The coach who has engineered one of the most remarkable turnarounds in college basketball history refuses to praise himself.

Scott Drew finds creative new ways to deflect credit even when asked questions designed to force him to reflect on his own achievements.

How did Drew transform scandal-tainted, tradition-bereft Baylor from a national laughingstock into a perennial NCAA tournament team? “We’ve been blessed to have not only good players but high-character people who have helped build our program.”

What enabled Baylor to spend five weeks ranked No. 1 this season without a blue-chip recruit or projected NBA draft pick on its roster? “You really need to have self starters, guys that want to get in the gym on their own and get better.”

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Which of Drew’s adjustments contributed most to Baylor’s finest regular season in school history? “The longer I’ve coached, the better I’ve gotten at delegating responsibility. Many hands make light work, and our staff has done an unbelievable job with this team.”

Drew may go to great lengths to avoid patting himself on the back, but he can do nothing about the deluge of compliments others have heaped on him this season. He’s the most deserving candidate to be named college basketball’s national coach of the year, a tick ahead of Dayton’s Anthony Grant and San Diego State’s Brian Dutcher.

Never before has Baylor received better than a No. 3 seed in the NCAA tournament. The Bears (26-3) will almost certainly be on the top seed line a week from Sunday when this year’s bracket is unveiled.

Never before has Baylor finished better than a tie for second in the powerful Big 12 conference. The Bears can grab a share of first place if they win at West Virginia on Saturday and Kansas falls at Texas Tech.

Never before has Baylor advanced beyond the Elite Eight since the NCAA tournament expanded to include more than eight teams. The Bears have 6-1 odds of winning a championship next month according to MGM, tied for the lowest along with Kansas and Gonzaga.

Baylor’s path to basketball relevance began 17 years ago when the school hired Drew to revive a long-struggling program rocked by maybe the darkest scandal in college sports history.

On August 8, 2003, Dave Bliss resigned as Baylor coach after the arrest of one of his players, Carlton Dotson, for the murder of teammate Patrick Dennehy. Hoping to cover up under-the-table payments that he had made in violation of NCAA rules, Bliss sullied Dennehy’s name after his death by concocting a story that Dennehy obtained the money by dealing drugs instead.

The mess that Drew inherited was even worse than he envisioned when he took the job. So many of Baylor’s top players transferred that Drew had to scour his own campus for potential walk-ons in an effort to have enough warm bodies to practice.

Baylor won a total of four league games during Drew’s first two seasons and four apiece in years three and four, but by 2008 the Bears were no longer an easy win for their Big 12 foes. Drew gradually transformed Baylor into an unlikely destination for top recruits, first securing Rivals 150 prospects like Curtis Jerrells, Tweety Carter and LaceDarius Dunn and later landing McDonald’s All-Americans Perry Jones III, Quincy Miller and Isaiah Austin.

As Drew began luring ballyhooed prospects a tier or two above those that Baylor had previously signed, other Big 12 coaches privately questioned how he was doing it and seethed about his unusually aggressive recruiting tactics.

Drew once created a position on his staff for the AAU coach of John Wall in a failed attempt to land the future Kentucky star. Another time, Drew sent out a flier to recruits asking which of these Big 12 coaches had signed a McDonald's All-American before. Pictures of Bob Knight and Billy Gillispie were crossed out, leaving only a photo of the Baylor coach.

Complaints about Baylor’s recruiting prompted an NCAA investigation that concluded in 2012. The only violations that investigators unearthed were impermissible calls and texts from assistant coaches to recruits, a modest offense that only resulted in a two-game suspension for Drew but also substantiated some of the accusations he had faced.

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