Jon Rothstein Breaking Down The NCAA Tournament, We Have Our Brackets In Our Hands Ready For The Best Week + Who's Back Of The Week

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Speaker 1 On today's part of my take, we have our brackets, and we also have our good friend John Rostein on the show to break down the best storylines. He's going to name all the regions.

Speaker 1 We've got a lot to catch up on with him because we haven't talked to him in a year. We're going to talk some brackets.
Great weekend of hoops. College conference tournaments wrap up.

Speaker 1 And we're going to get into one of the best weeks of the year. We also have Who's Back of the Week.

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Speaker 1 Today is Monday, March 17th, and we have our brackets.

Speaker 6 Got the brackets right here. Got a little ink under my fingernails, big cap.
You hear this? This is a real life in-person bracket. I don't do my shit online.
I hold it in my hands. Hell yes.

Speaker 6 Pen and a paper like a man. Always.
This is horoscopes for guys.

Speaker 1 This is the best. It's the best.
I'm going to sleep with it underneath my pillow tonight.

Speaker 6 I'm going to fuck it.

Speaker 1 I wasn't going to fuck it, but now I have to fuck it. I'm going to fuck my bracket.
Now I got to fuck it.

Speaker 6 You're not a man if you don't fuck it. I actually think that this is the best non-sporting

Speaker 6 sporting event of the year.

Speaker 1 Just roll it up.

Speaker 6 Like, this is... Yeah, just roll it up and crank it.
Yeah. I think that bracket.

Speaker 1 Oh, Max is going through the hole.

Speaker 6 Oh, you make a hole in your bracket?

Speaker 1 You're fucking it that way? You could. I was thinking of just going like this.

Speaker 6 You could also roll it up, and then the bracket could fuck you.

Speaker 1 True. Maybe just get a whole...
Maybe make a... Paper-mâché doll out of it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. I'm into that.
I'm in for that.

Speaker 6 But you know what I'm saying? I think that bracket bracket reveal is the best sporting event that does not actually contain sports of the year.

Speaker 1 Oh, it's incredible. And it's

Speaker 1 just the, you know, you spend, I think I counted it was like 50 hours of basketball I've watched in the last five days and I my eyes hurt and like every morning I wake up and I'm I'm I'm like, what just happened?

Speaker 1 I feel like I got hit by a truck. But then you end it all with the bracket and it's all like, oh, that was worth it because

Speaker 1 we just did all that and now we have a bracket. And it feels great.
And

Speaker 1 it's one of my favorite weeks. And

Speaker 1 I know some people don't like the first four, but I actually love it because they're like at this point right now.

Speaker 1 I wish there was a college basketball game on right this second, and we only have to wait till Tuesday. But let's talk about the bracket.

Speaker 1 Let's first talk about who got screwed, and that would be West Virginia and Indiana

Speaker 1 because UNC got into the tournament with one quad one win.

Speaker 1 And Bubba Cunningham, who is part of the selection committee, is also the AD at UNC.

Speaker 1 Now, he said that he recused himself from all conversations.

Speaker 1 What I would say to that is

Speaker 1 that doesn't fucking matter at all because you spend an entire weekend hanging out with these people. And then you're like, hey, guys, we're going to talk about UNC.
I'm going to go take a piss.

Speaker 1 You guys talk about UNC.

Speaker 1 But come on.

Speaker 6 We're boys, right? It's me, Bubba. Yeah, we're boys.

Speaker 1 And then, let's say he doesn't even do that. Let's say he doesn't say, hey, come on, guys, give me a solid.

Speaker 1 Everyone in that room has to decide on UNC and then have him come back in the room and he's going to be like, so how are we looking?

Speaker 6 Yeah, then you tell him your decision. And then Bubba has to look at you and be like, what the hell?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 God damn it. Y'all going to do that to Bubba?

Speaker 1 He also just, he went on CBS and ESPN after and just used, I don't know who his human shield was next to him, but they asked him a question about UNC and he brought another guy who was from the committee and he immediately said, Well, I wasn't allowed to talk about UNC, so I'm just going to have to defer to him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and just made him answer all the hard questions.

Speaker 6 He's going to answer all the UNC-related topics that you have for me. This is classic Belichick.
Yeah. I think he might have had something to do with it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, he was on a beach.

Speaker 6 He was on a beach. We know that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we do that.

Speaker 6 Living his best life. Living his best life.

Speaker 1 Congrats. Athletes.
Congrats. Athletes.
I mean,

Speaker 1 Hank,

Speaker 1 that's a I do that game with my kids.

Speaker 2 Yeah, your kids are small.

Speaker 1 Actually, the age difference is less between me and my kids.

Speaker 2 Your kids are going way a lot.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 that's the airplane game I play with my kids.

Speaker 6 I'm not going to make fun of Coach Belichick for doing that.

Speaker 1 Congrats, Bill.

Speaker 1 Is she wearing headphones

Speaker 1 in this? Yeah. So they're not talking?

Speaker 6 Or is she listening to like airplane noises?

Speaker 1 Okay, either way.

Speaker 1 Back to the bracket. UNC got in.

Speaker 6 So here's a stat that I looked up because the bracket matrix, they track everything. They compile everybody, all the amateur bracketologists out there, which is such a funny science to study.

Speaker 6 They have 111 111 brachetologists and they compile all their results. Out of those 111,

Speaker 6 27 of the 111 had UNC in the bracket and 111 out of 111 brachatologists had West Virginia in. Yes.
And UNC got in.

Speaker 1 They got screwed.

Speaker 6 I think they were 1 and 12 in quad 1. Yeah.

Speaker 1 They beat UCLA.

Speaker 1 Listen, the committee, and we can ask John Rostein.

Speaker 1 The committee, it's very clear they stopped working on Friday night. Maybe that's why Lenardi's been sleeping because it makes no sense that UNC is in this tournament.

Speaker 1 It makes no sense that Michigan got a five.

Speaker 6 It makes no sense that Louisville got an eight.

Speaker 1 Louisville got an eight.

Speaker 1 It makes no sense that they put Wisconsin and Denver in four days after the third game total in the tournament. They're playing at like one o'clock in the afternoon.

Speaker 6 I have a question for you, Big Cat. Why does the Big Ten insist on having their championship game as late as possible?

Speaker 1 I don't think it's the Big Ten. I think think it's CBS.

Speaker 6 They ask them to, so they have a lead-in for the.

Speaker 1 I think it's the TV. The TV networks dictate that.

Speaker 6 Because it's so late that the committee is forced to ignore the results of the Big Ten championship. Correct.
No matter what.

Speaker 1 But that's CBS. Yeah.
I mean, they want a game going into the bracket reveal, and they have rights to the Big Ten. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I'm sure the Big Ten would like to be like, hey, can we play this game on Saturday? And CBS is like, no, we need this right before.

Speaker 6 So I think Louisville finished the season 20 and 2.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 They were were 14th in the AP, and they were 23rd in the net, and they got an eighth seed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they got an eighth seed. Brittle me this.
Also, Gonzaga is an eighth seed, and they are a top-10 Ken Pom team. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Houston would potentially have to match up against them in the second round, which would be a very tough matchup, especially for, I think, Houston. Was Houston technically the second one seed?

Speaker 1 I have the full seed list. Hold on.
Let me find it because I always love going through the seed list. I know Wisconsin was the fourth

Speaker 1 three, and Michigan was the first fifth, uh, five seed. So, but it didn't, like, Purdue shouldn't have been a four, Michigan should have been the four.
All right, here it is. You have it was Houston.

Speaker 1 Oh, Houston's the third one seed. Okay, that actually makes sense because Duke is an absolute wagon.
We can talk about them in a second. Either way, there's some weird things that they made.

Speaker 1 Like, even

Speaker 1 I believe

Speaker 1 Colorado State is a 12-seed that's a three-and-a-half-point favorite over Memphis, the five-seed.

Speaker 1 So, and I know it's not off-betting lines, but it's like this committee outside of the UNC, I think, did a good job, except for the fact that some of the seedings make absolutely no sense.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I think this year there weren't as many teams that are pissed off.

Speaker 6 Like, obviously, if you're Indiana, if you're West Virginia especially, you have every right to be super pissed, but there weren't a lot of bid stealers this year. Right.

Speaker 1 But West Virginia did get screwed. They got fucked.
West Virginia got absolutely screwed.

Speaker 1 Okay. Well, yeah, so, yeah, I mean, Houston might have to play without Juwan Roberts against a top 10 Ken Palm team.
I don't understand that.

Speaker 1 Gonzaga feels like it should have been a higher than an eight seed.

Speaker 6 And Grand Canyon women's team got left off. Total snub.

Speaker 1 Why'd you? Well, no, they made the tournament.

Speaker 6 Of this one. Oh, this one.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Why'd you bring them up?

Speaker 6 I just thought that was a snub.

Speaker 2 You said something in the cave, too. You're like, I love their women's program.
Why?

Speaker 1 Yeah, they got a great program. Why? Because their head coach is very hot.
No, no, no. So put it on the bonk list.
She's a great coach. Put it on the bonk list.

Speaker 6 She's a fantastic coach. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's that's that's why. What's her name? Her name is Coach.
Exactly. I have respect for I call her coach.
Coach.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 how do we want to break down the bracket? Where do we want to start? You want to go region by region?

Speaker 6 Let's go region by region. And I think that there should be a uniform.

Speaker 6 I'd say like 90% of the brackets are in the same format, but then you get some websites that try to get cute with it and they mix things around.

Speaker 6 The regions, they go south in the top left corner. They go west in the bottom left corner.
East, top right, midwest, bottom right. That's how it should be.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So let's just go by region.
I agree. All right.
So south region, top left. Yep.
Top left. Auburn, Auburn,

Speaker 1 the one overall seed.

Speaker 1 Another thing that made no sense, not only the Louisville being an eighth seed, but if Louisville wins their first game, which I actually kind of like them to win that game because I think Chucky Hepburn is going to put Stephen Ashworth in a torture chamber.

Speaker 1 They're going to be playing in Kentucky.

Speaker 1 This game is in Lexington. Auburn's going to have to play a road game in the second round as the number one overall seed.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's one of those things where Louisville got fucked over by having a bad seed. So they have to play Creighton in the the first round, which sucks for them.

Speaker 6 But also they get what would be two home games.

Speaker 1 Speaking of which, Creighton and UConn a little doot-to-do on Saturday night. That was very funny.

Speaker 1 Or sorry, that was Friday night.

Speaker 1 My brain is warped.

Speaker 1 That was...

Speaker 1 That felt like a situation that UConn fans didn't fully realize that when you're on the top of the block for as long as they've been, people hate you, and they just got to...

Speaker 6 You just got to eat it. And I'm okay with them throwing home a slam dunk at the end of it, hanging on the room, celebrating a little bit.

Speaker 6 I don't think it's that fucked up.

Speaker 1 Well, and they'll say, and Danny Hurley, who we love, and we'll defend Danny Hurley, but Danny Hurley does think part of what makes Danny Hurley great is he is boisterous and yells at fans and lives on the edge.

Speaker 1 And that's also why he's won back-to-back national titles is because he's that type of coach, wired that way.

Speaker 1 What comes on the flip side is if you're wired like that, where you're yelling at fans as you beat Creighton a month ago,

Speaker 1 when the other team has a chance to rub it in your face, they're going to do it.

Speaker 1 That's just how it works. So if you're a UConn fan, I know you can get in arguments with Creighton, but you should just say, guess what? Yeah,

Speaker 1 we kind of deserve. We've been on the top for so long and we've been killing everyone.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's going to turn every now and then. I'm okay with it.
It's fair play.

Speaker 6 You win the Big East. You celebrate with a dunk at the end.
That's fine.

Speaker 1 They were trying to make the point that some fans were trying to make the point that UConn never, like, you know,

Speaker 1 when Danny Hurley's son would get in, Andrew Hurley would get in games, he would dribble it out, and he would yell at him not to shoot. Yeah.
Those were also like 20-point games.

Speaker 1 And I don't think UConn does like run it up in that scenario. But again,

Speaker 1 if you're the best team for two years running and you just demolish everyone and you have a coach like Danny Hurley, the minute it turns,

Speaker 1 people are going to take their shots.

Speaker 6 I'm okay with it.

Speaker 1 Max is a big East guy. You think that's fair play?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that was an obvious retaliation to

Speaker 1 Danny Hurley doing the rings to the Creighton student section on his way out of winning. Right, and people are like, well, that's not the players.
It's like, but it is.

Speaker 1 It's an extension of the players. That's just,

Speaker 1 and I wouldn't, if I were a UConn fan, I wouldn't take back Danny Hurley doing that to Creighton fans because that's what makes Danny Hurley wired that way to win two national titles.

Speaker 1 So it's like fair play all around, in my, in my opinion. You just have to, if you're a UConn fan, you just have to accept it and be like, yeah, we, we lost this one

Speaker 1 tough shit.

Speaker 6 We got dunked on. If you're the type of fan that gets online and says, stay classy after getting beat by somebody, you've lost.
You lost. You lost that argument already.
You've lost.

Speaker 6 And there's probably a bunch of people that did the stay classy to Danny Hurley from Creighton that are now getting stay classied by UConn fans. Yes, yes.
And you're all losers. Big time.

Speaker 1 All right, so that was Creighton. Also, has never won a Big East title.
I feel like they've been to every single year, every year they go to the final and they lose.

Speaker 1 I like Louisville in that game, though.

Speaker 6 I do too. I got them moving forward.

Speaker 1 Then we have

Speaker 1 probably going to be the number one 12-5

Speaker 1 upset that everyone's going to pick. UC San Diego, who's been awesome, who could have been an at-large team if they failed to win the Big West, which they did on Saturday night,

Speaker 1 playing against Michigan. I think they're only three and a half-point underdogs.
The Tritons are fun, though.

Speaker 1 They're a top 60 team in offense and defense on Ken Palm. They're really, really good.
They got a New Zealander who you would love PFT, Tate Jones.

Speaker 1 He's sick. That's his last name.

Speaker 6 It's a hyphenated last name. Tite Jones.

Speaker 1 I don't know how to say his first name.

Speaker 1 It's a lot. It's Anawana Wiena.

Speaker 6 Anawana Wina, Tite Jones.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Anawana Wina, Tite Jones. But I watched that whole game on Saturday night.
He's good. But that's the pick that everyone's going to make.

Speaker 6 They force a lot of turnovers, right?

Speaker 1 They force a lot of turnovers. Michigan turns the ball over.
But I will say, Michigan obviously beat Wisconsin in the Big Ten title today.

Speaker 1 Dusty May called it correctly. He was like, our team needs a reset.

Speaker 6 They got their reset, and then they won the Big Ten tournament, and they looked really good uh doing it so maybe they've turned the corner and gotten that reset they needed and also they have two seven footers which always scares me when you go up two seven footers against a smaller team yeah if you look at san diego starting lineup it's all six four six five i think they got one guy who's six eight and they don't really run they don't really their pace isn't big so if they can if they can force turnovers but Michigan, the way they were playing against Wisconsin, that's granted also like at the end of a Big Ten tournament run where every team's tired, the shots aren't going in.

Speaker 1 It was a horrendous game to watch. Well, yeah.
But it smoked out the haters who think that's

Speaker 1 how Wisconsin plays now.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it was not a fun game. But this goes back to what we talked about with Dusty May.
It's like at the end of a hockey game in the playoffs, you're getting your ass kicked, start a fight,

Speaker 6 flip up the whole dynamic, and they got into a fight with Michigan State and played way, way better coming out of it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I also kind of like Yale over Texas A ⁇ M.

Speaker 1 Yale's a good team. I feel like Yale also just, that's just a Yale does it every every year kind of guy.
Remember the big sweater guy? Yeah. That was pretty funny.

Speaker 6 Buzz is going to be dressed up like a guy from Yale. He wears like nine-piece suits.
Yeah. He's going to be sweating his balls off.
It's going to be great.

Speaker 1 I feel like Buzz, though, he might dress up like a guy from Yale, but if you spot him, he's not a Yale guy.

Speaker 6 No, he's not. I'd say he dresses like a guy from Yale in the 1920s.
Yeah. Like a robber baron that contributes a significant amount to the Yale and Dallas.

Speaker 1 He sweats too much to be a Yale guy. Yeah.
Yale guys don't sweat.

Speaker 6 And there's never been a guy from Yale Yale named Buzz. No.

Speaker 1 And then we got Olemis versus San Diego State and UNC, which UNC we've already discussed. Now, you know what's going to happen.
UNC is going to get to the Sweet 16.

Speaker 6 Well, there's one team that's in the play-in that gets to the Sweet 16 every year.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's going to be them. After everyone complained, it's going to be them.

Speaker 6 Louisville's going to lose in the first round, and then UNC is going to make it. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Also, Iowa State, great move by TJ Otselberger. He basically just held out a pretty big injury until after the selection committee.

Speaker 6 They can ding you for that.

Speaker 1 They can absolutely ding you for that. And

Speaker 1 after everything was decided, he was just like, oh, yeah, I forgot to mention one of our best players is out. My bad.
Thanks for the three seed.

Speaker 6 See you guys there. Yeah, we'll take it.
We'll run.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're good.

Speaker 6 Max and I were talking earlier about Villanova and then if them firing Kyle Neptune would have actually made it more likely for Villanova to make the tournament.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, that would have been the funniest thing ever if just somehow they resonated up and were like, you know what,

Speaker 1 a Kyle Neptune-less Villanova team should

Speaker 1 be dangerous. Yeah, would be a dangerous team.
I kind of like that idea.

Speaker 1 We also have New Mexico versus Marquette. That's going to be a fun game.
That's going to be a lot of points. Cam Jones is awesome.
New Mexico runs. Richard Petino.

Speaker 6 Richard Petino, Shaka Smart.

Speaker 1 And Michigan State, Bryant at the bottom. I actually like this region a lot for Michigan State because Auburn has not been playing its best ball.

Speaker 1 And Michigan State felt like on Saturday when Wisconsin beat them, like that was the reset they kind of needed,

Speaker 1 where they had been running so hot, and it was a perfect time for Izzo to be like, all right, guys, we're not, you know, a perfect team. Let's get ready for the tournament.

Speaker 6 Yeah, a good loss. I have them.
I have Michigan State winning this bracket.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I do too. Hank, any thoughts?

Speaker 2 I like UNC to make a run.

Speaker 6 What's your mentals at right now, Hank?

Speaker 2 My mentals are, we're stringing it together. This is

Speaker 1 why? St.

Speaker 2 Patrick's Day.

Speaker 1 Give people, because

Speaker 1 I don't want the AWS to be like, Hank said five words. I actually said before you came in here, I was like, over under 10 words if we don't ask him any questions.

Speaker 1 I'm going to speak what's supposed to be. How is St.

Speaker 2 Patrick's Day? St. Patrick's Day is a lot of fun.
Chicago.

Speaker 2 I would say it goes harder than Boston for St. Patrick's Day.
Everywhere is absolute chaos. A lot of fun.

Speaker 1 I'm old. What was your day?

Speaker 2 I don't know that I have those days in me. We need more of those days in me.

Speaker 1 If we did an old school like steel mill clock in, clock out, what was your clock in, clock out numbers?

Speaker 2 It was a full 12-hour shift. 12-hour shifts? Yeah.

Speaker 2 At least. Was it? Maybe overtime.
Yeah, I feel like it was. Maybe some time and a half.

Speaker 1 What time did you guys all meet up early? What time did you guys meet?

Speaker 2 I went out late, quote unquote, at like 11.

Speaker 1 And you stayed out till 2? That's 14 hours.

Speaker 2 Yeah, overtime.

Speaker 1 Time and a half. That's 15 hours.
I was with Hank at 11.

Speaker 1 I went out until like 4:30, went home, took a nap, went back out. Hank was still out from when I started.

Speaker 1 And then I left early. I was still that.
Yes, I was like, and then I left, and then he was like, oh, what, you're a pussy? You're going to beat me out here?

Speaker 1 And then you're going to be the one to leave early. And I'm like, dude, I'm going home.

Speaker 1 You guys are too fucked up for me.

Speaker 6 No, that's actually the most impressive thing you can do, I think, Max. I think it's way more impressive to go home for two hours, take a nap, and then come back than it is to stay out for 15 hours.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I can't do that.

Speaker 1 I felt great. It felt like I was rejuvenated.

Speaker 1 It was like I was just starting my day over again. Yeah, but nobody else was in my mindset, which I didn't account for.

Speaker 6 The power nap reset is something I don't think I've done that in 20 years. I really don't.

Speaker 6 That's something that you just don't do when you get older. No, you go home, you even think about your house, and you're like, well, that's it for me for the night.

Speaker 1 Sleep is death. Sleep is death.

Speaker 1 What Hank is referring to as sleep is death is when 2015, when Wisconsin beat Kentucky in the Final Four,

Speaker 1 I basically stayed out from after that game until so the game ended Saturday at like 10 p.m.

Speaker 1 I think I was out till about 4 a.m. Went to sleep for like three hours, got back up, went back out to the bar on that Sunday till like midnight.

Speaker 1 So basically was out for, I don't know, 24 out of 30 hours. And we were with clients and they were like, we have a tour of Lucas Oil Stadium.

Speaker 1 This is Sunday afternoon after I've been drinking for 14 out of 18 hours. And I just kept on repeating.
I was like, sleep is death, sleep is death, sleep is death.

Speaker 1 I was like, I'm going, the only way I can go on this tour is if you let me sneak alcohol in.

Speaker 1 So they poured me drinks into like a Coke can and I walked in standing on Lucas Oil Stadium, just drinking like straight vodka, just trying to stay awake because I was so fucked. Sleep is death.

Speaker 1 But credit to you, Hank.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we're here. I'm excited for this week.
I mean, this is the best, like, you know, it's definitely one of those I'm never drinking again type of mornings.

Speaker 2 And this is the best week to just take it easy and just go all in on college basketball.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Love it.
Love it. How'd your bets do?

Speaker 1 You were so drunk you forgot to fade me? Yeah. Damn.
That's tough. To do.
No, I actually did well. So you're good.
All right.

Speaker 6 This was a good week. Shout out, Oldie.
Yeah. If you tailed Oldie, you did well.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Oldie was red hot.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Any other thoughts from this region?

Speaker 1 I'm excited for this region. I like Michigan State, though, a lot.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I got Michigan State over Auburn.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay, West.

Speaker 1 Florida

Speaker 1 is the one seed in the West.

Speaker 1 Is this my region of death? No, I think it's another one.

Speaker 6 This is the best region of coaches.

Speaker 1 This might be the best region of coaches. Yeah, the big storyline in this region is that we get Bill Self versus Cal for a chance to play Rick Petino.

Speaker 6 If Rick Petino can beat Omaha.

Speaker 1 If Rick Petino beat Omar. I need that to be Cal versus.

Speaker 6 Yes, you know. Cal versus Petino.
That's what America is hoping for. Kansas is a bummer to watch.
Yeah. They really like because you're going to look at them and think, oh, wait, it's Kansas.

Speaker 6 Kansas in the tournament. Bill Self in the tournament.
They're going to be a pain in the ass to watch. But Arkansas is not great.
No. So

Speaker 6 I think Kansas is favored, aren't they?

Speaker 6 It's a 7-10, but I think Kansas is also a slight favorite.

Speaker 1 Someone look it up on DraftKings right now. This is my region of death because I think Florida, Maryland, and St.

Speaker 1 John's and Texas Tech, those, the top four seeds in this region, all, in my mind, could be final four teams.

Speaker 6 They've got maybe the best 12 seed.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they have one of the best 12 seeds in Colorado State who's a favorite in this game. And

Speaker 1 Florida is probably playing the best ball out of anyone right now. They just steamrolled the SEC tournament.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah, and also UConn is in there.

Speaker 1 Okay, so let's talk about that real quick because Florida is going to beat Norfolk State and then UConn plays Oklahoma. I think UConn could lose to Oklahoma.

Speaker 1 I kind of don't want UConn to lose to Oklahoma because I want UConn to play Florida and everyone to be like, watch out for UConn, and Florida's going to beat him by 100. And it's no offense to UConn.

Speaker 1 They're back-to-back title winners, but they're not the same UConn.

Speaker 6 But you're going to see UConn in that second round. Everyone's going to be like,

Speaker 6 Danny Hurley, he knows how to coach during the tournament.

Speaker 1 And Florida will kill him.

Speaker 1 That would be my take on that. So I'm rooting for UConn just so that I can bet Florida against UConn.

Speaker 6 Florida is very good.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Colorado State team that started 5-5, probably the hottest team in the country.

Speaker 1 They are awesome, and they are the 12-seed over Memphis, and they are a 3.5-point favorite, which makes perfect sense if you follow the numbers. It doesn't make sense if you just look at a bracket.

Speaker 6 And Memphis, they have that guy. What's the guy that they got that scored 4? He scored 42, I think, in the tournament semifinals.

Speaker 1 I don't know who. They have a big injury, though.
Oh, fuck. Who is it? I wrote down notes.

Speaker 6 God damn it.

Speaker 1 I took notes on like three different things.

Speaker 6 They have a really, really good player.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I can't remember where all my notes are. Oh, Tyrese Hunter is the Memphis player who might be out.
He was in a walking boot, and

Speaker 1 he's a very big part of their defense. Yeah, Nick Clifford is...

Speaker 1 He's awesome. He's awesome.
No, we were looking for Memphis.

Speaker 6 I think it was Clifford. I think Clifford.

Speaker 1 You're saying Colorado State scored 42 points? I know.

Speaker 6 Somebody on Memphis scored. Oh, yeah, because...
I think 42 in the semis.

Speaker 1 All right, find it, Max.

Speaker 1 I watched so much fucking basketball. My brain is just completely.
PJ Haggerty.

Speaker 1 Did he score 42?

Speaker 1 He's a bucket. He's a walking bucket.
Max is just not good at the Google thing. 42.
There we go. There we go.
Against Wichita State. Yeah, there we go.
It's Wichita.

Speaker 1 You got it, Max.

Speaker 6 That nap coming in clutch.

Speaker 1 That nap is. You can't.
I'll take another nap today. Let's go.
Wow. You did?

Speaker 1 I'm napped up. What time? Who did you take that nap?

Speaker 1 I don't know, around like one. Hell yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Neek Clifford, though, for Colorado State, he's awesome. And without Tyrese Hunter, if he doesn't play, that would be a problem.

Speaker 1 Missouri Drake, I'm very excited for it. Oh, Maryland.
Maryland Grand Canyon is going to be a good game. Maryland kind of got screwed, too, I feel like.
They probably could have been a three.

Speaker 6 The Crab Five. Yeah.
The best nickname.

Speaker 1 They have to, where is that game? Why doesn't the games, why don't the games have the locations on the bracket?

Speaker 6 I don't know where that game is, but I get a fun stat about maryland okay queen one of the members of the fab five yes crab five yeah that's what i said right you said first time i said crab the crab five um they have lost in every single game that he's made a three-pointer

Speaker 1 so keep keep an eye out for that if he makes a three early on they're gonna lose do not yeah if he's do not let him shoot any threes that's very important

Speaker 1 uh yeah so I like Maryland in that little quadrant. And then Missouri Drake's going to be very fun because Drake is an absolute snail of a team.

Speaker 1 They want to go as slow as slow as possible. If there was no shot clock, they would hold the ball for the like 10 minutes to start the game.

Speaker 1 They'd be like a high school team just being like, we're not going to play this game. We're going to make it a three-possession game.
And Mizzou can run. And then Texas Tech is really good, too.

Speaker 1 So this might be my region of death.

Speaker 6 I'm just rooting for Drake to keep winning so we can make jokes. That's it.
Okay. That's like when Oral Roberts is playing.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.
You love that.

Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah. With Drake, a lot of and Moorhead.

Speaker 1 You loved when it was Oral Roberts and Moorhead. Yeah, that was the best.
That was maybe

Speaker 1 a bracket. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 You can't get better than that.

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Speaker 1 Hank, how you doing? Checking in. Good.

Speaker 1 Checking in on the West.

Speaker 6 Checking in on you physically.

Speaker 1 I actually think you should fill it out right now because there's a chance you might just be so hungover that you turned off your brain and you just come up with the best picks.

Speaker 2 I would like Coach Cal to make a run. Okay.
I think that'd be fun.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 6 Good thoughts.

Speaker 2 And St. John's.
I bet St. John's Final Four probably a month or so ago when you told me to, and I'll be rooting for that.
St. John's good.

Speaker 1 They play Big East basketball.

Speaker 2 Do you have pen over there?

Speaker 1 I do.

Speaker 1 Memes and Max. If you guys have any thoughts or pics you love, just chime in because I know memes, you already fill out a bracket.
Memes has St. John's to win it all.
St. John's to win it all.

Speaker 8 I filled out my entire bracket. It's kind of

Speaker 1 a weird Final Four. What's your Final Four?

Speaker 7 Michigan State, St. John's, BYU, Kentucky.

Speaker 1 Hmm.

Speaker 1 Hmm.

Speaker 1 Michigan State, St. John's, BYU, Kentucky.
That's that's that's the first go at it.

Speaker 6 How many edits are you going to do? Probably two or three.

Speaker 1 What led you to that?

Speaker 8 I love BYU.

Speaker 1 I just love how they play and the region they're in.

Speaker 8 I think they could outrun the teams they're going to play.

Speaker 1 Shots of you. Yeah, straight shots of you.
But that's also memes.

Speaker 1 It had been a while because I haven't been in a lot of big games in a long time. It had been a while since I lost a quote-unquote big game, the Big Ten championship today.

Speaker 1 Memes was just firing off the memes instantly. Like, it felt like he had been waiting for that moment for so long because he hasn't had a chance.

Speaker 6 If you're just betting on social media memes, I would say that

Speaker 6 you want Wisconsin to beat BYU and then you want Wisconsin to lose to Duke.

Speaker 1 No, you want the Wisconsin-Bama.

Speaker 6 No, I think you want Wisconsin to beat Bama just so that Duke can be the one to beat you.

Speaker 6 If I'm just thinking about memes here.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 He's going to get, listen, he's going to get him off no matter when Wisconsin loses. Like, it's going to be...
He's ready to go no matter what. I made so many more today, too.
Oh, of course.

Speaker 1 I'm sure you did. There's so many good ones.
I thought you were going to win, too.

Speaker 1 We need to have a rule for... We need to get back control.
Remember when we used to have control of the Twitter account?

Speaker 1 I've had the password for the Twitter account forever. We need to get control for when memes loses.

Speaker 1 We should do that next year. If the Jets are ever in a big game, oh, you know what? The Knicks.
So

Speaker 1 when the Knicks are in the playoffs, I want control if the Knicks are in an elimination game. Okay, deal.
So we can just go off on memes.

Speaker 6 What about the Islanders? Nah, they suck.

Speaker 1 They suck. I knew that.
They suck. Ah,

Speaker 1 okay.

Speaker 1 East.

Speaker 1 I've come to the realization that I think Duke's going to win the whole thing.

Speaker 6 So Flag, his injury is going to... I don't think he's going to play at all in the first two games.

Speaker 1 Doesn't matter.

Speaker 6 But then he's going to be back. Will he be 100%?

Speaker 1 Doesn't matter. I don't know.

Speaker 6 They're still very deep.

Speaker 1 They're so good. They're going to win it all.
I've just come to accept that.

Speaker 1 They're just so well-rounded, so deep. I think Cooper Flag will be fine.
I think he probably, even if he doesn't play in the first weekend, they'll be fine, and then he'll be fully healthy.

Speaker 1 They're so good. I can't, I'm just, I have to brace myself.

Speaker 6 Where are they playing?

Speaker 1 Probably somewhere, probably at Durham. Raleigh.
There you go.

Speaker 1 Pretty easy. Pretty easy trip for him.
Hold on. I have the.

Speaker 1 Oh, by the way, shout out our guy, Jonathan Warner. I think we mentioned him last year.
A lot of people have brackets. He's the only guy I know that

Speaker 1 in the 45 minutes from when the bracket is released to when the tip times come out, he tries to predict every tip time. How do you do this here?

Speaker 1 I don't know. So many games.
I'm trying to see if he nailed any of them.

Speaker 6 And you're playing on Thursday, right? Yeah. Whiskey?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, so Duke,

Speaker 1 we have revenge games in Duke's region because we have Jeremy Roach on Baylor could play Duke. He played for Duke.

Speaker 1 And then we also have on Arizona, if they get to the Sweet 16 against Duke, Caleb Love, which would be fun. See them go up against each other one last time.
I think Oregon is

Speaker 1 the scary team in this region for Duke if they can get to the Sweet 16.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I have Oregon beating Arizona in the second round because that will be. I think that's going to be the Caleb Love masterpiece.
Yeah. I think he'll go three for 21 for 14 points.

Speaker 6 I like that. I think that's where I like that.
Essentially, the

Speaker 6 Josh Rosenstadt line of basketball.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Okay. Then in the bottom half, yeah, it's BYU VCU.
Memes is BYU. If BYU loses in the first round, memes, I'd like access to the Twitter account.

Speaker 8 Okay, deal.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 7 I'm a BYU lever.

Speaker 1 Please don't say that ever again. What?

Speaker 1 How much BYU basketball have you watched?

Speaker 8 I watch every single game.

Speaker 7 They play late, and I just love betting on them.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 BYU and VCU, that's actually a stylistic clash because VCU can muck it up and just play gritty defense right in their face. And then Wisconsin, Montana.

Speaker 1 Wisconsin got screwed in terms of the time, but you got to go play the games. At altitude.

Speaker 6 And altitude.

Speaker 1 It is crazy.

Speaker 6 Montana's used to the altitude.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It is crazy the third game on Thursday after playing four games in a row out in Denver.
Yeah. I don't know why they didn't give.
I also don't know why they wouldn't want.

Speaker 1 Why wouldn't you want to sell more tickets? Why wouldn't you want Wisconsin to be in Milwaukee? Like they were.

Speaker 1 There's two other three seeds in Milwaukee.

Speaker 6 So who is playing in Milwaukee?

Speaker 1 Kentucky and

Speaker 1 Iowa State.

Speaker 6 I don't know. I think protecting a three seed is like halfway down the list of stuff that's important for them.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know. It just kind of made no sense.
I actually think they probably should have lost on Saturday. It almost hurt them.

Speaker 1 And then Alabama, St. Mary's, Vanderbilt, and Robert Morris, the bottom half.

Speaker 1 We need Alabama to lose.

Speaker 1 I think Baba could beat Duke. Why? I think they could.
They could.

Speaker 6 I think they possibly could, too. Phylon is my favorite player to watch in college.
They get hot. Hank was also.

Speaker 1 I also didn't watch the game on Saturday, but you also did not watch the game on Saturday.

Speaker 2 It was on at the bar.

Speaker 1 Didn't they get absolutely

Speaker 1 smoked. Oh, yeah.
They got bullied.

Speaker 2 Oh, the Bama game. No, I didn't watch the Bamboo game.

Speaker 1 They got bullied. Bama also is not as good of a three-point shooting team as they were last year when they went to the Final Four, which they were a very good team last year.

Speaker 1 And Grant Nelson got hurt. Who knows what's going to happen with him? That's a very big injury.

Speaker 6 That is to not know that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that happened on Saturday night.

Speaker 2 That changes things for my bracket. Saturday afternoon.

Speaker 1 You got to check in on Grant Nelson. He might be okay.
Bosco couldn't get an answer.

Speaker 6 But they did crush Vandi when they played earlier.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 And then St. Mary's.
I don't know anything about St. Mary's.

Speaker 1 St. Mary's.

Speaker 6 Do they have an Australian guy this year?

Speaker 1 They always do. Randy Bennett's been to about a billion tournaments.
He also,

Speaker 1 the last two years, they've not played great, but I think one of them was against UConn, so it's like that doesn't really count

Speaker 1 because UConn was really, really good. They'll slow it down, so it would be a very fun matchup to see Alabama trying to speed it up for St.
Mary slowing it down. Where are they on Kenpom?

Speaker 1 They had a very St. Mary's year.
They beat Gonzaga twice in league play and then lost to him in the championship game.

Speaker 1 And they're a very well-rounded team that plays very slow. 359 in tempo.
Yep. That's what they want to do.
And Bama is one.

Speaker 1 That's why I want to see it. Be very funny to watch.

Speaker 1 Okay. And then in the Midwest, we have,

Speaker 1 like I said, Houston kind of got screwed because Houston, Gonzaga's the ninth team in Kenpom, and Houston is a one-seed, so that's who they maybe have to match up with in the second round.

Speaker 1 And they have a big injury with Juwan Roberts, so

Speaker 1 that could be a wrinkle in this whole bracket.

Speaker 6 That happens at Houston every year. Yeah.
Every year. They've got the worst luck.

Speaker 1 This is one of my favorite regions, and just that there's a game that I really want to happen

Speaker 1 in Illinois and Kentucky in the second round.

Speaker 1 That would be so much fun because it's like the two quintessential boomer-bust teams teams where if they're on, they play the best basketball in the world.

Speaker 1 And when they're off, they are just absolute dog shit. So I would love to see them match up and hope both are on because we'd get one of the best tournament games possible.

Speaker 6 I like the bottom half of this bracket a lot. I like Illinois, Kentucky, UCLA, and Tennessee.
I think those will make for, at the very least, very entertaining second-round matchups if they all win.

Speaker 1 Tough region. Clemson also, I feel like they got a little bit screwed with their seating,

Speaker 1 but Clemson Purdue, High Point's going to be a great game. There's so many fucking good games.

Speaker 1 God damn it, I love this tournament.

Speaker 6 I heard a rumor that High Point's not pumped about playing Purdue.

Speaker 1 Oh, really? Yeah.

Speaker 6 It's a rumor. It's a rumor.
You got sources? No, I don't want to throw anybody under the bus.

Speaker 1 It's someone thrown under the bus.

Speaker 6 No, but it's someone who's in my inner circle. And, you know, we have a good relationship.
Yeah. And so I don't want to go behind their back.
I don't want to annoy the guy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hank, what are your thoughts on the Midwest?

Speaker 2 I got Houston coming out of the Midwest. Yeah.
I like Houston, Tennessee in the Elite Eight,

Speaker 2 and I think High Point's going to make a run despite not loving their first-round matchup against Purdue.

Speaker 1 That's bad to not love that. Yeah.

Speaker 6 I know that's what I said, too.

Speaker 1 The one thing I will say about this bracket...

Speaker 2 It's crazy that they hypothetically were even thinking about Purdue

Speaker 1 this early on.

Speaker 1 High Point? What do you mean?

Speaker 2 Like they said before the tournament.

Speaker 1 Actually, never mind. Oh, they said before the tournament they didn't want to play Hur Purdue.

Speaker 6 Well, they were just saying, like, if there's a bunch of teams that they could play in that, you know, the slot that they were looking at, the 13-ish slot that they were putting themselves in, and Purdue was one of the teams that they said

Speaker 6 do not like that matchup.

Speaker 1 Who's your guy's source?

Speaker 6 I don't want to talk about it, Max.

Speaker 1 Just rumors. He knows someone at High Point?

Speaker 6 He knows a coach.

Speaker 1 No. No.
Got it. I didn't say that.
He knows the training source. Who said it was a he?

Speaker 6 Yeah, good point, Hank.

Speaker 2 PFT has multiple insiders sources that are women. That's right.
It could be anyone.

Speaker 1 Purdue's defense is not good.

Speaker 1 I think the Midwest region, so the West is my

Speaker 1 region of death because I think there's four teams that are all very qualified to be in the final four. Midwest is my chaos region.

Speaker 1 This could go any which way because I could with Jawan Roberts out for Houston, potentially out for Houston,

Speaker 1 there's not one in like Tennessee, Rick Barnes. It's Rick Barnes.
Rick Barnes.

Speaker 1 And then you have two teams in Kentucky and Illinois who at their ceiling could be final four teams, but they've also shown their floor, and it's very ugly.

Speaker 6 But Coach Cal, he could lose that first-round matchup again. That would be a game that Cal would lose.
Pope, I don't think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 No, Cal would lose to Troy.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Cal would lose to Troy.

Speaker 1 Troy would throw a zone at Cal, and he'd be like, what?

Speaker 6 I think Pope would not lose to Troy. Right.

Speaker 6 Pope might lose to Illinois. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And also, this region has a fun wrinkle that Mick Cronin, who was very vocal about Eastern Standard Time and having to play there, and used to say it was bad playing in Eastern Standard Time this year.

Speaker 1 They have to go play in Eastern Standard Time.

Speaker 6 That's tough.

Speaker 1 So they kind of stuck it to him there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is my region of I don't know what the fuck's going to happen.

Speaker 6 I think, here's my take. I think whoever wins the East, winning it all.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's going to be Duke. Duke's going to win it all.

Speaker 6 Could be Wisconsin. Could be Bama.

Speaker 1 Florida's the only chance.

Speaker 2 Why not Wisconsin Revenge in the Elite Eight for a chance of the Final Four?

Speaker 1 Listen, I just want to get to the Sweet 16. That's my...
Everything after that is like, let's just, let's see what happens. God will take me.
Revenge. Yeah.

Speaker 6 If Wisconsin can shoot like

Speaker 1 you're just a memes. You're a meme.

Speaker 2 Started the championship DVD.

Speaker 1 You're me.

Speaker 1 You're just another memes. You want to set me up for...

Speaker 1 I am very happy that Wisconsin played a game like today where it just really smoked out all the haters because there's a lot of people who watched their first college basketball game today and they're like, wow, Wisconsin stinks.

Speaker 1 They hit 18 threes on Friday.

Speaker 1 friday they play great offense bad day they were tired legs they were taking the same shots i actually think that they were taking better shots yeah they were in the championship game than they were on friday it's just that every shot they were taking on friday was going in every single one and they just were ran out of gas uh but that was it was fun to i got a lot of bookmarks and hopefully i can revisit um

Speaker 1 all right what any other things from the bracket we're going to get into more of it with jon rostein talk more brackets i'm sure he's got some good intel we didn't even think about.

Speaker 1 Oh, I had one thing that I wanted to say about this. This is the year

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 don't be afraid to just do chalk. I know that it sounds like you never want to be that guy.
Don't get as cute as you think you want to get because I saw this stat. It's from Max Barr CBB on Twitter.

Speaker 1 Only four teams since 2000 have entered the tournament plus 35 net rating that's adjusted efficiency rating on Ken Pom or better.

Speaker 1 So only four teams since 2000 entered the tournament plus 35 net rating. That was the 2021 Gonzaga Bulldogs.
They were they finished second. They were the runner-up in that year.

Speaker 1 2019, Virginia, they were the champion. 2015, Kentucky, Final Four lost to Wisconsin.
2001, Duke. They won it all.
So only four teams since 2000 had 35 net rating or higher. This year,

Speaker 1 four teams have 35 net rating or higher. So that's insane.
Yeah. Like that, that just shows you that the one seeds this year are playing at such a high level and are so dominant that it's literally

Speaker 1 the total amount of teams that are good this year, it's been whatever, 25 years. It took for four other teams to do it.
So Duke, Florida, Houston, Auburn are historically great teams.

Speaker 1 And so don't be afraid to just go chalk. That would be my speech.

Speaker 1 You're going to want to get cute.

Speaker 6 Well, get cute. Don't get cute.
Maybe get cute early on.

Speaker 1 Get cute early on. And I would say if you're going to try to say, hey, where can we not do the one seed? It would be if Juwan Roberts doesn't play in Houston might be that one.

Speaker 6 And maybe Michigan State.

Speaker 6 Possibly. Michigan State overall.

Speaker 1 Auburn does have bad vibes the way they finish out the season. Bad body language.
They didn't look great.

Speaker 2 But Auburn Bam a national championship, hypothetically.

Speaker 1 I would like to see that. No.

Speaker 1 Why not?

Speaker 1 He has a Bama few. But

Speaker 6 every time they play, it's a good idea.

Speaker 1 He wants Max on the bus.

Speaker 2 Not even. I mean, I just want good content.

Speaker 1 He wants you at the pumps party. And you on the bus.

Speaker 8 What's Max on the bus?

Speaker 1 For Pick'em, we made a bet. Rico Bosco, huge Bama fan, good football expert.

Speaker 1 Close friend of Natoates.

Speaker 1 If Alabama doesn't make the final four,

Speaker 1 Rico Bosco has to take a bus to San Antonio from New York City. If Alabama does make the final four,

Speaker 1 Max and Jack McCarthy have to take a bus from Chicago to San Antonio, and I have to go to the pump party on Thursday night.

Speaker 1 Am I ⁇ this is a pick'em bet?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Am I a part of the Pick'em show? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 By proxy? Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. Just wanted to put a little bit of context out there that this is an insane bet that I'm a part of.
Max just got thrown into it. No reason.
I know. You're a chill guy.
That'll do it.

Speaker 1 You're Chief Scout. It's Max.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. That's basically what happened.
Yeah, blame your buddy. It was you.

Speaker 1 No, it was Jack McCarthy. No, it was your buddy.
It was Jack versus Rico, and then you were like, oh, yeah, we'll have Max go with Jack, too. Well, well, Bama's going to lose.
What's done is done.

Speaker 1 Bama has to lose. You have to, you have to, as Hank said, we're just rooting for content, so you'll be very invested in those games.

Speaker 2 Other good content, though, would be Wisco beating Bama and then beating Duke.

Speaker 1 Oh, I appreciate that because I assumed

Speaker 1 you wanted them to lose one of those games so that you can get your memes off. Well, then he's just assuming you would lose in the Final Four.
Oh.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but that would be

Speaker 2 those would be two

Speaker 2 electric games.

Speaker 1 Those would be electric games.

Speaker 6 Ben Kat vs. Hank.

Speaker 2 It'd be fun.

Speaker 6 Duke, Wisconsin.

Speaker 2 People forget I respectfully didn't even wear Duke.

Speaker 1 You were very nice about that.

Speaker 2 The national championship.

Speaker 1 You were very nice about that. Wow.

Speaker 1 I just love looking at this bracket.

Speaker 6 Also, the NIT bracket just came out, Max. Oh, you're not in it.

Speaker 1 Sorry. What?

Speaker 1 Are you aware of the crown? Or are you not aware of the crown?

Speaker 6 Oh, the college basketball crown? Yeah. The fake tournament that just built up at the last second.

Speaker 1 The crown is

Speaker 1 pretty prestigious.

Speaker 1 The crown. I don't think you know about the crown.
I know about the crown. Ah.

Speaker 6 The crown where they say that they're going to make NIL payments, but they don't actually make NIL payments unless you finish in the finals.

Speaker 1 That crown? The crown crown is going to be pretty sick. It's in Vegas.
It's pretty awesome. Is Villanova in the crown?

Speaker 1 We should be. Stand by.
Who's coaching him?

Speaker 1 Great point. I want him to do a player coach.
Eric Davis. Oh.

Speaker 1 Coach. What is he going to do? Miss more shots? Yep.

Speaker 1 And then we're just on. I'm fine with losing immediately and just figuring out who our next coach is.

Speaker 6 If I were losing the crown, then it's not be that important of a tournament.

Speaker 1 It's not that important. Okay.
But it's cool to say the crown. It's cool to say the crown.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was a good weekend of hoops.

Speaker 1 Fucking wall-to-wall. I had fun until I didn't.

Speaker 1 Anything else?

Speaker 1 NIT HUSA? Oh, NIT SU. Wait, do you have the NIT bracket?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I got the NIT bracket right now. Give it to us.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 6 SMU against Northern Iowa. SMU the one seed.
Oklahoma State at Wichita, or against Wichita State. Arkansas State against St.
Louis. North Texas against Furman.

Speaker 2 Dayton. I like Furman in that.

Speaker 1 Dayton. The NIT is taking a hit this year.

Speaker 6 Dayton against FAU. Middle Tennessee against Chattanooga.
Bradley against North Alabama. George Mason against Sanford.
I love George Mason's big band. He was fun to watch.

Speaker 6 San Francisco against Utah Valley. San Jose State against Loyola Chicago.
Sister Jean.

Speaker 1 Yeah. St.

Speaker 1 St.

Speaker 6 Bonnie's against Kent State. And then Stanford against Cissun.

Speaker 1 Cal State Northridge.

Speaker 2 No, Indiana. Do they just deny the bid?

Speaker 1 They might be in the crown. No, they're in the crown.
All the people. They're in the crown, Power 1.

Speaker 1 You've got to understand how important

Speaker 1 the crown is. You don't get the crown.

Speaker 6 I left off one leg of the bracket. Then we have UC Irvine, Northern Colorado, Georgia Tech against Jacksonville State.
St. Joseph's against UAB.
Santa Clara against UC Riverside.

Speaker 1 The NIT. It's going to be about the crown.

Speaker 1 Wait, who's the

Speaker 1 biggest power five team in the NIT this year?

Speaker 6 I respect Georgia Tech. Respect.

Speaker 1 It looks like the ACC is the only

Speaker 1 Crown Georgia Tech standpoint. Stanford.
SMU. SMU.

Speaker 6 Oklahoma State.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 6 Damn. And then Hank's Furman.

Speaker 1 You like Furman all the way? I like Furman a lot.

Speaker 1 All the way.

Speaker 6 Furman what?

Speaker 2 The Furman Boilers.

Speaker 6 The Boilers.

Speaker 6 All right. Like Boilers, like a chef, someone who boils something, or Boilers, like an engine?

Speaker 2 Like an engine. Okay.

Speaker 1 Hank, did you fill out a bracket?

Speaker 2 I did.

Speaker 1 All right, give it to us.

Speaker 2 Well, I asked a question for a reason, although I didn't know about the injury. I have out of the south, Auburn

Speaker 2 coming out of the west, St. John's after beating Yukon.

Speaker 1 Oh, in the Elite Eight. Yeah.

Speaker 6 So you have Yukon over Florida.

Speaker 2 And Maryland, yeah.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 2 You got to beat the Champs to beat the Champs.

Speaker 1 But they have the championship DNA. What if Florida beats the Champs?

Speaker 1 What if Oklahoma beats the Champs?

Speaker 2 I don't think they're going to. I think this team has coached well.
They have championship DNA. They know what it takes to get it done at this time of the year.

Speaker 6 Rick Petino, he has championship DNA.

Speaker 2 Sure, that's why he's going to be.

Speaker 1 It's been tested.

Speaker 2 And then I have Houston beating Tennessee to advance out of the Midwest.

Speaker 6 I love that when you talk college basketball, you say it the correct Houston way.

Speaker 2 Houston, I'll burn.

Speaker 2 I like Kentucky-Tennessee matchup before that. That'll be a fun one.
High point, they have the kid. He's going to be the story, the

Speaker 6 exciting white.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, who mean mugged yeah yeah big time

Speaker 2 and then in this bracket uh

Speaker 2 i guess i wasn't thinking about storylines but i have

Speaker 2 bama beating wisconsin and then duke on the way to the final four so bama is going to be in the final four and they're going to beat auburn uh

Speaker 1 so you have bama winning it all and max having to take a bus and me having to go to the pump party Yeah, I wasn't really thinking about any of that when I filled this bracket out, but this is just how it kind of shook out.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 got it.

Speaker 1 Well, that would suck.

Speaker 1 Right, Max?

Speaker 1 I'm still doing research on the crown.

Speaker 1 What are you finding?

Speaker 7 You might not even be in the crown.

Speaker 1 What do you got for us? No, we're definitely in the crown. I think we have an auto-bid to the crown.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the crown is in conjunction with the TV network, so they basically force teams to go to the crown.

Speaker 6 Got it. You can't say no.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I did ask some Villanova people because I've been trying to get on the

Speaker 1 I've been trying to get in the know of who our next coach is going to be. I'm like, can we opt out of the next tournament to just focus on coaching?

Speaker 1 And apparently, you're not allowed to opt out of the crown.

Speaker 6 That sucks. You can opt out of the NIT.

Speaker 1 You can opt out of the NIT.

Speaker 1 You're not allowed to opt out of the crown.

Speaker 6 You just got to wait for Vandy to lose. Then you get your next coach.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 he's on the list.

Speaker 6 Who else is on your list?

Speaker 7 Jay Wright?

Speaker 1 I can give you my list.

Speaker 6 Richard Petino?

Speaker 1 I can give you my list. Richard Petino is on my list.

Speaker 6 Italian League.

Speaker 1 My list is

Speaker 1 TJ

Speaker 1 Otsen, what's his name? Ottson Burr Otson.

Speaker 1 Todd Golden, Will Wade, Tommy Lloyd, Ben McCollum, Ryan Odom, Chris Collins, Mitch Henderson, Richard Petino, Matt Lenle, Porter Moser. Wait, wait, wait.
Hold on. Go back real quick.

Speaker 1 Todd Golden is the Florida head coach. Yep.
On my list. Who's a one seed and has probably an insane NIL and coaches in the SEC.
On my list. He's going to go to Villanova? He's on my list.

Speaker 6 Is Villanova, are they a Jesuit school?

Speaker 1 What? I don't know.

Speaker 1 He's on my list.

Speaker 6 Do you think he's Villanova material?

Speaker 1 He's on your list. He's on my list.
John Shire?

Speaker 1 Yep. He's on your list? Sure.
He can be on my list. I do like Will Wade, though.
Let's get Will Wade

Speaker 6 a proper program to run now.

Speaker 1 Father Peter would love Will Wade and Todd Golden. What about Chris Beard? List.
He's on the list. List.

Speaker 1 You're all on the list. They're all on the list.
They're all on the list. Don't know what's the number one job in America.

Speaker 1 Arguably.

Speaker 1 Championship DNA. What about Jay Wright?

Speaker 1 Jay Wright owns the list. Oh, he runs the list? He runs the list.
What do you think they'd have to offer Jay Wright to come back?

Speaker 1 I think they have offered him unlimited money. So I think that there is not a number.
Got it.

Speaker 6 What would you personally do to get Jay Wright as the coach?

Speaker 1 Well, what would you want?

Speaker 6 I would do that. I just want to know where your line is.

Speaker 1 Yeah, my line is high. My line.

Speaker 1 I miss Jay Wright. Would you suck and fuck? Yes.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Would you quit?

Speaker 1 Would I quit this show? Yeah. I wouldn't let you.

Speaker 1 I'd think about it.

Speaker 6 Well, you should say yes because we'd just say no. You're not allowed to.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 6 Would you kill memes?

Speaker 1 Easy. That's easier than quitting the show.

Speaker 1 I would help you with that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's a BYU lever.

Speaker 6 Don't say that. Please don't say that.

Speaker 1 BYU leaver. He's just been cackling to himself back here with the mics off just saying BYU leaver over and over again.
It was so bad.

Speaker 6 I wish they had given BYU a Sunday game. Just been like, let's put our chips on the table here.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I was saying it would be funny if there was a year where BYU makes a tournament, but they're not very good, and the committee's just like, yeah, we're giving you Friday, Sunday, you're not going to win.

Speaker 1 Don't worry. It's not a big deal.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's do Who's Back of the Week? And then we will get to more bracket talk with John Rostein.

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Speaker 1 Hank, who's back of the week?

Speaker 1 You got it in you?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I got a couple.

Speaker 1 Let's go.

Speaker 2 My first one is playoffs.

Speaker 1 Playoffs? Playoffs.

Speaker 2 We talk about it a lot.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's obviously a week early, but there was a lot of college basketball similar to the tournament and having something to wean you off on Monday and the golf gods, the weather gods have granted us that.

Speaker 2 There's a three-hole aggregate playoff for the players' championship tomorrow morning, 9 a.m. Eastern.
So that will be a nice thing to wake up to.

Speaker 6 Nice way to get your way into the week.

Speaker 2 Rory, McLory, JJ Spawn.

Speaker 1 Who's going to win?

Speaker 6 I hope JJ.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 2 Rory, it's a fun storyline of him just, you know, kind of getting so close and choking.

Speaker 6 But Rory on St. Patrick's Day? I feel like that's good vibes for him, right?

Speaker 1 Isn't he Northern Ireland also celebrates that?

Speaker 6 They do. I looked it up, yeah.
It's not as big a deal, I don't think, because they're Protestant up there. It's St.
Patrick's Day. That's a Catholic thing.

Speaker 6 I just feel like if it's a guy from a part of Ireland against a guy not from a part of Ireland that leans towards the Irish guy.

Speaker 1 So wait, do you not like Rory now? You've come around

Speaker 1 on our discussion?

Speaker 2 I'm a Liv guy. This is where it's like, I haven't something that I've come around.

Speaker 1 Is she a Liv performer? Yeah, she was great. She was awesome.

Speaker 6 What if Liv just decided to get into the college basketball playoff scene?

Speaker 1 Probably is going to happen. You're probably going to be with the crown

Speaker 1 champion.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's kind of what it is, right?

Speaker 1 Crown Prince. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And then my other who's back of the week is it's Hank's hot in the street, and this is definitely a sign of I'm really old. But have you guys seen Borks?

Speaker 6 Nope.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah. Oh, you're talking about the jugs.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 It's big in Madison. I think you see everyone drinking Borks out on the lake.

Speaker 6 I think it's Borg, isn't it? B.R.G.

Speaker 2 Borg, I'm sorry, yeah. Blackout Rage Gallon.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it's basically just pouring

Speaker 2 a ton of vodka into a gallon jug, some water, and then just the

Speaker 2 liquid drops, the flavor drops. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Foul.

Speaker 1 Did you not have that at parties?

Speaker 2 Not in a way we would. Who seen this ever clear?

Speaker 1 I've seen it.

Speaker 1 We'd put it in an actual Gatorade container.

Speaker 2 It's not as common. It seems like it's a super, super common thing where

Speaker 2 in the the streets of Boston, streets of Chicago, there's just all the confiscated

Speaker 2 gallon borgs. People name them and stuff.
The Borg James.

Speaker 6 What it is, it's just like a personal thing that you bring around.

Speaker 1 It's just you just get blacked out.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it used to be just jungle juice in that cooler at the party. Yeah.
And then you have some of that.

Speaker 6 You never have to worry about cleaning out the cooler because you just make more jungle juice and it goes in there. But now, yeah, you've got your own borg that you carry around.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, like it's just, it's, it's, it's so ratchetable. I assume it's like a half handle of vodka and some.

Speaker 1 I assume it's also like it's a lot of underage drinking, I would assume. The biggest.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, look at all those Borgs. Confiscated Borgs.
Confiscated.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's one of those things that I saw it and I immediately said

Speaker 1 that would make me want to die. But if I were 20 years old, I'd be heavy into the Borgs.
Definitely.

Speaker 1 All right, so those are your two who's backs? Those are it. All right.

Speaker 6 Hank took one of my who's backs. Borg?

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Tarbrought two, sorry.

Speaker 6 We should Borg.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it definitely made me... It seems like a case race thing, but

Speaker 6 a Borg race. No, I just think, yeah, chairman of the Borg.

Speaker 1 Like that.

Speaker 6 My who's back of the week is Karen Reed.

Speaker 6 You guys remember Karen Reid? Yeah. So her trial is going to resume.
Restarting? I think it's going to restart. Hank, you probably know more about it than I do.

Speaker 6 Karen Reed.

Speaker 6 They're restarting her trial? Yeah. So I thought, what would happen? Why did he get stopped last time?

Speaker 1 No, I think it was.

Speaker 2 They didn't come to a decision or whatever.

Speaker 1 Is it a hung jury? No.

Speaker 1 What's a hung jury? Split jury.

Speaker 6 A hung jury? When you're all just packing heat.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think that's it.
Too many cocks.

Speaker 6 There was a lot of meat on the jury.

Speaker 1 No, it was, yeah, there was. It's not unanimous.
It was unanimous. It's not unanimous.
Yes.

Speaker 6 Another murder news trial, there's a new O.J. Simpson documentary, which I watched as well.

Speaker 6 I will watch every single OJ documentary that they put out. I will learn nothing new every single one that I watch because I've already seen 20 of them, but I'm going to watch it if it's out.

Speaker 1 I have a question for you, PFT.

Speaker 1 If we're in the circle of trust,

Speaker 1 I actually almost made a purchase for you the other night, but then I realized, you know what, this is probably too messed up.

Speaker 6 Oh, I should have done it.

Speaker 1 I don't know if it's still live. There was an auction selling off O.J.
Simpson's clothes. What kind of clothes?

Speaker 6 Like Hawaiian shirts. Oh, not the clothes.

Speaker 1 No. Okay.
But But like

Speaker 6 just his entire

Speaker 1 closet.

Speaker 6 Listen, I don't like OJ. I've been very clear on that.
OJ's been on my shit list for a long time, ever since he blocked me on Twitter.com.

Speaker 1 So you're saying, so maybe I shouldn't, I should have bought it, but maybe the fucked up part is that I saw it and immediately thought of it.

Speaker 6 You thought of me. Yeah, I want people to look at OJ and their first thought to be PFT.

Speaker 1 I know exactly who'd want this shirt.

Speaker 2 Remember when we always interviewed him outside of jail? Yeah.

Speaker 6 Well, no, it wasn't outside of jail.

Speaker 6 The deal was there was an alcohol brand, I won't say their name, that was asking us to pick him up from jail in a van and do an interview in the van on the ride home from the jail in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Speaker 6 Like his first interview out was going to be with us, and we're like, you know what? He's

Speaker 1 a murderer, so we're going to pass.

Speaker 6 Credit to us. Yeah.
Integrity.

Speaker 1 Integrity. Also, it would have just been a terrible interview.

Speaker 6 He probably would have tried to kill us.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It would have been a bad one.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 1 Here's the auction site. Let me see if there's still.

Speaker 1 Okay, you could get

Speaker 1 where, oh, it's Heisman's $10,000.

Speaker 6 That's it?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I think it's an auction, so there's still time to go. 13 days to go.

Speaker 1 Buying his Heisman would be pretty sick.

Speaker 6 That is a steal.

Speaker 1 That would be pretty fucking sick.

Speaker 6 You want to do it?

Speaker 1 Well, let's see.

Speaker 1 Someone please keep a counter 12 days from now. Let us know.
Pretty much depends on how I do in March Madden. Hey, can you do that?

Speaker 1 Can you actually do it unlike the bonkless, which you didn't do?

Speaker 2 Bonkless is hot and heavy.

Speaker 1 Oh, he's got golf bags. That'd be sick.

Speaker 1 Now that, you having OJ's golf bags

Speaker 1 would be pretty sick.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I'm in on that.

Speaker 1 All right, yeah, let's get, there's 13 days left in the auction.

Speaker 2 So we'll have to revisit. This is March 26th.

Speaker 1 I don't know what to do. Dude, you do the maths.
You got the calendar in front of you?

Speaker 6 What website is the OJ auction on? Is it on inter slash slash slash slash escape?

Speaker 1 No, it's actually the guy golden auctions. We head in.
Yeah. Oh, I got it.
I got the joke.

Speaker 1 That's an old school one. Old school slash.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Slashes. What, Max?

Speaker 1 I didn't get it. Slash, slash, knife.

Speaker 6 His email address is inter

Speaker 6 slash slash slash backslash escape.

Speaker 1 PFT literally just dropped. Like, it was actually, I remember, I think I even remember my dad saying that joke in like 1996.

Speaker 1 I still don't get it. Slash like a knife.

Speaker 6 Oh, enter, slash, slash, slash, backslash, escape.

Speaker 1 Got it. Got it.
Got it. And it was like one of the premier dad jokes when the internet came along and they were like, how can we make the OJ internet? It was a big one back in the day.

Speaker 6 Because

Speaker 6 the internet was new, too. Yeah.
So it's like combining two very current things.

Speaker 6 Jay Leno got paid probably $40 million just for those jokes.

Speaker 1 That and Monica Lewinsky.

Speaker 1 Oh, he's got his student ID. That's a Ravel.
Revelle's got to be all over this.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that's the problem: if we get some, we just have to understand that Ravel is going to have his paws on one of these things. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Also, it's kind of fucked up to just be like, I have OJ's golf bag. But

Speaker 1 also kind of a statement piece.

Speaker 6 Ran for 2,000 yards in, what, 14 games?

Speaker 1 Peter King has him in the Hall of Fame. Yep.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. My Who's back of the week.

Speaker 1 I have two. Baseball's back.

Speaker 1 Cubs opening days Tuesday morning

Speaker 1 in Japan against the Dodgers.

Speaker 6 I hate that so much.

Speaker 2 Did you see the camera angle?

Speaker 1 No. Show me the camera angle.
I'm going to be live streaming with Eddie Chief and White Sox Dave and Titus at 5.10 in the morning.

Speaker 6 So this camera angle, it looks like it's a video game.

Speaker 1 Don't laugh at me, Hank. That's wild.
What? I mean, it's first pitch of the Major League Baseball season. Where's the camera angle? Look at that.
I've got to send Max. Actually, you know what?

Speaker 1 I'm going to defend Max on this one. Twitter's search is so bad now, you can't find anything.
Max. Memes just tells me to look up stuff that we aren't talking about

Speaker 1 all the time.

Speaker 2 Are you listening yourself?

Speaker 1 I am, but he just keeps saying, look this up. Look this up.
He's like, look up the Hanshin Tigers. Why would you say that? Because I guess they shut out the Cubs.

Speaker 7 No, that was in association to what you're talking to.

Speaker 1 Max, look up.

Speaker 6 Look up Dansby camera. Because there's a sick angle of Dansby Swanson.
Barcelona Tiger. Type Cubs.

Speaker 1 Oh, wait, that was fake.

Speaker 6 Was it?

Speaker 2 It looks fake. It's scary.

Speaker 6 This one?

Speaker 1 That was my point.

Speaker 6 Oh, that's fake. Yeah, that's definitely fake.
Yeah, it's a video game.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Wait, this is what I saw.

Speaker 1 Is there another camera angle?

Speaker 6 So we all scrolled past that and thought maybe it's real.

Speaker 1 This is so fake. It's very fake.
Wait, yes.

Speaker 1 This is like MLB the show. That's the show.
That's insanely fake. Yeah, that's the show.

Speaker 6 Did you think that was. I scrolled past it very fast on my phone, and I thought that's what he was talking about with the camera angle.

Speaker 1 Got it.

Speaker 2 I think it's real.

Speaker 1 That's it.

Speaker 1 Hank, look at the look to the left of Hank. Look at the TV, Hank.
Look to the left of you.

Speaker 1 You think it's real, Hank? That is MLB the show.

Speaker 1 That's so fake, Hank.

Speaker 1 It looks fake. Yeah, you just said it looks real.

Speaker 2 But it's so high-tech, I think. I don't know.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 Hank, Hank, there's no way that you think this is real.

Speaker 2 Why would Barcelon Sports Main tweeted it that it was real?

Speaker 1 Because they got it. Look at it.
I understand that.

Speaker 2 That's why I brought the point up is because if this was real, it's scary how weird it looks. And if it's not real, then I'm happy because society's all right.
Good.

Speaker 1 You're happy.

Speaker 6 By the way, I found a new it was a talking point.

Speaker 2 I'm happy I brought it up. Yeah.
We got to the bottom of it. Maybe.

Speaker 6 I found a new kind of guy online on Friday. It's very rare that you find a new guy.

Speaker 6 But there's been like a conspiracy out there for a while that sunscreen is actually what gives you cancer, not the rays from the sun. Oh, this is good.

Speaker 6 But that's that's that's been out there for a while.

Speaker 1 MLB account tweeted it. What? so it's real

Speaker 1 all right this person says look at the mlb actual tweet

Speaker 1 okay this says it's actual footage from a different angle fed into ai which then creates the highlight okay so it is fake so it's like that really happened but then they make this angle via ai this is also my source is rob j08 and it has four likes on twitter also

Speaker 2 x.com the everything happens it's all happening on ads mlb main main account said, we can't get over this ridiculous replay from the Tokyo Dome.

Speaker 6 So, what they're doing is they're taking real highlights and then they're making it look more like video games so that kids will watch the highlights. This is hurting my brain.
That sucks.

Speaker 2 That's why I brought it up. It's crazy.

Speaker 6 It was a talking point.

Speaker 1 Okay, my other who's back is.

Speaker 1 But wait, wait,

Speaker 1 I didn't tell you about the new guy. Oh, yeah, the new kind of guy.

Speaker 6 So the sunscreen truth was they've been out there for a while. Then I found guys

Speaker 6 that think that

Speaker 6 actually this is a a different sun.

Speaker 6 That we switched the sun out like 40 years ago, and it's the new sun. And it's worse.
And it's worse for you. I have so many questions, though.
One, where did we make the new sun?

Speaker 6 What did we do with the old sun? What year did we switch it out? Oh. And how is that person able to get through life without dying every single day, getting hit by a car? This is good.

Speaker 6 So I got to do some more research on the new sun, guys.

Speaker 6 Good conspiracy. Yeah, it's very good.

Speaker 1 I had one the other day

Speaker 1 that actually I completely believe that

Speaker 1 Chernobyl was on purpose. Okay.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 For what reason?

Speaker 1 Everyone was doing nuclear power plants and Russia has a shitload of oil and gas. And so they're like, hey, let's blow up a nuclear power plant and scare the fuck out of everyone about nuclear energy.

Speaker 1 Ooh.

Speaker 1 And let everyone stop doing nuclear energy.

Speaker 6 Or inside job. Maybe we sabotaged it to fuck with Russia.

Speaker 1 But that wouldn't make sense for us because then we have to buy their gas.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 But that's just, I like that one. That one was just cut and dry.
I just saw one tweet and I was like, yep, I'm in.

Speaker 1 All right, my other who's back is Aaron Rodgers playing games because Aaron Rodgers is apparently the Giants and the Steelers are sitting and waiting for Aaron Rodgers to decide if he wants to be a Minnesota Viking.

Speaker 1 And I don't know if the Vikings are also.

Speaker 1 I don't know what the Vikings are, if they're waiting for Aaron Rodgers or they're like, hey, we haven't offered you anything.

Speaker 6 I think the Vikings want him.

Speaker 6 I don't think that the Vikings love JJ.

Speaker 1 Why wouldn't they love JJ? I don't know. They drafted him.

Speaker 6 But it seems weird that they're waiting for Aaron Rodgers to make his decision if they were really that convinced that JJ was their guy, right?

Speaker 1 I read it as the Vikings.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what's going to end up happening.
Oh, so it is a real highlight.

Speaker 1 It's a real highlight.

Speaker 1 With AI. It's like the footage is AI.
Apologize.

Speaker 6 No, it's a real highlight that they were like, if this looked like video games, then kids would like watching it. So let's just turn the real highlight into a video game.

Speaker 2 Apologize.

Speaker 1 The angle is AI. The footage is real.

Speaker 2 What does that mean? Look at it.

Speaker 1 That is not like. I've seen it.
Look at the difference between the two video. Yeah, and where would be,

Speaker 1 there's no camera behind Dancy. Look at his side.
Look at his jersey. It's like pick it.

Speaker 1 There's no camera behind Dancy Swan. It lags.

Speaker 1 The middle of his torso lags.

Speaker 2 It it could just be a super wide lens super long lens yeah it could be a super long lens look at his belt look at his belt when he does this little action well there it's a grainy video like the the oh yeah no

Speaker 6 it's ai it glitched hank it glitched come on that's the play on top it's the same no that is the same play but it's not that's not a real camera that shot that correct the big camera that's over top of everything it sees all the movement and then it feeds it into a little processor and it's like here the the idiots like hank out there will like this highlight more if it looks like we're playing the show well and when when MLB, the main account, posts this and it doesn't have the little AI tag or anything and it just says, I can't believe this replay, why would I not believe that it's a real replay?

Speaker 6 I'm very sad for the future of our society.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, this whole conversation has

Speaker 1 made us all dumber.

Speaker 1 Aaron Rodgers, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the Vikings are going to do.

Speaker 1 They have a good offensive line. They made some good moves in free agency.

Speaker 6 I feel like he'd be good on the Steelers.

Speaker 1 Steelers would would be funny. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Loves Mike Tomlin. Let's make the Steelers happen.

Speaker 1 Where do you want him to go, memes?

Speaker 1 I would like the Giants because I predicted that.

Speaker 6 But the Vikings for the Brett Favre storyline.

Speaker 1 That's memes for you. And that means the Jets are going to the AFC Championship.
Oh. Okay, got it.
Good point. Good point.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Let's...

Speaker 1 Hank is still looking at this highlight. Are you okay, Hank?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm trying to get some proof that it's it's not real, but you guys are just

Speaker 1 you got what never mind. Okay, uh, let's get to John Rossing.
After John Rossine, we uh say goodbye to Oldie for now. Uh, he was he was watching with us all weekend, and we do numbers with him.

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Speaker 6 Man, I'll tell you what.

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Speaker 1 okay we now welcome on a very special guest it is john rostein he is our good friend uh you can see him on cbs he's got a new podcast coming out with cbs which will be his exclusive podcast home moving forward john we got our bracket what's your schedule this week you got a probably crazy schedule what's going on?

Speaker 1 Where are we going to see you?

Speaker 13 Crazy schedule. I'm on with you guys tonight, which is awesome.
It's a tradition unlike any other. I'm going to fly out to Ohio in the morning.

Speaker 13 I'll be doing the first four games with Spear Odidas and Jim Spinarkle on Tuesday and Wednesday. I think from the...

Speaker 13 The big games in the first four, it's the best first four in the history of the first four with Carolina, San Diego State, and Xavier against Texas.

Speaker 13 And then we are going to go after we do Wednesday's broadcast up to Cleveland, and we're going to do those games. So that's Michigan State against Bryant, New Mexico against Marquette.

Speaker 13 That's a great matchup between Donovan Dent and Cam Jones, the two great guards. And then we're also going to do Alabama Robert Morris and St.
Mary's Vanderbilt.

Speaker 13 So pumped to be in the great state of Ohio here coming up this week.

Speaker 6 So it's interesting you said that. I like the promo.
It's maybe the best first four in the history, the long vaunted history of the first four. We got UNC in there.

Speaker 6 And John, just but a couple days ago,

Speaker 6 you were passionately making your declaration that UNC would not be in the first four. Yep.
What happened? What's going on with that?

Speaker 6 Because I know that you talked to Bubba Cunningham, the AD from UNC. So what happened?

Speaker 13 This is one of the biggest miscarriage of justices that I have seen in all my years covering college basketball.

Speaker 13 And when you think right now about what the criteria is to get teams into the NCAA tournament, at the end of the day, what is always going to usurp everything is who did you play?

Speaker 13 Where did you play them? And did you win? North Carolina was 1-12 against quad 1 opponents. That is just a fact of life.

Speaker 13 And then, when you look at some of the teams that were left out of the bracket, the two that I'm looking at specifically is West Virginia and Indiana.

Speaker 13 And remember, with North Carolina's resume, Carolina also had a quad three defeat on its resume, which Indiana, who was left out of the tournament in favor of North Carolina, did not have.

Speaker 13 And if you're looking at big wins right now, North Carolina had one against the field. It had the win against UCLA in the CBS Sports Classic.
Let's look at what Indiana had.

Speaker 13 And again, remember, the Hoosiers had no quad three and four losses.

Speaker 13 Indiana won a road game at Michigan State in East Lansing, who is a two seed right now, okay, in the south region, which I've named the region of depth because of the depth that exists with the Spartans, Auburn, Texas, A ⁇ M, and other.

Speaker 13 programs in that region. And Indiana also beat Purdue at home.

Speaker 13 I don't understand how Carolina can get in over Indiana if Indiana won a game at Michigan State and beat Purdue and doesn't have a quad three or four loss, and Carolina does.

Speaker 13 But what about West Virginia? The miscarriage of justice continues. West Virginia went to Allen Fieldhouse and beat Kansas.
West Virginia beat Iowa State at home a three seed.

Speaker 13 And West Virginia on a neutral court beat Arizona State and beat Gonzaga.

Speaker 13 This is one of the biggest miscarriage of justices that I have seen in nearly 20 years covering college basketball on the national level.

Speaker 13 Now, I I will say this, because North Carolina does not deserve to be in the NCAA tournament, that has no bearing on what the Tar Heels can do when they get into the NCAA tournament.

Speaker 13 And I'll give you a perfect example. 14 years ago, I did not believe that VCU deserved to be into the NCAA tournament.

Speaker 13 VCU then started in the first four and went all the way to the final four under Shock of Smart.

Speaker 13 And VCU in the regular season that year averaged 8.3, made three-point shots a game, and then made 12 in the NCAA tournament.

Speaker 13 So what Carolina does moving forward has no bearing on whether or not the Tar Heels deserve to be in the field. But my heart breaks for West Virginia.

Speaker 13 It breaks for Indiana that North Carolina got this opportunity instead of them.

Speaker 6 So you talked to Bubba Cunningham, the AD from UNC. What was his explanation? What did he say? Was he just like, hey, wasn't my call? Did he try to defend it?

Speaker 13 He was very, very clear that he was not involved in, obviously, what was going on in the room when North Carolina was brought up, but you guys know this as well as I do.

Speaker 13 It always helps to help out your friends. And when you're in a situation like this, where the committee chair is from North Carolina, it's obviously going to influence the other committee members.

Speaker 13 Now, I understand he can leave the premises when a resume of the Tar Heels is going to be brought to the table, but I'm sorry.

Speaker 13 This, again, is the biggest miscarriage of justice that I have seen in nearly 20 years covering college basketball at the national level. My heart breaks for Darren DeVries in West Virginia.

Speaker 13 My heart breaks for Indiana and its fan base.

Speaker 13 But again, North Carolina is going to get an opportunity here in the first four to do some major things in this bracket if it can beat San Diego State coming up here on Tuesday night.

Speaker 1 All right. So

Speaker 1 I agree with everything you said. It's crazy UNC got in.
Relationships matter. Bubber Cunningham can leave the room.

Speaker 1 When he comes back in the room, those are the people he's been sitting with all weekend.

Speaker 1 That has an effect. Whether you want to say it's subconscious, that's fine, but it has an effect.
I also don't understand the.

Speaker 1 It feels like this bracket is just littered with some weird decisions. Gonzaga is a top 10 team in Ken Pom.
They're an eight seed,

Speaker 1 and they're going up against,

Speaker 1 what is it, Houston in the second round if they win their first round game?

Speaker 1 Auburn, who's the number one overall seed, if Louisville wins their first-round game, Auburn has to play a road game in their second game as a number one overall seed. Michigan

Speaker 1 was a five-seed. I think they got misseeded.
You had VCU is probably not an 11-seed, probably should have been higher than that.

Speaker 1 It's all over the map where it feels like they just prayed and sprayed a lot of this stuff, and it doesn't really make sense.

Speaker 1 You have Colorado State is a three and a half point favorite as a 12-seed over Memphis, the five-seed.

Speaker 13 Yeah, it feels like in a lot of areas of the bracket, we did not have a compass and there was no rhyme or reason in a lot of things that were going on.

Speaker 13 I thought for certain that Gonzaga would have been better than an eight after it beat St. Mary's in Las Vegas last week in the WCC tournament.
But I'm with you, Kat.

Speaker 13 I think there's a lot of different things that really stood out here.

Speaker 13 Another thing that stood out to me, and I wasn't surprised about this, I felt with the way that the selection committee had treated the Mountain West last year by putting two teams into the first four in Dayton, that Boise State was vulnerable by not winning the automatic qualifier on Saturday.

Speaker 13 And that's what came to fruition. Xavier had a pristine resume in quad three and four.

Speaker 13 And Xavier also, we have to remember, lost two games in December without Zach Fremantle in the lineup, who was a 17 and seven guy at UConn in overtime and also by a basket at home against Marquette.

Speaker 13 As you guys know as well as I do, and we had heard this when we spoke to Bubba Cunningham, I believe on Friday, Player availability matters in the NCAA tournament when you're evaluating teams.

Speaker 13 If Xavier obviously is going to have Zach Fremantle on the NCAA tournament, which it will, it's going to be a much more formidable team.

Speaker 13 I think that is one of the biggest reasons why the Musketeers are going to hook up here with Texas in the first four on Wednesday.

Speaker 13 And you guys know I've been doing the first four now for a number of years. We have never had brands like this in the big games in the first four in terms of games on back-to-back nights.

Speaker 13 North Carolina and San Diego State have appeared in two of the last three national title games. Xavier is Xavier.

Speaker 13 And get this, UD Arena is 47 miles away from the Centas Center where Xavier plays its home games. That's going to be obviously a Xavier home game.

Speaker 13 And Texas has a lottery pick in Trey Johnson, and it's Texas. So I think the brands in this first four in terms of the marquee games are second to none.

Speaker 13 And I've said this guys time and time again, you know, the three of us haven't really schmoozed about this, but I want to put it out there right now.

Speaker 13 You guys know how I feel about NCAA NCAA tournament expansion.

Speaker 13 I've said for a long time that Jeff Goldblum said in The Lost World in 1997 that taking dinosaurs off this island was the worst idea in the history of long said history of bad ideas.

Speaker 13 Expanding the tournament will be worse than that. But I do think this.

Speaker 13 I think if you're good enough to get an automatic qualifier to the NCAA tournament, you deserve to partake in the Thursday and Friday of the first week.

Speaker 13 I think if we made that shift and moved all AQs to Thursday, Friday, and then put the last eight at-large teams in the first four, it would reward these programs again at the lower level and give them the NCAA tournament experience of Thursday, Friday, and also spruce up the way we start the tournament with maybe four bigger games instead of two.

Speaker 1 I like that. I agree.

Speaker 6 I think we were talking about expanding the tournament. We said, don't expand it.
It's great the way that it is.

Speaker 6 But if you were, do it that way so you don't make the automatic qualifiers play play-in games on a Tuesday or Wednesday.

Speaker 1 I got a question for you, John, about the injury stuff.

Speaker 1 TJ Alzenberger announced after the bracket came out that Keyshawn Gilbert is out for Iowa State.

Speaker 1 That was just a smart move by him because do you think Iowa State would have had a different seed if that had been known to the committee going into selection Sunday? Because

Speaker 1 Iowa State's playing

Speaker 1 in Milwaukee, yeah, and like and Wisconsin has to go all the way out to Denver. Right.

Speaker 13 You know, it's very possible that we could have flip-flopped Iowa State and Wisconsin if that information was made privy to the committee before the selection went out.

Speaker 13 I remember it was 25 years ago now. Cincinnati had the best team in the country with Kenyon Martin in 2000.
And Kenyon Martin broke his leg in the Conference USA tournament that year.

Speaker 13 And Cincinnati, which had been dominant all year long, number one team consensus in the country, was dropped to the two line. And it was ridiculous.

Speaker 1 And Bob Huggins said it at the time, but they were evaluating Cincinnati without Kenyon Martin who wound up being the number one player in the NBA draft so I totally agree with you on that cat okay so uh let's get to the actual bracket we got some other questions that we'll ask you after but let's talk about the bracket I know you always break it down so I kind of will let you go whichever direction you want to go tell us what you've got and yeah go go off we'll we'll jump in where we want to jump in but this is uh this is our favorite part of uh selection sunday All right, guys, well, let's start right now in the top left of your bracket, which is the region of depth, the south region.

Speaker 13 Now, why is it the region of depth? I'm looking right now at these teams at the top. Auburn, Michigan State, Texas A ⁇ M, really deep rotations on all of these teams.

Speaker 13 All of these teams can really go into their bench. That's why I like it to be the region of depth.
I obviously got Auburn coming out of the top.

Speaker 13 I am going to take Creighton to beat Louisville at Rup Arena, the Ryan Kalkbrenner factor.

Speaker 13 He's kind of like, and I haven't really watched a hockey game in probably 30 years, but wasn't Martin Brodeur that famous goalie for the Devils in like the 90s?

Speaker 13 Yeah, he's kind of like the Martin Brodeur of like, you know, the Big East. You know, he's kind of like the goalie because he's so good defensively.

Speaker 13 Then I am going to take Michigan to beat UC San Die Diego, who's going to be a trendy upset pick. And here's an upset.
I am going to take Yale.

Speaker 13 under James Jones, a program that beat Auburn last year to pick off Texas A ⁇ M in a 13-4 game in Denver. Remember, Yale beat Auburn last year, beat Baylor in 2016.

Speaker 13 And then I think when you look at the next part of the bracket in this region of depth, this is tailor-made for Ole Miss. This is tailor-made for Chris Beard to really, really go on a run right here.

Speaker 13 I felt all season long that Ole Miss reminded me of some of the teams that Chris Beard had at Texas Tech.

Speaker 13 I've got Ole Miss beating the winner of San Diego, State, Carolina, and then beating a vulnerable Iowa State team without Keyshawn Gilbert. Ole Miss to the Sweet 16.

Speaker 13 I'm going to take Marquette to beat New Mexico and Michigan State to beat Marquette.

Speaker 13 So in the Sweet 16 here, I'm going to give you Auburn against Michigan, and I've got Ole Miss against Michigan State.

Speaker 13 I've got Auburn against then Michigan State in a regional final Atlanta, and I've got Tomizzo getting back to the final four.

Speaker 6 I like it. Yeah, I like that a lot too.

Speaker 6 So you think that Yale's coach is the most underrated coach in America, right?

Speaker 13 I think he's the most underrated coach in America. It amazes me that James Jones has not gotten a bigger job.

Speaker 13 He has won the Ivy League multiple times in the last couple of years, as I mentioned, won a game against Auburn last year in the NCAA tournament, won a game against Baylor in 2016.

Speaker 13 But I think, you know, we could see this Yale team be a factor.

Speaker 13 But, guys, here's the interesting thing: when you look at the amazing job that Yale has done, only lost one game this year in the Ivy League.

Speaker 13 When you think about Yale and you think about the dynamic right now for this team that, again, is going into the NCAA tournament as a trendy, trendy upset pick, potentially.

Speaker 13 Yale is in a scenario, okay, where it lost Danny Wolf to Michigan and it lost Matt Noling to USC, and it is still in the scenario that it's in right now where it made the NCAA tournament.

Speaker 13 That is a credit to the head coach. A couple of names you want to keep your eye out for for Yale right now as you're getting ready to think about the NCAA tournament against Texas AM.

Speaker 13 Nick Townsend, obviously a very, very burly forward inside. He's going to have to hold his own on the glass.
And then John Pulakidis, a dynamite, dynamite lefty shooter, can come off screens.

Speaker 13 He had 25 against Cornell in the title game.

Speaker 13 And also Bez Mbang, along with Casey Simmons, cat you might remember from the Big Ten, started his career at Northwestern before he transferred to New Haven.

Speaker 6 Okay, and then you got Tom Izzo over Bruce Pearl to get to the final four there.

Speaker 6 What's your thought about Auburn right now? Because they were dominant all year long, and then at the end, they kind of stumbled a little bit. You could write that off.

Speaker 6 Some people are like, yeah, it's the tournament. Doesn't really count.
Conference tournaments. Not a big deal.

Speaker 13 Yeah, no, I think PFD, what it does is it reiterates to me that we don't have a dominant team this year in college basketball.

Speaker 13 And what I mean by that is, you know, last year, UConn was so removed from the pack because it was a two-year run that we may never see again in our lifetimes in terms of the level of dominance.

Speaker 13 12 NCAA tournament wins by an average of 21.7 points per game.

Speaker 13 But we do not have a team this year like UConn.

Speaker 13 We do not have a figure this year like Zach Eady at Purdue last year, the only player since Ralph Sampson in the 1980s to win, obviously, National Player of the Year awards in back-to-back season.

Speaker 13 So I think Auburn's a a little bit vulnerable right now.

Speaker 13 I do think it's a big advantage for the Tigers to be playing in Atlanta, which isn't that far from the Auburn campus, potentially in the Sweet 16.

Speaker 13 But if Louisville does beat Creighton in the first round, Auburn will have a pseudo-road game there at Rupp Arena, which is something to monitor. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's go west, where Florida's the one seed. Florida's playing probably the best ball of anyone right now.
What they did in the SEC tournament was incredible. What are we calling the West?

Speaker 13 This is the region of prestige because four coaches in this region, Dan Hurley, Rick Petino, John Calapari, and Bill Selp have won national titles.

Speaker 13 Also, Florida, the one seed in this region, has won multiple national titles in the last 20 years. So there's brand name power in this region.
I got Florida over Norfolk State.

Speaker 13 I got UConn over Oklahoma. Both coaches in that game, Dan Hurley and Porter Mosier, have been in a situation where they've coached in a final four in the last decade.

Speaker 13 Dan Hurley's won two national titles. I'm taking Neek Clifford in Colorado State over Memphis, Maryland over Grand Canyon.
Drake, started from the bottom, now they're here, in my opinion, has,

Speaker 13 for all intents and purposes, an interesting road here. And I'm going to tell you why.
You got Missouri. And you got Ben McCollum, who's really looking like, you know, a bit of a wizard at Drake.

Speaker 13 It wouldn't shock me if next year he's coaching somewhere in the Big Ten. He's He's got a 31 team with four D2 transfers.
One of them, Mitch Miscari, has made 86 three-point shots this year.

Speaker 13 If Drake beats Missouri, Drake gets a vulnerable Texas Tech team in the round of 32. Now, why are they vulnerable?

Speaker 13 Grant McCaslin told me earlier on Sunday night that he expects Chance McMillan and Darion Williams to play in the first round against UNC Wilmington.

Speaker 13 But with that said, those players didn't play in Texas Tech's last Big 12 tournament game due to injuries. So Texas Tech's a little bit banged up.

Speaker 13 I think Drake is a team with Ben McCollum, if it can get by Missouri that could maybe flirt with a chance to go to the Sweet 16. And then how about the lower part of that region in Providence?

Speaker 13 Kansas and Arkansas, Calaparry against Self, two coaches that coached against each other in the title game in 2012. And then St.
John's takes on Omaha. Now, look.

Speaker 13 You guys understand the media as well as anybody. I work for CBS.
I know how much the program executives love to match up certain games on Saturday nights and going into 60 minutes.

Speaker 13 And look, whoever St. John's plays on Saturday night is going to be crazy.
Can you imagine if we get Calapari and Petino on Saturday night? And look, Petino himself would be great.

Speaker 13 It would be an incredible matchup of Hall of Fame coaches. But if it's Calaparry and Petino, it would become, again,

Speaker 13 appointment television. And it would be the third time that these guys have met in the NCAA tournament, I believe, yeah, since 2012.
And remember, they also met in the 1996 Final Four. Now,

Speaker 13 I've talked to Rick Petino about this, and I did an interview with him when he was at Iona, and he made a joke about it, but I think he was telling the truth.

Speaker 13 He said one of the reasons why he came back to college was to get John Calapari off his resume. Because if you think about it, these coaches each took three different schools.
to a Final Four.

Speaker 13 So that's another thing that is lying here in the weeds right now. Rick Petino is trying to get a fourth school to a Final Four, but he might have to go through John Calapari to do it.

Speaker 13 It's going to be Calapari herself as long as St. John's gets by Omaha.
So I have Florida, Yukon, Colorado State, Maryland, Drake, Texas, Tech. And then I'm going to go Arkansas, St.
John's.

Speaker 13 I've got St. John's against Drake in the Sweet 16.
And I've got Florida against Maryland in the region of prestige. I'm going Florida over St.
John's in a regional final.

Speaker 13 So on the left side of the bracket, I've got Michigan State against Florida. And ironically enough, you know, I love good nuggets, guys.

Speaker 13 That would be a rematch of the 2000 national title game that Michigan State won 89-76 in Indianapolis.

Speaker 1 There we go. All right.
That's good. That's some good stuff.
Okay.

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Speaker 1 Bison meatloaf, chicken enchiladas, turkey lasagna, the kind of meals that taste like Saturday night, even on a Tuesday. Crave New World.
Find it in Kroger Isles this October.

Speaker 1 The road trip might be over, but dinner's just getting good. What about in the East, where we have Duke, who Duke is,

Speaker 1 I said it before you came on. I think Duke's winning the whole thing.

Speaker 1 They're just,

Speaker 1 they're so good. And even without Cooper Flag in in the ACC tournament, they showed how good they are.
I think he's going to be fine. He'll come back and they're going to roll through everyone.

Speaker 13 Yeah, you know, guys, it's amazing. And I think it speaks, obviously, how talented Duke is, but it also speaks to the state of the ACC right now.

Speaker 13 Duke was able to win the ACC tournament and beat Carolina and Louisville in back-to-back days without Cooper Flag and also without Malik Brown, who, you know, Duke's staff feels this way.

Speaker 13 And I know from being, you know, on Duke's campus in the preseason, he's like Emile Jefferson was 10 years ago.

Speaker 13 Not to bring up bad memories there, Kat, but I mean, you know what I'm saying, in terms of a versatile defender that can be a factor defensively in that rotation.

Speaker 13 Those two players don't play, and all of a sudden, we have a scenario where Duke is still beating Louisville, who was the second best team this year other than Clemson in the ACC and North Carolina.

Speaker 13 That is not obviously a great, obviously ringing endorsement for the ACC, but for Duke, it speaks to their talent level. I've got Duke playing Mississippi State.

Speaker 13 I've got Oregon, Arizona, Arizona, which to me could be one of the best games in the round of 32, these former Pac-12 rivals hooking up.

Speaker 13 Then I'm going to take VCU to beat BYU to hook up with Wisconsin, the most aesthetically pleasing Wisconsin team of our lifetime. Thank you.

Speaker 13 And then I'm going to be in Cleveland for these games, so I'm pumped about this. I'm taking St.
Mary's to beat Vanderbilt. I'm taking Alabama to beat Robert Morris.

Speaker 13 I've got Duke, Oregon, Wisconsin to the Sweet 16 to take on Alabama.

Speaker 13 And then I am going to take in a rematch of the 2015 national title game

Speaker 13 Duke over Wisconsin in Newark to go to the Final Four. That's the region of firepower because Duke, Alabama, Wisconsin, Arizona, Oregon, obviously, explosive teams offensively.

Speaker 13 So much offense in that region.

Speaker 6 So you got VCU over BYU. It sounds like you're not a BYU lever.

Speaker 1 Did you just come up with that?

Speaker 6 I am not. I just came up with that.
You can use that.

Speaker 1 If you want to use that, use that one.

Speaker 13 I like BYU. I think Kevin Young's done an incredible job, and I think they got great pieces.
But look, it's not fun if you don't roll the dice places in your bracket. The NCAA tournament isn't fun.

Speaker 13 So I'm looking right now at the BYU-VCU matchup, and I know that we have seen a scenario where BYU has played great basketball the last couple weeks.

Speaker 13 And it wouldn't shock me if BYU wins a couple of games, but I'm looking at this. VCU is no 11 seed.

Speaker 13 And if there was one thing that I would say right now, the non-power non-power conference teams in this bracket, in a lot of places, won their respective conference tournaments after having a high volume of wins during the regular season.

Speaker 13 VCU with Max Shulga, Zeb Jackson, Joe Bamasiel, all these guys, okay, Philip Russell as well, has the deepest perimeter.

Speaker 13 In the Atlantic 10 since Dan Hurley's last team at Rhode Island had Fats Russell, Jeff Doughton, Stan Robinson, J.T. Terrell, E.C.
Matthews, and Jarvis Garrett.

Speaker 13 That team, you have to remember, beat Trey Young in Oklahoma in the NCAA tournament and lost to Marvin Bagley and Duke in 2018. This VCU team is for real.

Speaker 13 And also, another player on VCU, Jack Clark, was a part of the Clemson team last year that went to the Elite Eight and lost to Alabama.

Speaker 13 VCU is the best VCU team since we saw Breante Weber and company lose to Stephen F. Austin in 2014.

Speaker 6 John, when you're rattling off all these names from old teams, do you ever just think about making up a name and tossing it in there to see if you get called on it?

Speaker 6 I would do that if I were you.

Speaker 13 It's an interesting proposition. It never crossed my mind.
I just go to the internal hard drive and I just keep it moving.

Speaker 6 Just like if you're thinking of an A-10 team from 2006, just tossing the name, I don't know, like Tommy Spaninatti.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 You remember Tommy Spaninati? Yeah.

Speaker 6 Great, like all-time three-point guy, not much off the dribble, but catch and shoot all day long.

Speaker 13 You know me, though, PFT, and you're America's drinking buddy for a reason. I pride myself on being as accurate and as thorough as possible.
So I feel like I'd be shortchanging the beat if I did that.

Speaker 13 That is true.

Speaker 1 That's fair.

Speaker 6 I have a question for you because you are plugged in, John. And that's not a robot comment.
You're plugged in. You talk to a lot of people.

Speaker 6 Grant Nelson from Alabama.

Speaker 6 What are we hearing about him? Because I think Alabama is a good team.

Speaker 6 You know, I would still take them in the first two games without Grant Nelson, but after that, it's probably going to be a problem. What are you hearing about his...
It's his knee, right?

Speaker 13 Yeah, I have an update for you. I had a bunch of injury updates earlier, so

Speaker 13 I'm going to just read you exactly what I tweeted. And NATO's texted me this in the early afternoon, but I want to give you guys the full reports.

Speaker 13 I have a couple of injury updates of substance for the NCAA tournament. So you guys just let me know what you want.

Speaker 13 So Grant Nelson's going to see a knee specialist on Monday to determine his status moving forward. He obviously suffered the injury, so that evaluation is going to happen on Monday.

Speaker 13 And then, you know, as I told you, like Alabama plays Robert Morris Morris and Cleveland. That's one to monitor some other stuff from Sunday.
And this is big for the first four.

Speaker 13 Brian Dutcher told me that Magoon Guoff, the Mountain West freshman and defensive player of the year, is going to be available for the NCAA tournament.

Speaker 13 So in the first four Tuesday night, Magoon Guath will be available to play against North Carolina. He hasn't played since February 22nd.
That's a big boost for San Diego State.

Speaker 13 Mark Pope also told me earlier on Sunday morning that Lamont Butler will be available for Kentucky's first NCAA tournament game. He's been dealing with a shoulder.

Speaker 13 And John Calapari has told me that a dude theoro is doubtful for the Kansas game due to the knee injury he has been dealing with. He hasn't played since February 22nd.

Speaker 13 But Boogie Fland, who we thought was out for the season, came back on Sunday to practice, went through practice, had no missteps. He should be fine.
I was referencing the Missouri-Drake game.

Speaker 13 According to a school spokesman, Mark Mitchell from Missouri is expected to be fully available for that that basketball game against Drake in the round of 64.

Speaker 13 A note from Scott Drew, Langston Love is expected to be available against Mississippi State in the east region. He averages just over eight points per game.
Another nugget for a number one seed.

Speaker 13 Kelvin Sampson told me that Jaywan Roberts, who did not play at the end of the Big 12 tournament due to an ankle injury, they're obviously veteran leader, is receiving treatment.

Speaker 13 He'll be re-evaluated on Monday in terms of his status for the Cougars' first game. We'll just make

Speaker 13 sure I don't leave anything out there. but those are the bullet points as of now, Red Fellas.

Speaker 1 John, do you have every single head coach's number?

Speaker 13 Yes.

Speaker 1 Wow. Most powerful phone on the East Coast.

Speaker 6 Like every single one.

Speaker 13 Every single one, I believe. I mean, I do.

Speaker 13 What I do is I kind of like when I get back from the final four, like you use April to detox a little bit, and then you just spend some time over the summer just making sure your Rolodex is on point and everything is on point.

Speaker 13 And then, you know, you just go.

Speaker 13 You make sure you're locked in. Yeah.

Speaker 6 How often do you text these guys?

Speaker 13 I would say probably,

Speaker 13 let me think. I mean, I think it's, it's pretty, I have daily communication.
So it's like, I would say with every staff, there's daily communication. It might just be for an injury update.

Speaker 13 It might be like, what is the key to this game?

Speaker 13 On game days, I like to follow up if a team, because if I'm in the studio, I like to have obviously, you know, nuggets on what they think keys to the game are or trends to watch, because when you're trying to cover everything, you want to, I always try to, as somebody who's a non-player coach, get the insight of the player, of, you know, the teams that I'm covering from their perspective.

Speaker 13 So it's constant communication. And in the offseason, it's constant communication as well because there's things to cover during the offseason.
Yeah, I like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, because I mean, I read the article in the New York Times. It was great that said that the Ross Stein text is an inside joke in the industry.

Speaker 1 Now, I feel like they're being disrespectful to you with that.

Speaker 13 No, I mean, look, I mean, you guys know me now for a number of years. I mean, I don't make any bones about this.
You know, I did not have any connections

Speaker 13 in this industry. You know, I have no inheritance.
so I don't have any other choice but to work as hard as I can each and every single day to be as thorough as I can, to do the best job I can.

Speaker 13 And I'm never going to relent on that. It's never going to happen.
I'm never going to stop. The world meets nobody halfway.

Speaker 13 And you know that because you told me that you thought Over the Top was an underrated movie by Stallone.

Speaker 1 It is. It's facts.
Yeah. No, you

Speaker 1 are, I love the article because there were some things I didn't even know, like that you basically bought time on a radio station that had no one listening to it just to get reps.

Speaker 1 Really, an awesome story of how to work your way up through the industry. And the other nugget I had from it was you get your hair cut every Sunday?

Speaker 13 Every Sunday, yeah, 10 a.m.

Speaker 1 That's

Speaker 1 standing appointment.

Speaker 6 And out of season.

Speaker 13 Yes, just if I'm as long as I'm home. As long as I'm home, 10 a.m.
every Sunday. Creature habits.

Speaker 1 So what do you do

Speaker 1 when you're on the road?

Speaker 13 On the road this week because I'm leaving Monday and obviously I couldn't do it selection Sunday.

Speaker 13 I got it Thursday and I said to just go a little shorter on the sides because I'm not going to be back in New York till

Speaker 13 a week, you know, or a week from now because I'm going to Dayton and then we're going up to Cleveland and those first and second round games are Friday, Sunday.

Speaker 13 But I want to tell you guys something if I can backtrack a little bit because I know you guys obviously started out with humble beginnings too. That experience of selling air time.

Speaker 13 was the most humbling experience that I ever had in my life because at that time I was making like $13 an hour screening calls and doing reporting at esp and radio new york i was cold calling for my friend's brother's mortgage company like glen gary glenn ross that was like what i was living in just cold calling people out of the yellow pages and i was like making fifty dollars an article writing college basketball for different publications so i knew though i needed like a demo to try and have an opportunity so i would like walk up and down neurochelle going into businesses trying to buy airtime and nobody would buy anything And I remember talking to a guy in a car dealership, and this is like probably 20 years ago.

Speaker 13 And I said, well, if I do a weekly show, you know, will you buy some maritime? And he goes, well, is Joe Torrey a weekly guest? And I didn't know who that was at the time.

Speaker 13 And then he was like, and then he was like, he's like, well, if Joe Torrey's not a weekly guest, then I'm not doing it.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. Oh, man.

Speaker 13 It was that moment where I was just like, look, I'm not going to become. anything in his business unless I have calluses and I'm getting calluses right now.

Speaker 13 But that also brought me back to the over-the-top thing. You know, the world meets nobody halfway.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, it's very cool. And it's, it's a very cool story.
And I think people should go read it because it gives kind of a backstory of like, hey, John Rosteen has done it the hard way.

Speaker 1 You know, people don't, people need to respect that because it's very hard business to break into. And you weren't a coach, you weren't a player, and to get into it is awesome.

Speaker 13 Well, another thing, too, and you guys know I have a passion for this, but,

Speaker 13 you know,

Speaker 13 in my 20s, when like people that I was close with in New York and friends like that were taking vacations and traveling, I went to AAU tournaments and networked. That's what I would do.

Speaker 13 Like I would sit with Dan Hurley when he was at Wagner and, and you know build a relationship i would sit with bill self i drove once i remember to virginia there was this big tournament down there boo williams and i drove it was like seven hours each way and i just went i like made business cards at kinko's and i just went and just networked and networked and networked and you know i feel like you know when that is your backbone every single day you owe it to yourself but most of all you owe it to your bosses who continue to give you these great assignments to give everybody ever the best you can every single day.

Speaker 13 Now, I do want to, because I feel like we're close, share something personal with you. Two things personal.

Speaker 13 But I switched recently. I was kind of pressured.
I had a little crisis. And I don't know if you noticed this when we were texting earlier, but it was probably,

Speaker 13 I've had dreams. And I will admit this to you guys publicly.
I've had dreams because like of how much my life revolves around my phone and I need it like the machine rolling.

Speaker 13 I've had dreams that I've been at a pool party and I jump and do like a cannonball and my phone's on me. And it's like nightmares.
And I wake up and I'm like, I didn't do that.

Speaker 13 So a couple of weeks ago, you guys know I've been a droid guy my entire life. Yep.

Speaker 13 Like there's like twice a year, there's like, there's like something that happens where there's like an iOS upgrade and droid people can't text iPhones. And like it was giving me a kananahura.

Speaker 13 I started to schfitz. Like I didn't know what was going on.
I couldn't communicate with people and communication is so important. So my wife, you know, we have a child now who's

Speaker 13 18 months old. She couldn't get in touch with me.
And you start to flip out. So one day I just ripped the bandaid off.
And now I'm team blue bubbles. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So I'm adjusting to it. Yeah.

Speaker 13 I'm adjusting to it. So that I thought was a life-altering experience.
The day after I switched to an iPhone, it was either a day or a week after. Yeah.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 when they, the coaches talked about the Rothscene text, I bet they're happier to get the text now that's a blue bubble.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 13 So, but then get this. This was another thing that happened.
So I, and you guys, you guys know how sometimes like I'll tweet in the spring, it's like in April or May, like, I hate you, pollen. Yeah.

Speaker 13 I've tweeted that in the past. Last year, I was having a bad deal with allergies.
You know, I just said to myself, should I get allergy shots? And I went and investigated with my local allergist.

Speaker 13 And they said, you can do 32 rounds of shots and you should be 80% immune. And I was like, I don't want to get back from the final four when everything's over and have to deal with allergies.

Speaker 13 I'm sick of dealing with allergies. So there's 32 rounds of shots to be done with it.
So I get through 30 rounds of shots. Okay.
This is like maybe two weeks ago. I go for my 31st shot.
I get it.

Speaker 13 I think, you know, you go to the gym, gym, get your allergy shot, come home, do your podcast, whatever.

Speaker 13 I start having this weird reaction, like I'm Jack Nicholson and something's got to give. I'm sitting on a stoop and I'm sweating.
I go back into the doctor's office. I start throwing up.

Speaker 13 They give me two shots of an EpiPen to calm me down. And I just remember like my life was flashing in front of my eyes.
But I said, I remember I said to these people, I thought it was crazy.

Speaker 13 I said, if I'm going to go, I'm not going before March.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's smart. You can't.
You can't.

Speaker 13 I can't. I said, if you want to take me, take me on April 10th.
Don't take me now.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we die in May. So, so that's

Speaker 1 exactly. Yeah,

Speaker 6 another victim claimed by Dusty May.

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 13 Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 6 There was another part of the article that I loved, and it talks about your wife. And she said, when it gets to March, he will literally walk around our place and repeat, this is March, this is March.

Speaker 6 I'm like, I know it's March. Just say it in your head.
How many times a day do you say this is March to yourself?

Speaker 13 Probably 10 to 15, especially when the TV's on and like you're just soaking everything in and you see close finishes, you see crazy upsets. I mean, it's a part of the fabric of college basketball.

Speaker 13 It's definitely a big part of my life. And the thing that's so humbling is like a takeaway I've gotten from that article.
And a very prominent media reporter reached out to me.

Speaker 13 He's like, I'd like to do, you know, a feature on your wife. She sounds a lot more interesting than you do.

Speaker 13 I was like, yeah, I guess you don't care about the path, obviously, in the region of firepower.

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Speaker 1 All right, all right, back to back to the bracket. Midwest, that was great, John.
Midwest, last one.

Speaker 13 Okay, this is the region of toughness. Okay.
Think about guys, the coaches in the scowling that is that is involved in this region.

Speaker 13 Kelvin Sampson, Houston, Rick Barnes, Tennessee, Mick Cronin, UCLA, Brad Underwood at Illinois. This is a dynamite region.
I've got Houston. I've got Gonzaga beaten Georgia.

Speaker 13 I've got McNeese coached by Will Wade beating his alma mater Clemson in the 12-5. Remember, Will Wade was a student manager at Clemson before he got into coaching.
That's my 12-5.

Speaker 13 I got Purdue over high point.

Speaker 13 I've got Illinois over the Texas Xavier winner, Kentucky, UCLA, and Tennessee. Then we're going bottom.

Speaker 13 I got Houston against Purdue, and then I'm going to take Illinois against Tennessee in the sweet 16, and I'm going to take Illinois against Houston in the Elite Eight, and I got Houston going on the final four.

Speaker 13 So I got Houston against Duke on one side. Houston comes out of the region of toughness on the other side.

Speaker 13 I've got Michigan State and Florida, and I got Houston finally breaking through under Kelvin Sampson and winning the national championship. Kelvin Sampson, again, I've said it before.

Speaker 13 This is why Houston basketball's nickname is No Mercy. He reminds me a lot of the sensei and karate kid, John Creese.

Speaker 13 You know, with just, you know, remember when he said, strike first, strike hard. No mercy, sir.
That's what Kelvin Sampson reminds me of. He's like the Sam.

Speaker 13 He's a much, you know, kinder man than, you know, Martin Cove was in the Karate Kid, but he has that same type of fierce kind of presence.

Speaker 6 Does that guy win in Karate Kid?

Speaker 13 He doesn't win. And if you remember at the start of Karate Kid 2, his knuckles bleed because he punches them through a car when he gets in a fight with Mr.
Miyagi.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that guy rocks. So, yeah, you mentioned Will Wade.
We were actually just talking about Will Wade earlier today.

Speaker 6 Will Wade, any chance if you're Villanova, any chance you're picking up the phone, giving Will Wade a call?

Speaker 13 I don't think Villanova is the school to give Will Wade a call, but I will say this.

Speaker 13 We have seen a number of big-time coaches get second chances for off-the-court issues, and there's many programs that are coached by them now in this ncaa tournament and those programs are thriving yeah bruce beard at all miss rick betino at st john's bruce pearl at auburn kelvin sampson at houston the school that hires will wade is going to be the school that falls next in that line yeah yeah think about this here's a couple of things on will wade i was thinking about i talked about it tonight on our show Will Wade is the only coach since Shaka Smart to win an NCAA tournament game at VCU.

Speaker 13 Will Wade won the SEC regular season title at at LSU, and Will Wade, since he took the McNeese job in two years, is 57 and 10.

Speaker 13 I know that things were very sloppy at LSU, but a lot of those things are legal right now.

Speaker 13 So the school that hires him is going to be on an upward trajectory moving forward, and then I'm going to have to come up with a new tagline for him.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, all this stuff that he got in trouble for is stuff that is actually legal, and it's an advantage if your coach can do those things well right now.

Speaker 6 They also have, I think, the best student manager of anybody.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 13 That guy. Oh, he's a star.
Yeah. Amir Khan is a star.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 He's awesome. So good vibes from him.
So you have Houston over Illinois. You got Illinois over Tennessee.
Talk me through that one.

Speaker 13 You know, I did on Thanksgiving Day, you know, CBS Sports had a thing. We have a Thanksgiving

Speaker 13 game now after the NFL. Next year, it's going to be Arkansas and Duke in Chicago, which maybe you guys can go to.

Speaker 13 I don't know if you want to do it on Thanksgiving, but it's a big-time game in Chicago. It is.
So

Speaker 13 I... Did the game with Iron Eagle and Bill Raftery, you know, in Kansas City, and I saw Illinois up close.

Speaker 13 And when everything is equal on a neutral court, and Cat, I know you know this because you know the Big Ten so well, Illinois has final four talent when things are clicking with Yakachonis, with Ivasich.

Speaker 13 There's obviously great role players and ancillary pieces around those guys with Boswell, Will Riley. I talked to Brad Underwood last week.

Speaker 13 He loves the way Will Riley has been playing, you know, the last couple of weeks. And this is the thing, too, you got to like when you're looking at Illinois.

Speaker 13 Because of Ivasich's ability to stretch things from the five spot, it's very difficult. And this is what killed Arkansas in that game on Thanksgiving.

Speaker 13 It's very difficult to play a traditional five-man against them because they can extend the defense so much with Ivic. He reminds me a lot.
This is a throwback comparison.

Speaker 13 He reminds me a lot of Rafe LaFrence.

Speaker 1 Ooh, I like that. Kansas.

Speaker 13 So much Rafe LaFrence and Tomislav Ivic.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, Illinois is like I was saying when we were talking about the bracket before you came on, I want to see Illinois Kentucky because those two teams,

Speaker 1 when they hit their ceiling, it's incredible basketball. They have had floors that we've seen as well, and it's been bad, but both those teams have insane firepower.

Speaker 1 And I agree, Illinois is they're very volatile, but if it's good, it's great.

Speaker 13 It's good, it's great, and you bring up a great point because a potential Illinois-Kentucky game in the round of 32 would be like a regional to final.

Speaker 13 But, guys, I've always felt that the round of 32 is the most intriguing round of the NCAA tournament because you are going to get, in some cases, the dreamer having a chance to dream the dream for another week, or you are going to get a massive showdown of powerful programs.

Speaker 13 Look, we could have in the region of toughness, you could have Houston Gonzaga, Purdue Clemson, Illinois, Kentucky, or Texas or Xavier against Kentucky, and then UCLA against Tennessee.

Speaker 13 If we saw any one of those matchups in an Elite Eight or a Final Four, we'd probably take it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're right.

Speaker 13 I mean, just the houston and zago one is crazy that could be a second round matchup sir can you give us some names of guys that that we're gonna want to get to know from arch like guys that have the potential to take over this tournament and become household names how deep do you want to go do you want power conference names do you want me to get really in the weirds here in the weeds here uh let's start out with with just give me like two names per bracket that you should okay let's go right uh up right now to the top left the region of depth donovan dent from new mexico is one of the great point guards in college basketball.

Speaker 13 That is somebody you want to put on your radar for sure. Ole Miss has a couple of players.
Sean Padula, a terrific veteran point guard who transferred from Virginia Tech.

Speaker 13 Also John Pulakidis, I told you from Yale. We go down to the region of prestige right now.
A couple of guys, again, who are off the radar. I'm trying to come up with.

Speaker 13 Bennett Sturtz at Drake, who's kind of the maestro for them.

Speaker 13 Also, Neek Clifford from Colorado State, who has been part of this incredible surge by Colorado State.

Speaker 13 He has been elite, playing like one of the top 15 or 20 players in the country over the last couple of weeks.

Speaker 13 I will also point out in the Yukon, Oklahoma game, Jeremiah Fears, the freshman point guard for Oklahoma, the brother of Michigan State's Jeremy Fears, is a name to watch.

Speaker 13 And then as we look right now in your top right, the region of firepower.

Speaker 13 I'm going to give you one for Mississippi State, Josh Hubbard, an electrifying yard, plus Oregon. You've got Jackson Shelstad and Nate Biddle.
Max Shulga at VCU. Richie Saunders at BYU.
At St.

Speaker 13 Mary's, Augustus Marcelonis is the least talked about back-to-back conference player of the year we may have in history. He's won the award in the WCC in back-to-back seasons.

Speaker 13 Ryan Nemhard, we know from Gonzaga. For Georgia, a talented player.
Ace of Newell, who's a good freshman.

Speaker 13 I'm trying to keep going down the.

Speaker 13 Ryan Conwell at Xavier is like a poor man's Michael Red. He will be in the first four Wednesday night in the Xavier Texas game.

Speaker 13 And then I'm going to say, I mean, UCLA, I mean, you don't really get in the weeds here too much, but I mean, UCLA, Eric Daly and Tyler Billidoe, I would say, are

Speaker 13 two names there.

Speaker 1 Okay. Love it.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, John, I got one last question for you.
This has been awesome. We love having you on.
Give it up for Chicago.

Speaker 14 Sebastian Meniscalco's new stand-up special, It Ain't Right, is coming to Hulu on November 21st.

Speaker 1 30 years ago, ago, Jeff Bezos, complete nerd. Bezos now ripped to shreds on his super yacht, and the boxes keep coming.

Speaker 14 Sebastian Maniscalco, It Ain't Right, premieres November 21st, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. Terms apply.

Speaker 1 Again, everyone tune in. John will be Tuesday and Wednesday in Dayton.
Then he's going up to Cleveland. We're going to see him on the broadcast.
Can't wait for it.

Speaker 1 I saw you dropped a new Rostinism, and I had a question about it.

Speaker 1 The new one is Todd Golden is to Florida basketball, what Mark Zuckerberg was to Facebook in the social network. They both built monsters, and Golden's looks like it can win the whole damn thing.

Speaker 1 You know, like, Mark Zuckerberg's a real person. Social network is his life.

Speaker 13 Right, I know, I know that. But in terms of like, Todd was always this guy, and like, I'll just, I talked about this with Bruce Pearl on our show tonight.

Speaker 13 When Bruce Pearl first got the Auburn job, you know, I went down to a practice and we went out to eat after, and like Todd was this guy who wasn't even like an assistant coach on the staff, but everybody looked at him as like this prodigy.

Speaker 13 And he had this incredible mind for basketball and he had these unique ways to evaluate. And he was always kind of ahead of things with the analytics.

Speaker 13 And he used that, you know, he had that team at San Francisco a couple of years ago that went to the tournament and, you know, gotten that large bid. And now he's doing incredible things in Florida.

Speaker 13 And guys, I want to say this because Todd Golden, I had my top five for national coach of the year, and this is not to disparage him at all as a coach, but obviously he's still so young.

Speaker 13 If Billy Donovan was coaching this Florida team with the way we're playing, Florida would be universally viewed as the favorite to win the national championship, and it wouldn't be close.

Speaker 13 But Todd knows he's got to prove it in the NCAA tournament, but Florida is ripping through college basketball right now like a chainsaw through butter.

Speaker 6 I think Big Cat's point still stands, though, which is Mark Zuckerberg is a person. He's a real person.
Not like outside of the movie. The movie was about Mark Zuckerberg, but you can just say

Speaker 6 he's like Mark Zuckerberg.

Speaker 13 Okay, I appreciate the amendment, but you guys know part of what gives me balance is when I get through the Final Four and things are a little quieter, I love having like a Perroni and a bowl of Terales and watching these old movies that I've watched 15 to 20 times, sometimes more.

Speaker 13 The social network is in that rotation.

Speaker 1 Okay, yeah. But he is a real person.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He is a real person.

Speaker 6 What about the Rothschildism I suggested? I know that you don't take submissions for Rothsteinisms, but Danny Hurley, drinking piss. That's a good one right there.

Speaker 1 That's a really good one.

Speaker 13 I don't know, man. You said one a couple of years ago, like for Wake Forest, like run, Forest, run.
Like, we have to kind of put that in the delete files. You think that's good?

Speaker 13 Yeah, that's really good.

Speaker 6 It fits in with your thing. It's like old movies.

Speaker 13 Rothsteinisms can't be forced. I know.
That's the thing.

Speaker 1 I know, I know.

Speaker 13 They can't be forced.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, I do.

Speaker 6 I have one last question for you. John, some people have accused you, you you know, you're an insider, you work on the area, you're in media, but you weren't a coach, you weren't a player.

Speaker 6 Some people are saying that you can't diagram a flare screen. Can you describe a flare? A flare screen.
Can you describe a flare screen to us?

Speaker 6 Sure.

Speaker 13 Well, let's just use Wisconsin as an example because that's obviously some common ground for us right here. So a flare screen is this.
Let's say we have three players on the perimeter.

Speaker 13 Let's say John Blackwell is on the point.

Speaker 13 and on the two wings on the right wing is john tanjay and on the other side is max klesmid if blackwell throws the ball to the right wing, he is then going to go to the left to kind of drift to the corner and Klesmid is going to come and set a back screen on Blackwell's man and then Tanjay would throw it over the top to John Blackwell and get him a shot.

Speaker 13 Now, another thing is the guy who's the screener on that back screen is also a threat to roll to the basket and get an easy layup because the defense then might think that the play is going over the top to John Blackwell.

Speaker 13 So that's a, that's the flare screen. I love it.

Speaker 6 I think you got that exactly right. John,

Speaker 1 we love having you on. And like I said, everyone go read the story because I can't say it enough.
Like you love and breathe hoops and you are a great story in the fact that like the world is cynical.

Speaker 1 You just worked your ass off and got to this point. And we're very happy for you.
And this is the best time of year.

Speaker 13 Yeah, it's the best time of year. I appreciate you guys.
This is something I look forward to every single year. And if I make it to Chicago this summer, I hope to see you guys.
Yes.

Speaker 13 Also, you know, you guys enjoy the tournament too, because Kat, I'm telling you, man, I don't know if it can happen, but Wisconsin has enough here to at least get to the second weekend.

Speaker 13 I know you live and die with that team, and they got the best off guard in America.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm very excited for the tournament.

Speaker 1 I want to try to have a run. Also, it sounds like I might have to invite you over to Thanksgiving.
I mean, you might have to just come to my house for Thanksgiving.

Speaker 13 I mean, if I gave, if I'm fortunate enough to get the assignment again, but I mean, but you know me, I have to, I focus on a game day.

Speaker 13 Like, when I have a game day assignment, like it's like, you know, that's the only thing that matters. So I can't unwind until that happens.

Speaker 1 You don't have to unwind. You can literally just come over and eat.
You don't have to talk to anyone. I'm totally fine with that.
I don't like talking to anyone in my house on things.

Speaker 13 But then you and I, I could get into a little disagreement because I'm going to want like feast week on the TV and you're going to want to watch the NFL.

Speaker 1 Listen, I, do you know how many TVs I have in my house, John?

Speaker 13 How many TVs?

Speaker 1 I have like 18 TVs. There's not a room that doesn't have multiple TVs.
I got got you. Don't you worry.

Speaker 13 I love, I love, I love, you guys know I love New York more than anything.

Speaker 13 As you guys know, I used to watch Cocktail Wall Street, The Secret of My Success nonstop, but there is nothing like a great long weekend in Chicago, especially in the summer.

Speaker 1 Love Newson's Italia.

Speaker 13 Come to portion sizes.

Speaker 1 Come do it. Let's get it.
Let's live it up.

Speaker 13 Let's live it up. We were going to take a long weekend with the baby last summer, and we didn't think she was ready for it, but maybe

Speaker 13 this summer she will be. We love that architecture tour, too.
That's big time. It's like Vince Vaughan in the breakup.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the boat tour is great.

Speaker 6 But you don't eat pizza when you're out here.

Speaker 13 I do. I will not waste calories on pizza outside of the Eastern time.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 We know that rule.

Speaker 6 Did you watch any football this year?

Speaker 13 We had a Super Bowl party, and I was so tired from the weekend in college basketball, I like dozed off a little bit, even though, you know, just because I couldn't take the game.

Speaker 13 And my wife came over and said, we have an apartment full of people. You can't sleep.
And I said, you're right. We sleep in May.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there we go. There we go.

Speaker 1 All right, John. Thanks so much.
Can't wait to see you on the broadcast. And hopefully you do come to Chicago sometime soon and we'll get some dinner.

Speaker 13 You got it. Love you guys.
Have a great tournament.

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Speaker 1 Okay, let's wrap up the show.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 breaking news.

Speaker 1 We're actually cheating because we already finished the whole show, and we're adding this at the end of the show before we do numbers with oldie. Breaking Moose, Hank?

Speaker 2 Breaking Moose.

Speaker 2 Jamar Chase, T. Higgins, paid.

Speaker 1 Whoa. Per? Buh?

Speaker 2 The Cincinnati Bengals.

Speaker 1 That's the important part.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so Jamar, four years, $161 million, $112 mill guaranteed. He is now the highest paid non-quarterback in NFL history.

Speaker 1 Oh, he didn't give him seven days.

Speaker 6 He got the crown. And then T.
Higgins got four years, two years guaranteed, worth up to $115 million.

Speaker 6 I don't know what the guaranteed money is on that, but he is now the highest paid wide receiver too in NFL history.

Speaker 1 I am very happy for Bengals fans. I'm very happy for Joe Burrow.
This is awesome because Bengals fans, I think, were very nervous. about this entire offseason.
Will the Bengals be cheap?

Speaker 1 What's going to happen in the future of their franchise, franchise, their offense?

Speaker 1 Those two guys are really fucking good at football, and they're both still young, relatively young.

Speaker 1 And you have Joe Burrow, and you basically are saying, you know, yeah, they got to make some right decisions on defense and make some good picks, but they're always going to be in the mix with those three guys.

Speaker 6 Yeah, they're saying, let's lean into what we do really well, and that's offense. Our offense is fucking awesome.
Let's just do more of that. And if you're a fan, that's exactly what you want.

Speaker 6 That's what you want. You don't want to have to revamp that whole thing.
You don't want to also, you just don't want to piss off your quarterback.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 6 And it seems like he's going to be very happy with what you've done.

Speaker 6 It also probably means that Trey Hendrickson will definitely get traded at some point, right? Yes. Yes.

Speaker 1 I would say so. But good for the Bengals.
Good for Bengals fans. You basically guaranteed the next three to four years are going to be fun.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know if they're going to win, but they're going to be fun. Yeah, you're going to be great.
The Bengals have always been fun when those three guys are on the field. So, good job.

Speaker 1 Thanks for the breaking moves, Hank. No problem.
Good breaking moves, Hank.

Speaker 6 Do we know if that video is real or not, Hank? Have we gotten to the bottom of that?

Speaker 2 Just a tweet from MLB saying this tweet is not a video game. So Max saying it's a video game, you idiot.

Speaker 1 He's the idiot.

Speaker 1 I memory hold this whole conversation because I really don't like

Speaker 1 it. There's different Quigs.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean,

Speaker 1 it might be the worst podcasting to have an extended debate about a video that people who are listening can't see.

Speaker 6 It's a new segment. Is this motherfucker real?

Speaker 1 When you're thinking about it, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I didn't bring it to the video.

Speaker 1 We definitely can't even put the video in. Oh, so it's not even good for the YouTube.

Speaker 1 So I'm not going to

Speaker 1 have to go look for the video. I'm thinking about the fans, Hank.
Personally, I'd be... Yeah, I mean, I would bring it up.

Speaker 1 When we end recording right now. You did bring it up.

Speaker 1 No, not right now.

Speaker 1 I brought it up. When we end recording right now.

Speaker 6 Just to get this conversation going again.

Speaker 1 When we end recording, I am 100% in on just hanging out with the boys and continuing this debate. Cool.
Yeah. All right.
So let's do that. So now the podcast listeners can be like, finally.

Speaker 6 Well, that's not good for the listeners either. Now they're like, I wonder if they talked about something cool with the video.

Speaker 1 No, we're going to just talk about the video. It's going to be worse or not.

Speaker 6 We're going to have a worse conversation than we did on the air.

Speaker 1 All right. Let's kick it to ourselves with Oldie.
Okay,

Speaker 1 time for numbers, and we're going to say goodbye to Oldie for now. Oldie,

Speaker 1 how was your weekend watching hoops with us? It was four days of you just getting blitzed with college hoops.

Speaker 5 Electric, like fire. It was unbelievable.
From the second I showed up. Well, the airplane was another story, but I mean, once I arrived, it was, it was on.

Speaker 1 Donkey Kong.

Speaker 5 We were ready to rumble in the jungle. Heaters,

Speaker 1 good

Speaker 5 on Thursday. Heater on Friday, good.
Saturday, good. And Sunday, you know, my number is four, and it was my fourth day here.

Speaker 1 And phenomenal.

Speaker 5 Finished hard. Yeah.
Finished hard and hot.

Speaker 6 So you just kept on winning.

Speaker 5 Basically, it's almost like, what's his name there? Piss and excellence, right? Wake up in the morning, piss excellence. Yeah.

Speaker 6 What did you think about brackets?

Speaker 1 That is sick. Yeah, so

Speaker 1 sickening. right?

Speaker 1 So Oldie had never seen a live bracket reveal.

Speaker 5 Like, I've seen a bracket in Canada. Like, and once it comes out, but like 48 and 72 hours after the fact, right? By the time it gets up north.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 But I mean, to see it live, to see teams fired up, sitting, waiting. Is there a squad going to be the squad? And all of a sudden, boom, it's their squad and everyone's fired up.

Speaker 6 Give us a couple Cinderellas.

Speaker 5 Cinderellas. Well, St.
John's not a Cinderella. No.
It used to be.

Speaker 5 I got to go, my boys.

Speaker 5 We got to go back to Akron. Zips.
Zips, Zips.

Speaker 6 Zips.

Speaker 1 Unbelievable.

Speaker 5 Who else we banging with on the West Side region? I'm trying to remember. There's so many teams.
It's trying to hard to track.

Speaker 5 I think it's like 300 and

Speaker 5 I don't know, 56 and just D1. And then we got the other unranked schools that still make it, which is still incredible.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Florida's a one.

Speaker 5 Come on, oldie. Ahrens one.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 Badgers is not a Cinderella story. That's eight.
They should be even higher for some reason. I don't understand, but

Speaker 5 that's all politics stuff that's behind this.

Speaker 1 We triggered out after.

Speaker 5 Who else is out there is Shanty? Who's the one team there?

Speaker 5 Or Norfolk. Norfolk's Norfolk's.

Speaker 1 Norfolk. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 5 I like them. I watched them play a couple games.

Speaker 6 I heard you get a home game.

Speaker 1 I think they're playing College, right?

Speaker 6 Max is trying to find a bracket.

Speaker 1 They're doing a bad job of finding this bracket. All he's doing is looking up memes and streets where it's like the holding a bracket.
There we go.

Speaker 1 He's giving me empty brackies.

Speaker 5 He's giving me straight, empty brackies. And I'm just like, okay, final four from 20.

Speaker 1 He's got you right now, right here.

Speaker 5 He's got, we're back in. We're back in.

Speaker 1 Oldie,

Speaker 1 what was your takeaway from just the gambling cap? I mean, you spent a lot of time with us. You saw a lot, like the Rico Bosco experience,

Speaker 1 a lot of history,

Speaker 1 a lot of inside jokes.

Speaker 5 At some points, it's just like, as I'm right now, I get speechless at some points. It's crazy.
It's incredibly amazing.

Speaker 1 The guy knows every coach in America.

Speaker 5 The guy literally knows every coach. And if he doesn't know the coach, he's running straight goods practice facility.

Speaker 5 If your guys can't get into a barn because it's so big,

Speaker 1 call Rico.

Speaker 5 One shot, one dial. You got him.
Boom. He's on it.
He won't even miss the call. No.
No.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think I've seen.

Speaker 6 Rico beat Wisconsin last year. Yeah.
He got JMU at the practice facility.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he did.

Speaker 5 You might want to also keep an eye on the electricity. He's been punishing through.
That phone is constantly charging.

Speaker 6 It's the most powerful phone on the East Coast. It is.

Speaker 7 That's a huge phone.

Speaker 5 I'm surprised you're not a secure, secure, like a

Speaker 5 one of those things, like a beamer around it, like womping kind of.

Speaker 1 I don't know what you're talking about, but I like that.

Speaker 5 But it's just so powerful. It has like a raise off everything.
You can't even come close to it. If you try to touch it, you get zapped.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. So great trip, Oldie.

Speaker 1 We'll see you in the future.

Speaker 1 You'll maybe be back for some hockey playoffs. So a couple months from now or a month and a half from now.
But yeah, it's great having you around. You're great energy on the streams.
I appreciate it.

Speaker 5 I appreciate it. It's live.
Everyone's a beauty in there. Everyone's bumping and grinding.
They got tickets going, winning tickets, losing tickets. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 5 And if you're not even for that team, just be the team. Be the team.
If you're not for that team. Right.

Speaker 1 Be there.

Speaker 1 Be the team. Yeah, no, Oldie Bett on Florida today in the A was he was head to toe in Vols gear.

Speaker 1 He was just like, I'm doing this for Big T. Oh, yeah.
I rode. Ride with him.

Speaker 5 I rode with Big T the whole choo-choo train, the whole way there. And in about last seven minutes, I had a Florida ticket.
Yeah. It connected, though.
It connected.

Speaker 5 Great run by the Vols. Great run.
Good work. Good team atmosphere, but Gators chomped in through.
Great run.

Speaker 1 Better bet. Yeah.
Yeah. Way better.

Speaker 5 Way better bet than the run.

Speaker 1 Also, great job. I mean, you're just like, we would leave.

Speaker 1 Basically, every day we'd come in, watch basketball all day, leave at like 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, and then I'd wake up the next morning and Oldie was just everywhere in Chicago.

Speaker 1 He was hitting, he was hitting, he was doing BP at Sluggers last night at one in the morning, walking around Fulton Market. You had a great time.
Everywhere.

Speaker 5 I was on the strip. I was here.
I was there. I was here.
Friday, I want to apologize, though. I was late.
I was the second in the office. Oh.

Speaker 6 Who was here first? Luke.

Speaker 1 Oh. And I knocked on the door, and I was excited.

Speaker 5 I didn't see anyone. He goes, what are you doing here? I said,

Speaker 5 back to the grind with the boys. What do you mean am I doing here? Like, it's got time.
It's go time, dude.

Speaker 5 And he goes, well, it's a good thing you met me and seen me here because I was just on the way to the office and you would have been done because you don't have a card, right?

Speaker 5 And I'm like, how would I have a card?

Speaker 1 Like, I don't have a card yet. Yeah.

Speaker 5 So, and I I was like, okay, no problem.

Speaker 1 No problem.

Speaker 5 And I go, sorry for being late. And he goes, it's like 9:14 or 9-something.
On a Saturday. This is Saturday.

Speaker 1 Oh, this is the

Speaker 1 Saturday. Yeah, no one was here till noon, but you're here at 9:14.

Speaker 5 And he's like, the show doesn't start till like 12 or 1 the stream.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I don't care about the stream of the show right now. I'm here for the work.
Let's go. Yeah.

Speaker 5 So I went and started filling up the waters, you know, cleaned it up. And that was it.
Bada boom, bada bing. We're back at it.
Love it. And then everyone showed up.
Thanks for coming, too. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It was, it was, he was filling up the waters every single time I turned around. So I appreciate that, Oldie.
And throwing out trash with PFT.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that was, that was all time. We were working on the El Camino out in the garage here.
We hear a beeping noise. The garage door raises up.
It's a dump truck backing in.

Speaker 6 Immediately, Oldie goes, hang on, I'll be right back. He runs over to the dumpster.
It starts loading the truck up with trash.

Speaker 6 The guy gets out, and Oldie starts hitting the gears to work the back gate of the truck. And the guy just looked at him and was like, at first, like, what the fuck?

Speaker 6 And then Oldie was like, it's okay, I got this. And then he just dapped it up.
Yeah. And it was all good from there.

Speaker 1 You were touching another man's truck, and the guy was cool with it.

Speaker 6 I ran the controls.

Speaker 1 I ran the controls.

Speaker 5 He tried to just come over and show me this is how you do it. Buddies, take it easy.
I got seniority, pal.

Speaker 1 How many years you got in, dude?

Speaker 5 I want to tell him, but he was a good guy. He's out there bumping and grinding with the boys.

Speaker 1 So you got to love that. Yeah,

Speaker 5 you can't hate on the guy bumping and grinding, working full force. And he's been out probably popping from five in the morning running straight shift.

Speaker 6 It's a Friday, long week for him. Oldie gave him a spell at the end of it.
He appreciated the blow. Yeah, big time.
Big time.

Speaker 5 We got the car fired up. How did she run?

Speaker 6 Oh, she runs great.

Speaker 6 She got home safe and sound. Snow putter,

Speaker 5 nothing crazy like that. Snow.

Speaker 6 It's all good. I think this is going to be a good year for the Okamina Oldie.

Speaker 5 Oh, it's going to be smooth. Once that sunshine comes coming out, look out.
Highway 190. Here we come.

Speaker 6 Nope, nope, no highways. Can't take it on the highway anymore.
No. You know what? That's right.
Ran out of gas on the highway one time.

Speaker 5 It's PTSD from that. No, for my guy, Pete.

Speaker 1 No, PTD.

Speaker 6 I made the entire city of Chicago late for work. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Can't do it again. Stay on those safe streets.
Keep it real out there. Nice car.
Let's get it.

Speaker 1 All right. Let's finish up.
Numbers. Everyone.
Three.

Speaker 1 33.

Speaker 1 All right. Go ahead, memes.
You get it. No.
No, memes. You have it.
You have it. Nah.
All right.

Speaker 1 Take it.

Speaker 1 I'll take

Speaker 1 84. 13.
One.

Speaker 5 I got to go. I already went my four-banger.
I hit the Nasher 6-1. I got to go back to the roots.
Stand up on the hang side. 6'9.

Speaker 1 Oh, nice. Back to the roots.

Speaker 1 99 Poke.

Speaker 1 Jack?

Speaker 1 52. Little boy Jack? 21.

Speaker 1 Little Jackie. Little Jackie.
Little Jackie.

Speaker 1 Congrats, Lil Jackie.

Speaker 1 54.

Speaker 1 54.

Speaker 1 Love you.

Speaker 5 Close. 52.