
- Baylor was named the nation’s top performing university on Facebook (and No. 3 on Twitter) last spring.
- BU’s fashion merchandising program was named the nation’s top program among private schools in 2015.
- Baylor’s Model UN won first place at the National Model UN competition in New York City last spring.
Other top-10 Baylor programs include the trial advocacy program at Baylor Law School (ranked No. 4 by U.S.News), Baylor entrepreneurship (No. 5. Entrepreneur magazine), the Army-Baylor master’s in health administration (No. 7, U.S.News), the Army-Baylor doctoral program in physical therapy (No. 8, U.S.News), and Baylor’s nurse-midwifery doctoral program (No. 10, U.S.News).
As for the basketball ranking… While there’s still plenty of season left to play (and the ranking that matters most comes at the end of the season, as we all know), it’s certainly fun to add this No. 1 ranking to all our other top honors!
Sic ’em, Bears!
