NCAA Tournament With Mark Titus, Aaron Donald Retires, Hot Seat/Cool Throne + #MadOnline

Speaker 1 Hey, pardon my take, listeners. You can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
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Speaker 1 On today's part of my take, we have our good friend Mark Titus on to break down the entire bracket.

Speaker 1 We've had a couple nights to sleep on it, figure out where we're going with our picks, storylines, everything to get you ready for Thursday morning, one of the best days of the year.

Speaker 1 We are going to do hot seat, cool throne. We are doing hashtag mad online, correct, Hank? Yep.
Also, I finished the Patriots documentary. I don't know if you guys did.
I did.

Speaker 1 I could maybe do some cherry on top because holy shit, did they really take down Belichick?

Speaker 3 Yeah, the last two episodes were

Speaker 4 abomination.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so we'll talk about all of that and some more tournament thoughts. When cool, creamy ranch meets tangy, bold buffalo, the hole is greater than the sum of its sauce.

Speaker 1 Say howdy, partner, to new Buffalo Ranch Sauce only at McDonald's for a limited time. At participating, McDonald's.
Okay, let's go.

Speaker 1 No place to hang out or washing.

Speaker 1 And then I can't blame all of the sounds. Oh, no, we're gonna rock it down to Elene Trick Avenue,

Speaker 1 and then we'll take it higher.

Speaker 1 Oh, we're gonna rock it down to Elene Trake Avenue. It's part of my take, present by Marshall Sports.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Part of My Take, presented by DraftKings Sportsbook. New customers can bet five bucks to get $150 instantly in bonus bets only at DraftKings Sportsbook with code take.

Speaker 1 Today is Wednesday, March 20th, and we are

Speaker 1 just 24 hours away from the best two days of the year. Boys, I don't know if you guys feel the same way, but Monday night, I crawled into bed, and my body was craving college basketball.

Speaker 1 It was like I had been, you know, all of Conference Championship Week, I've been watching all this basketball, and then they just shut it off. And I was like, give me college basketball.

Speaker 1 We need more college basketball.

Speaker 3 Big news today, also, the start of spring. Yeah.
We made it. Shout out that Groundhog.

Speaker 1 Wait, is it?

Speaker 3 Yeah, that little motherfucker was right.

Speaker 1 I thought it was the 21st. 20th.

Speaker 3 Oh, shit. 20th.
First day of spring.

Speaker 1 Hank was right.

Speaker 3 The calendar.

Speaker 3 We're done with winter.

Speaker 1 The calendar is so stupid. The start of spring

Speaker 1 is St.

Speaker 3 Patrick's Day.

Speaker 3 There should be sports that go along with the changing of the season.

Speaker 1 St. Patrick's Day is the start of spring.
Start of summer is Kentucky Derby Day. Start of fall is week zero college football.
Start of winter is Halloween. Christmas.
Oh. No,

Speaker 3 Thanksgiving should be starting.

Speaker 1 No, I like to pretend that winter doesn't. You shorten winter.
Winter's just Christmas. It's the St.
Patrick's Day. You're like, oh, it's two months.

Speaker 3 But when you have the score bugs on TV and it's the cornucopia and all that stuff, that is a little bit of both autumn and winter.

Speaker 1 We made it to spring. Spring has sprung.

Speaker 3 Good job, boys.

Speaker 1 How are you guys feeling when we're 24 hours out from the best two days of the year?

Speaker 3 I'm feeling good.

Speaker 1 Do you agree that it's the best two days of the year?

Speaker 3 Best two sports days of the year, yes. I would agree.
Thursday, Friday of

Speaker 3 the NCAA tournament because it's just all you think about the entire time.

Speaker 3 You wake up, you start making your preparations, you take one last look at your bracket, you go, you sit down on a couch, and you don't move for basically 48 hours.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and it's, I know that there will always be a random...

Speaker 1 It'll be a random day, weekend in the fall where you have like an insane NFL slate and an insane college football slate, but you can't depend on that.

Speaker 1 That's year-to-year, like, you know, if all the stars align.

Speaker 1 This is just it.

Speaker 4 I think underrated,

Speaker 4 the second best is the two weeks of the first round of NBA and NHL playoffs, where every night there's a game that matters.

Speaker 1 Okay, I agree with you.

Speaker 3 But if it's the first two rounds of the NBA playoffs,

Speaker 3 there's a lot of blowouts. Yeah.

Speaker 1 A lot of blowouts. Do you have NHL?

Speaker 3 You do have NHL as well. You have NHL.
You know, we spend a lot of time talking about how the Monday after the Super Bowl should be a national holiday.

Speaker 3 Thursday and Friday should have Thanksgiving rules.

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 3 Like people pretend to work on Thursday and Friday, which actually, you know what? I'm talking myself out of it.

Speaker 3 I think the holiday of this Thursday and Friday is that you get paid for going to work, but you just don't work. Yeah, you don't work.
It's an unspoken holiday.

Speaker 1 Shout out the boss button. Remember when they nailed the boss button in like 2006 or something or seven? And there's just like, yeah, you can click on it and it has Excel pop up.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I hit that one time. I think it was my professor was like, why are you looking at a spreadsheet?

Speaker 1 Yeah, my business.

Speaker 3 This is an English lit class.

Speaker 1 Yeah, in my first job,

Speaker 1 I remember there's like, you don't use Excel. Yeah, what's Excel?

Speaker 3 You don't know how to use it.

Speaker 3 Maybe you didn't read my resume. I said I was proficient.
Yeah. Me being proficient in Excel is knowing the website for the boss boss.

Speaker 1 Shout out 99% of the world who has put proficient in Microsoft Excel on their resume. That's just a must-have.

Speaker 1 That doesn't mean shit.

Speaker 1 Have you ever seen the Excel like Olympics?

Speaker 3 Yeah, they're sick. People are, they're basically like musicians.

Speaker 1 No keyboard. Yeah.
They just use a mouse. No, no, no, no mouse.

Speaker 5 No, no, no, just keyboard.

Speaker 3 They're like piano players with the speed that they go.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, I actually saw it.
Oh, man. Since we're down this rabbit hole, fuck, I got to try to find it.
It was a Monday reading that I saw that was probably the most diabolical thing I've ever seen.

Speaker 1 Someone fill in while I find it. Oh, okay, got it.
Someone in IT trolled me for over a decade. Have I any recourse? I work in a medium-sized firm between 2014 and January 2024.

Speaker 1 I found myself constantly making mistakes while working.

Speaker 1 Some examples are my calculations on Microsoft Excel being wrong, data inputs on spreadsheets being wrong, booking the wrong days with my annual leave by accident.

Speaker 1 I booked the 1st through the 10th October, but suddenly found I had booked 3rd to 13th October, impacting the business negatively. Typos and documents that I had sent, counts was cunts.

Speaker 1 I felt like I was going crazy, so I would do things like screenshot what I had calculated, but found my screenshots had disappeared when I logged in the next day.

Speaker 1 So I was wondering if I ever took them in my first place. In February 2024, our IT guy, we'll call him Bob, left us after facing a disciplinary, and we hired another one.

Speaker 1 The new IT guy, over the next two weeks, approached me and showed me a series of records.

Speaker 1 Bob had been accessing my system, editing my work, and changing the information I had put into my annual leave sheet, among other things. The man has been sabotaging my work life for a decade.

Speaker 1 The consequences I have faced are, I don't mean to laugh, but it's funny. I was not allowed to work from home like my colleagues due to my apparent unreliability.

Speaker 1 This resulted in $250 in transfer costs every month. I've been overlooked for promotion.
I've had my professional life and credibility massively damaged.

Speaker 1 I had to undergo assessments for ADHD and early onset Alzheimer's and other cognitive tests with the NIHS. I was put on a performative improvement plan.
Shout out memes, Pip.

Speaker 1 The old IT guy has moved out of the UK, but is there anything I can do? I spoken with HR and they issued an apology, allowed me to work from home again and remove my pay. How crazy is this?

Speaker 3 All right. So my take is I would hire Bob in a heartbeat.
Oh, to me, Bob sounds like a guy that he gets shit done. He's vengeful.

Speaker 3 I actually, I look at this as a negative on the dude that wrote this post.

Speaker 3 How many years? 10. 10 years, and all your shit's getting fucked with all the time, and you couldn't figure it out? Like, Bob, I would like to have Bob at my company to see how dumb people are.

Speaker 3 Is this like a fight club situation?

Speaker 1 I mean, it's crazy.

Speaker 1 It's like an evil. If Jim Halbert was like the most evil person ever and he did all his pranks to Dwight, that ruined his life.

Speaker 3 I was thinking the same thing, Hank. It could be like me, myself, and Irene.
This guy's got split personalities. Spoiler if you haven't seen the end of Me, Myself, and Irene, our fight club.

Speaker 3 But it might be this dude. He was in the box.
He might go home. It was his wife's head.
He might go home

Speaker 3 and then he just fucks with himself when he thinks that he's asleep. He might be schizophrenic.
That was crazy.

Speaker 1 I saw that and I immediately screenshotted it. So that's an extra bonus Monday reading.

Speaker 3 But don't you almost respect Bob?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 What an absolute savage that guy is.

Speaker 3 I would hire Bob just to make sure that Bob was under my control. Yeah, he moved out of the country.

Speaker 1 He's like, I got to get the fuck out of here.

Speaker 3 Yeah, because otherwise, every job that I go to, it's going to be like, I hope Bob's not working here.

Speaker 1 It might be Kim.com. He's in the Philippines somewhere.
Oh, yeah, that guy.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, but the XL, no one knows how to use it, and everyone says they can use it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 XL, that's a program that will one day end up replacing human brains. Yes.

Speaker 1 All right, so

Speaker 1 any other thoughts about the tournament before we continue with the show? I'm just so excited. NIT, big NIT, number one.

Speaker 1 We'll do a poll tomorrow. Should Max live stream Villanova's bid to win an NIT championship?

Speaker 3 This is Max's Super Bowl.

Speaker 4 No, I second half on Instagram.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Just give it to us.

Speaker 3 If it's within 10 points in the fourth quarter, you should have to go live.

Speaker 6 On Instagram.

Speaker 1 On the pardon, I take Instagram. Fine.

Speaker 7 The NIT did quarters at some point.

Speaker 5 I don't know if they still

Speaker 4 can also

Speaker 1 join. Oh, yeah, we can join.
We can laugh at you. Yeah.
Max is ready to go for the NIT.

Speaker 3 I just filled out my NIT bracket. Shout out NIT Stu.
I've got Ohio State beating Villanova in the finals.

Speaker 1 Wow, would that be incredible?

Speaker 3 That would be so funny.

Speaker 1 We should talk quickly about Anthony Edwards ending a life last night.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that was embraced debate. Was that a dunk?

Speaker 1 So all those dunks always, yeah, when you

Speaker 1 zoom in, you're like, did the ball leave his hand beforehand?

Speaker 3 Didn't touch the rim.

Speaker 1 Or did he follow through on the rim? Yeah. Some of those screenshots, you see, he had,

Speaker 1 he made John Collins smell his fingers before he dunked. He dislocated his finger.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he dislocated his finger on the dunk and then stayed in the game afterwards.

Speaker 1 I'm counting it as a dunk just because I like cool sports moments like that where the world stopped to be like, Did you see what Anthony Edwards just did?

Speaker 3 Yeah, it was pretty incredible.

Speaker 3 And he's had like six dunks like that over the course of his career where people have stopped and legitimately asked the question, like, is this the best dunk of all time? Yeah.

Speaker 3 So he's fucking awesome. The only problem with that dunk was it was kind of overshadowed by Austin Reeves getting dunked on last night.

Speaker 1 Oh, Oh, no, I didn't.

Speaker 3 Because, oh, you got, big cat, I want to get your live reaction to it. There was a tea-bagging.
Oh, no. There was a tea-bagging.

Speaker 3 And they asked Austin Reeves after the game what it was like from his vantage point. He's like, nobody wants to see that from my vantage point.

Speaker 1 No one wants to see that.

Speaker 1 We also should mention, wait, hold on.

Speaker 1 Jalen Johnson on Austin Reeves.

Speaker 1 Oh, no.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. It was Johnson's.
The fallback is the problem.

Speaker 3 It was literally Johnson on Reeves.

Speaker 1 If I were Austin Reeves, I'd try to head-butt his dick. Bite it off.
Yeah, there's only one move.

Speaker 1 I would never get dunked on like this. I just want to say that right now.
No, I wouldn't. Because I would foul way before that.

Speaker 3 Well, I also have pride in my rim protection. Yeah.
I would just

Speaker 1 tackle him before that. Oh, man.
Yeah. He looked like he actually was hitting a hurdle.
Holy fuck. That's bad.
Yeah. Vicious stuff.
We also, while we're talking to NBA, we missed it because

Speaker 1 we were deep into college basketball, but Kyrie's game winner was one of the coolest shots out.

Speaker 3 He was crazy. The left-handed floor, it was over Jokic.

Speaker 3 It was such a cool shot that you had guys from around the league in their next practice trying to recreate that shot to see if they could make it.

Speaker 1 They had guys on the mavs, like, I don't know who was on the baseline, like put their hands on their heads and like collapsed. Yeah, that was fucking awesome.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it was wild.

Speaker 1 But it is college basketball time. We respect the sports calendar.
I had one thing that we also missed on Sunday, which we should probably talk about. Aaron Donald.
Yeah. Aaron Donald retired.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's our fault.

Speaker 1 Maybe

Speaker 1 Aaron Donald, you could have the case, the perfect career.

Speaker 3 If he had won two Super Bowls.

Speaker 1 So if he had won the other one, but that wasn't a defensive issue. That was,

Speaker 1 you know, the Rams' defense came to play in that game. They gave up 13 points to the Patriots.
But Aaron Donald played 10 years in the NFL. He was a Pro Bowler all 10 years.
He won rookie of the year.

Speaker 1 He won three

Speaker 1 time defensive player of the year. And he was an eight-time first-team all-pro selection, and he had a Super Bowl ring, and he had some crazy-ass stats.

Speaker 1 Like, for the last six years, Aaron Donald faced

Speaker 1 1,797 double teams, 150 more than anyone else in the defensive field. Yet he still led all defensive tackles and pass rush win rate during that span at 26%.

Speaker 3 Hank.

Speaker 4 He also was responsible, like highest of highs, most viral, best interview on this podcast ever, as well as one of the worst.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, that's right.

Speaker 4 There's probably him and John Cena in terms of like really good interviews while also having really bad interviews.

Speaker 3 And then, remember, he got on that other podcast where they asked him just football questions, and he kept being like, I'm just here to talk about Epsom salts.

Speaker 3 Yeah, like I want to talk about this Epson salt. That was on this.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that was when we interviewed him at the Super Bowl in Miami, and it was incredible. Meme's whole career was based on that interview with

Speaker 1 calling him a pussy. Yeah, all-time clip.
And then he came on to, what was he promoting, a sports drink?

Speaker 1 And he insisted on his partner coming on as well, who might have played basketball at Pitt, but we didn't have any questions for him. And we did like 10 minutes, and then he wanted to go.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So he gave it it all. He really was everything.
But I actually think that Aaron Donald is as close to a perfect career as you could possibly have, minus the Super Bowl loss.

Speaker 1 But he literally was a Pro Bowler every single year. And eight out of his 10 years, he was an all-pro first team.

Speaker 3 And he trained with knives. That's also an all-time clip, is watching him just work out in the offseason.
There's a guy trying to stab him. And he also.
And he's just like, no.

Speaker 1 And he also was just like the fact that he was quote-unquote undersized at his position, but still so goddamn dominant. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because, like, you know, a lot of defensive tackles are, you know, you think of like the Hilodinadas or the,

Speaker 1 you know, Vince Wilfork, but he just, he had a fucking six-pack and he would just...

Speaker 1 dominate everyone

Speaker 3 all the time.

Speaker 3 One thing I don't like is the new trend of really good players retiring, and then instantly the official Hall of Fame social media accounts being like, we'll see you in four years or whatever,

Speaker 3 leave some suspense up there. Yeah, like, yeah, he's going to be a Hall of Fame, but he's one of the best football players of all time.

Speaker 3 Give it some time, give it some time, don't annoy him just yet. Yeah, I like the official accounts to stay out of that.
Yeah, the official accounts should be above all the speculation. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 3 It's final when it's final for them. I agree.
But yeah, Aaron Donald, I think probably

Speaker 3 the best defensive player I've ever seen play. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He is the most dominant in this era. I know J.J.
Watt was ⁇ I mean, J.J. Watt was at his peak was very, very dominant, but

Speaker 1 reminder that Aaron Donald did it from the defensive tackle position. Yeah.
Which is just ⁇ that's not ⁇ your job isn't always to get after the quarterback, and he just always did.

Speaker 3 He also had the perfect time of year to retire. Quit your job before March Madness.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I wish he had done it on not Sunday of conference championship because we would have talked about it on Sunday. That was our fuck up.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Imagine, though, imagine retiring retiring one year, and you're like, oh, shit, what am I going to do now that I'm retired? Yeah. Oh, wait, yeah, I have an entire month of college basketball to watch.

Speaker 1 You didn't make it, though.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's tough.

Speaker 1 Also, RG3 got ratioed to hell. Yeah,

Speaker 3 RG3 loves the take game.

Speaker 1 Man, he was so off. He basically was like, Caleb Williams should not go to Chicago and

Speaker 1 basically had no facts behind it. No, I agree with him.

Speaker 3 I think he made some good points. And then he should demand a trade to a successful, well-run franchise historically, like the Washington Commanders.

Speaker 1 And I quote you and just stated simple facts, and he then quickly did the Kermit the Frog, Big Cat in His Fields. Everyone's like, dude, he got ratioed again.

Speaker 1 It was like thousands of quote tweets on his original tweet.

Speaker 3 Yeah, RG3 likes to, he likes to dip his toes in the game.

Speaker 1 I like him, but man, he has some bad fucking takes. That was a bad take.

Speaker 3 Real bad take. I think he's right.

Speaker 1 I had time for it on Monday. I went to war with...

Speaker 1 the fallout of the Caleb Williams Justin Fields. There's still some people.

Speaker 1 There was actually, I don't know if it was a troll or not, but there was one person who did tweet out a petition for the Bears to bring back Justin Fields.

Speaker 3 No, that's what we were talking about. Remember, like, if Caleb Williams gets dinged up this year.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 Just, I want to sprinkle it out there for Bears fans to just have in the back of their head, like, why not bring back Justin?

Speaker 1 Yeah. I was working out stats.

Speaker 1 I was doing everything because people were, you know, arguing about there's not enough quarterbacks that have won Super Bowls on rookie contracts to actually be like, this is the way.

Speaker 1 And I went and looked it up. It's essentially if you have Mahomes or Brady, you win a Super Bowl.

Speaker 3 Yeah, and it's also that if you have a cheap quarterback, you would rather have a cheap quarterback than an expensive quarterback. Am I right?

Speaker 1 It gives you your best chance. So I'm pulling it up.

Speaker 1 I went through the whole thing. Like I said, I had time for it on Monday because I was just waiting for college basketball to start.
But starting

Speaker 1 this past year, Brock Purdy was in the Super Bowl on a cheap, cheap contract. The year before, Jalen Hurts was on a cheap, cheap contract.
Burrow was on a cheap contract in 21.

Speaker 1 Mahomes in 20. Mahomes won it in 19 on a cheap contract.
Goff in 18. Foles,

Speaker 1 because remember, Carson Wentz was still on his rookie contract. Foles won it, not paying a lot.
Cam in 15, Russ in 14. Russ won it in 12.

Speaker 1 And Flacco went against Kaepernick, who both were on cheap contracts,

Speaker 1 and he won it. Flacco won it in 12.

Speaker 1 So basically, every year, someone from the Super Bowl is going to be a cheap quarterback, and the other one's going to be Mahomes or Brady, and they're going to win.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you'd rather have a quarterback that's not getting paid a lot of money so you can pay a lot of money to other good players.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 3 if you disagree with that premise, I don't think we're even speaking the same language.

Speaker 1 The argument boils down to if you want to say having a cheap quarterback will just get you a loss in the Super Bowl to Mahomes or Brady, that's fine. Fine.
Oh, I would suck it.

Speaker 3 I would suck it. Take it.
I'd take it in a second. It's quarterback Photoshop season two.
So Shane came up to me earlier today and said that he's working on Photoshops for the draft.

Speaker 3 And so I was like, just give me all the quarterback Photoshops. Just make me a Caleb Williams one, just so I can look at it.
Yeah. Caleb Williams D.C.
one. I just want to have that on deck.

Speaker 3 I looked at it, and it looks pretty good. That's mine.
I agree with RG3. That's mine.

Speaker 1 Hank, while we're talking about Brady Mahomes, the Patriots Dynasty documentary has concluded. Yep.

Speaker 1 Wow, was that a hit piece on Bill Belichick? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Holy shit.

Speaker 3 I'll say this.

Speaker 3 It was very clearly pointed, and it was meant to make Robert Kraft look like the benevolent father who kept it all together.

Speaker 1 Calling him Tommy constantly.

Speaker 3 Which is very creepy every time he says it. And then it made Belichick look like he was like abusive.
They made him look like he was abusive and negligent.

Speaker 3 And the only thing that I would say to Bill would be he didn't do a very good job of acquitting himself in those interviews.

Speaker 3 Like when they asked him the tough questions, he would just be like, I don't want to talk about that right now. Which made him look worse than I think the actual situation was.

Speaker 3 But Bill Belichick's not like an open book. He didn't want to be doing the documentary.

Speaker 3 If he had just been a little bit more gregarious, if he had explained one or two things more in depth rather than just sitting there, and we don't know what they cut out, we don't know what they cut out.

Speaker 3 But from what they used, he just seemed like he would rather be anywhere else than answering those questions, which ended up making him look worse.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I loved some of those answers when they asked him, What did you think about Tom Brady's performance in the Super Bowl against the Eagles? And he's like, well, their offense scored more than us. So

Speaker 1 give credit to their coaches.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so the Malcolm Butler thing was, it still is weird to this day.

Speaker 1 So weird. So weird.

Speaker 4 But they also, you know, they set that season up to make it seem like all the players hated. You know, they didn't want to be there.
All those players came back.

Speaker 4 They made it to the Super Bowl that year, almost won. They won a Super Bowl the next year, and then...

Speaker 1 They did give Belichick credit for that Super Bowl against the Rams.

Speaker 4 But then they also made it seem like, well, because Bill did good,

Speaker 4 I told Tommy, Tommy knew, like, I had to sign Belichick. Like, it almost made him seem like he was mad about the fact that they had won a Super Bowl.

Speaker 4 And then that he was like, well, you know, that kind of decided the fate. Like, we had to go with Bill.

Speaker 3 Right. It made it seem like they were going to fire Belichick if he lost that Super Bowl, which I don't think was ever going to happen.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 4 It was weird watching it because it almost made me, you know,

Speaker 4 they slanted it from Kraft's POV, but they didn't have any, you know.

Speaker 4 Being a Patriots fan for those 20 years, rooting for Belichick, rooting for Brady, rooting for all the players, was the greatest time of all time. Like, being a Patriots fan was amazing.

Speaker 4 And they didn't really, it didn't feel like that. They made it feel like you shouldn't

Speaker 4 be sad for being a Patriots fan and, like, oh, you were a fan of this guy? Like, how dare you? So, that part made me sad where it was like,

Speaker 4 this was, you know, the greatest run of all time, and they're not making it feel like that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the weird part to me is, like, I've, I've been consistent when everyone's like, Brady or Belichick, it's like, well, the player is obviously the most important thing.

Speaker 1 Like, when we talked to Diana Rossini and she was like, the Patriot way, I was like, the Patriot way is having Tom Brady, just like the Chiefs' way is having Patrick Mahomes.

Speaker 1 If you have the best quarterback in the game, it doesn't really matter. Like everything else kind of works.

Speaker 1 So I don't think most people don't say like, oh, it's Belichick over Brady. They're like, yeah, the player, he's the greatest quarterback.
Like,

Speaker 1 that's the guy. So to then go even further to bury Belichick seemed just so unnecessary.

Speaker 3 And he was also, you know, slightly burying his own organization with the trainer stuff, being like, oh, you know, it was crazy they kicked Alex Guerrero out when he was you know directly going against what the patriots team trainers were saying which i don't know if those are belichek's guys or crass guys or whatever but that that whole thing was strange it was it was a sad watch also from belichek's point of view your star player has his own personal trainer who's also working with other people on the team that same personal trainer has also been accused of being a fraud in the past that misdiagnosed cancer and like said or not misdiagnosed said that he had like cures for cancer and diseases like that that he obviously did not have That's probably a liability in your head.

Speaker 3 Like, oh, there's this outside guy that's working with my best player.

Speaker 4 They're trying to grow a business.

Speaker 3 Trying to grow a business. So, conflict of interest, probably right on the inside.
So, yeah, it's not as cut and dry as they made it seem in that documentary.

Speaker 3 But when they talked about the Malcolm Butler stuff,

Speaker 3 Hank, how many people on planet Earth do you think know the true, exact story of what happened and how Belichick reacted to it and decided to bench Malcolm Butler? Maybe three, four,

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 3 How much money would you pay to know that? To know exactly, like to have your own personal documentary made about how it went down and have all the footage?

Speaker 4 I don't know. I don't really want to know.
I don't think.

Speaker 1 Here's the one thing that doesn't make sense to me about the Malcolm Butler thing. Malcolm Butler has never said what he did, right? Right.

Speaker 1 So it has to be something that people will be like, whoa.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Like, Malcolm Butler's in a good spot right now because everyone's like, we don't know why he got benched. Belichick will never say it.
Malcolm Butler will never say it.

Speaker 1 So your mind can just be like, Belichick fucked up.

Speaker 1 But doesn't it feel like if you got benched in that position and you literally did nothing, wouldn't you just be like, I don't, like, here's everything I did and there's nothing here?

Speaker 1 I just don't know. It makes no sense to me.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, obviously it was a very, very, very personal situation.

Speaker 1 Right. So doesn't it feel like if Malcolm Butler said it,

Speaker 1 Malcolm Butler probably knows deep down what happened. And if he said it, people would be like, oh, well, dude, yeah, you shouldn't have done that.

Speaker 3 So now we need to ask, like, is Bill Belichick the good guy in this situation? I don't know. For never saying what it is.

Speaker 1 That always confused me about it because it's like,

Speaker 1 Malcolm Butler, as far as I know, has never said, like, I think it might be this. You know what I mean? No, he was acting oblivious in the doctrine.
Right.

Speaker 3 And to get disciplined by the Patriots, if you're a star player, you have to do something really fucked up.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Really fucked up.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it was weird. And also the Trump, you know, they pinned the Trump thing on Belichick, but it's like it was Brady, Kraft, Belchek.
It was all three of them

Speaker 4 were Trump guys. But they started the episode with the reading the letter from Belichick, and then that slanted the whole thing.

Speaker 1 I thought it was a good documentary in the fact that they did

Speaker 1 okay. I thought it was a good documentary in the fact that the things that people are interested outside of like you is

Speaker 1 those stories. But they just, it was so slanted to bad stories instead of like a couple good stories.
Like, that's what people want to watch.

Speaker 1 People don't want to watch a documentary that's just like they won six Super Bowls. I know you do.

Speaker 3 It could have been like a 15-part series, just only football porn for Hank Lockwood.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, I guess the only thing comparable would be the last dance, but the last dance was through Michael Jordan's lens, and it was anti-ownership, and this was through the owner's lens, and it was almost anti-Belchek.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, there's another piece of this that I wanted to bring up in high school.

Speaker 4 Also, Brady, like, that was tough where Brady was like, yeah, there's things I don't want to talk about. Yeah, and then Kraft just said, yeah, like Giselle said, You're not making my husband a man.

Speaker 1 You're not treating him like a man. They don't treat Tommy like a man.
That's tough. That was so weird.
Yeah, that was a good idea. What do you say, Max?

Speaker 5 Was Brady a part of the edit?

Speaker 3 Because there's a part that I want to talk about.

Speaker 1 Are you and I about to talk about the same thing?

Speaker 3 Max and I are on the same page here because I've got it queued up, Max. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So, my cool throne was going to be Tom Brady's pettiness

Speaker 3 because a Twitter user, Todd

Speaker 3 Oren Denker, discovered that they edited something out during this documentary that's very weird that it was edited out.

Speaker 3 They showed the highlights of the Super Bowl where the Eagles won. And on the Philly special,

Speaker 3 they

Speaker 3 played an edited version of Al Michaels' play call.

Speaker 3 And so I want you to listen to these two play calls. One is the first is the actual game call, and then the second is as it appears in the Dynasty documentary.
So it's right here.

Speaker 5 This is the call by Michaels.

Speaker 1 Obviously, saying the word falls because he's the one who caught the touchdown.

Speaker 1 They're going to snap it, and it's Trey Burton who throws caught fools touchdown.

Speaker 5 Caught Foles touchdown.

Speaker 1 So what does the Apple Show do?

Speaker 1 They edited out the word Foles.

Speaker 3 What? And we've seen clips of Tom Brady not liking it when people bring up Nick Foles. Was it one of the Mannings that brought up Nick Foles' name? He fucking hates Nick Foles.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 3 And he had his name edited out of this documentary.

Speaker 1 That's wild.

Speaker 3 That is wild.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to defend the filmmakers of this, so

Speaker 3 it seems like that would be a Tom Brady-specific request. I don't think that there's a filmmaker that's like, you know what? I'm going to edit out Foles.

Speaker 4 Well, for time, you know, you got to save time.

Speaker 1 It may have been like a quarter of a second. No, Hank makes a good point.

Speaker 3 Also, for time, I think the time of each episode varies between like 37 minutes and like one hour and six minutes. Yeah.
I think they can do as much time as they want, but no, you're right.

Speaker 1 They cut out for time.

Speaker 3 They probably edited out for time.

Speaker 1 A 10-part series that cut for time.

Speaker 5 One word.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I like that. I respect that level of pettiness.
It actually,

Speaker 3 Max, does it make you feel good, though? No, I love that.

Speaker 5 I mean, the Eagles are so far in Tom Brady's head, and Nick Foles will always be there.

Speaker 4 They also discredited the whole thing, like that, that Super Bowl had nothing to do with the Eagles winning. It was just Malcolm Butler.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, if Malcolm Butler plays that, you don't have a Super Bowl ring, but no, I don't care.

Speaker 1 I didn't watch it.

Speaker 9 I won't watch anything about the Patriots dynasty.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 that is so funny, just thinking like Tom Brady watched all 10 parts. It was like only one note.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Move the word goals, please.

Speaker 4 But if you broke down the 10 episodes into things that were not positive versus dynasty,

Speaker 4 it was definitely like 75, 25.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It should be called, it wasn't about like the dynasty.

Speaker 1 I just feel bad for Belichick because he's the best coach of all time and he just got butchered. Yeah.
Absolutely butchered.

Speaker 4 I do think, though, I like that, you you know, NFL films backed out when they kind of realized what was going on.

Speaker 4 And I feel like that's going to invigorate them and Belichick to come out with their own version, which will be

Speaker 3 awesome. Die Nasty.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Ooh, I like that. Come back at it.
I like that. Yeah, the demeanor that Belichick had the entire time he was being interviewed was that of a man that knew it was a setup.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Oh, we got Breaking Moose.

Speaker 1 Breaking Moose. Former Chargers wide receiver Mike Williams signing with the Jets.

Speaker 3 Oh, congrats.

Speaker 1 Memes. We're back.
We're back. Shout out, NYJ Matt.

Speaker 3 He sent Mike Williams a

Speaker 1 bacon, egg, and ham to the facility, and it got to him. That sealed the deal.

Speaker 3 Oh, I like that. Okay.
Good job, NYJ Matt.

Speaker 1 Why didn't you do that? Is it because you're on the pip?

Speaker 1 Stop saying that.

Speaker 3 I think his name is just Pip.

Speaker 9 He's just going to be talking to me about this for the rest of the day.

Speaker 1 I love you, memes. I'm not going to let that take away from this news.
This is awesome. Yes, and Marvin Harrison possible.
Marvin Harrison.

Speaker 1 No, Dan Jeremiah dropped a mock draft and had the Jets drafted. Marvin Harrison.
And what number? Four. Trading up.
Oh. Okay.
Trading up.

Speaker 3 I love mock drafts with trades in them.

Speaker 3 Just anything can happen. They're trying to sprinkle around.
They're trying to get clicks so they're like each fan base can have something to look forward to if there's a trade.

Speaker 1 I can't wait for draft season. The Vikings are up to something.
The Brian Windhorse meme, up to something.

Speaker 3 JJ, they're the favorites to draft.

Speaker 1 JJ would be the perfect quarterback for the Vikings. Yeah.
Where he will be discussed endlessly.

Speaker 3 Justin Jefferson's not going to be happy with that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's do Hot Sequel Trone, and then we'll get to Mark Titus talk brackets.

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Speaker 1 Hank, your hot seat cool throw.

Speaker 4 My hot seat was going to be John Collins,

Speaker 4 so I'll go with my other one, which I'm kind of scared to talk about. But Boeing.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Boeing is on the hot seat, allegedly. I guess I'll say.

Speaker 3 No, they're on the hot seat.

Speaker 5 They're on the hot seat.

Speaker 4 There was a whistle blower, John Barnett, who was doing a deposition. He worked for Boeing.
He had all the inside secrets at one of their plants or factories or whatever.

Speaker 4 He did a whole testimony, kind of going through what he said. I guess he was reciting a lot of stuff off memory, and that scared the Boeing lawyers.
He was supposed to drive home.

Speaker 4 Boeing lawyers asked him to stay one more day to finish his testimony, and then his body was found the morning of 3-9, dead.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he was allegedly from suicide, even though he told his family, if I die, it's not suicidal.

Speaker 3 He was suicided.

Speaker 3 And there was another thing that happened, I think it was a flight from New Zealand, where the plane dipped, like it dropped for about 30 seconds, and everybody on board was certain they were going to crash.

Speaker 3 And the

Speaker 3 Boeing explanation of what actually happened on that plane was that a stewardess hit one of the buttons on the seat, which made the plane drop. I am.

Speaker 4 Like, not putting your phone in airplane mode.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm not an expert on planes.

Speaker 3 I do know more than I think the standard fly sexual out there, but there's not a button on a seat that makes the plane crash. That would be a bad button to include on a plane.

Speaker 1 I did used to think when I was a little kid that my Game Boy could control the plane. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That part's true. And I was like, oh, I have to turn it off because I could just be like left.

Speaker 3 Plane goes left. That part's true.
Really dumb stuff from a kid. But yeah, Boeing.

Speaker 3 Not a great week to be Boeing. No.

Speaker 1 And I'm worried about you, Hank. That was Henry Lockwood who said that.

Speaker 1 He lives on.

Speaker 1 Allegedly.

Speaker 3 He does have information pertaining to the arrest and subsequent conviction of Hillary Clinton as well. Please contact him.
If you're looking at him, but don't do it at work.

Speaker 1 Nope.

Speaker 4 If I die, it's not suicide. And then my cool throne.

Speaker 1 See, if I die, it's not suicide as well.

Speaker 3 If I die, it's not suicide.

Speaker 3 Unless Billy gets elected president, then I will.

Speaker 1 If I die, it's not suicide. Okay.

Speaker 1 Kate Middleton. Yeah.

Speaker 4 She's alive.

Speaker 3 Is she? No, BBL.

Speaker 1 What do you mean? Is she? Is she?

Speaker 3 What do you mean she's alive? How do you know?

Speaker 1 Is she?

Speaker 4 There was pictures of her out with her family.

Speaker 1 Was that real? Her?

Speaker 3 Oh, the blurry picture, the Bigfoot quality footage?

Speaker 1 Is she?

Speaker 1 What do you guys think? I don't think so. I think she might be alive.
I don't think that was her. I think they just keep putting these things out there to try to get us off the case.

Speaker 3 Any AWLs out there that have had a Brazilian butt lift, let us know, first how it turned out. Second of all, how long it took for you to be out in public again?

Speaker 3 Because I'm pretty sure that it's not like four months.

Speaker 1 Wasn't the throne supposed to announce something? Didn't they have like an announcement coming? Yeah. King Charles might be dead?

Speaker 3 And it seems that if you... Well, yeah, I think it was like Sputnik over in Russia that reported that King Charles was dead, and then England had to be like, psyche's not dead.

Speaker 1 That's fake news. But the British people are fucking weirdos.
King Charles could be dead.

Speaker 1 Like, he could have died on Saturday, and they'll just have him laying in that bed, giving him little kisses and being like, we love you.

Speaker 3 Are we going to do the thing that we did during during football season where we like delayed kickoff of week one to all cry for the queen? You remember that? No.

Speaker 3 Well, are we going to do that again for Charles?

Speaker 1 Also, I'll just say, if King Charles did die, like, dude,

Speaker 1 what the fuck? You waited how long?

Speaker 1 Your mom lived to be like 100 years old.

Speaker 1 You waited 50 years to become king, and then you just, damn, dude.

Speaker 3 If he is dead, I'm taking Alabama to lose in the first round of Charleston, though.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You got to think of the edge in that situation.

Speaker 1 I also, I, I kind of love the royal family because they're the quintessential, like, you can just make fun of them because you can punch up to those people. Yeah.
All day.

Speaker 3 Maybe that's what they're there for.

Speaker 1 Don't feel bad.

Speaker 3 They're not really there to give hope and meaning and optimism to the British people. Maybe they're just there to have like a group of people that you can just make fun of.

Speaker 3 Yeah, we can all make fun of them.

Speaker 1 We're American. We can make fun of them all we want.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They got a fuck. His brother's a fucking pedophile.
Anyways. Allegedly, but.
Oh, no. I think we have to.
You know what? I'm going to say it. He's a pedophile.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 He's a pedophile.

Speaker 3 Sweating problem. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He doesn't sweat.

Speaker 3 Yeah, if I lived in England, I would just.

Speaker 3 That would be my career, would just be making fun of the royal family. Yeah.
It's awesome. But also,

Speaker 3 if you're Kate Middleton and you've been,

Speaker 3 you just got caught releasing a fake Photoshop. At some point, if you're okay,

Speaker 3 wouldn't you put out a picture being like, let us know. Sorry, I got caught putting out a fake Photoshop.
Here's a real picture of me.

Speaker 1 You're a Reddit AMA.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm okay.

Speaker 1 Yeah, with today's date. Okay.
Good hot seat, Cool Trone, Hank. Thanks.
PFT?

Speaker 3 My hot seat is the NIT. Oh.
Because Tom Creen, I think he cried on TV when they announced the brackets. We love Tom Creen.
We love Tom Creen. I like his passion.
I admire his passion.

Speaker 3 But he's just saying coaches should demand to get better.

Speaker 3 And then somebody brought up the fact that his last year at Indiana, they had the opportunity to host an NIT game, and they declined hosting it because they thought hosting an NIT game would be beneath the University of Indiana.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know what Dockets would say to that? My ass. My ass.

Speaker 3 Fucking my ass.

Speaker 1 My ass.

Speaker 3 But now, to be fair to Tom Creen, I believe that was right before he's about to be fired. It was the AD's call.

Speaker 1 Right when we had him on.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it wasn't Tom Creen's call. Yeah.

Speaker 3 So all the, we're getting all the facts around this situation, but people are upset at Tom Creen. I agree.
Like, if you're a college basketball coach, you probably want to coach more basketball.

Speaker 3 Now, if you're a player,

Speaker 3 you probably don't want to play.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 I've always assumed the NIT, like, if you're a player who's maybe not a starter or someone's going to the NBA, but if you're someone who wants to get better, like, playing more basketball is good, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Like, if you want to get, if you want to cement your job for next year, it's like bowl games.
Everyone shits on bowl games.

Speaker 1 That's an extra three weeks of practice for these college football teams that all these young guys opt outs. Young guys get a chance.

Speaker 3 Listen, I want to watch more college basketball. I'm always in favor of having

Speaker 3 just more sports on.

Speaker 3 And then my cool throne was going to be pettiness with Tom Brady editing out the word foals. I love it.
Which, again, kind of respect, but also good for Max. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. My hot seat, I have two.
One is memes pointed this out.

Speaker 1 The hot seat is Houston. So this was on college basketball Reddit.
In every tournament since 2021, a top two seed is lost in the first round, big sample size, by the way.

Speaker 1 In the first round to a team with a phallic, euphemistic name in 2021. Oral Roberts defeated Ohio State in 2022.
St. Peter's defeated Kentucky in 2023.
Fairleigh Dickinson defeated Purdue.

Speaker 1 That's three years in a row. Once is happenstance, twice as coincidence, three times as a pattern.
In 2024, Houston will face Longwood in the first round.

Speaker 3 Just looking at the bracket right here.

Speaker 3 I see two right next to each other. What about Moorhead?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Moorhead, and then Drake. Yeah.
Drake's very phallic.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Drake is also phallic. Okay, so what will happen?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 3 Interesting.

Speaker 3 I'm going to go with Drake.

Speaker 1 It's only one in two's top two seats. Okay.
And this huge sample size.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah.

Speaker 3 I don't know. I think it's just because usually big schools play against schools that you don't hear about that have.

Speaker 3 They have to get admissions up somehow, so they have to insinuate penises into their names. Exactly.

Speaker 7 There's also St. Peter's again.

Speaker 1 Yeah, St. Peter's again.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there we go. Tennessee, there it is.

Speaker 3 The Peacocks. The Peacocks.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 The Cox. And Long Beach.

Speaker 1 Long Beach.

Speaker 1 A lot of euphemism. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Long Bush. Just the word Long? It's the same as Long Bush.
It's Long Beach. Longwood is out there.
Yeah. Long Beach.
Look at the miss. Loganist.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Long Bitch. My other hot seat is Clemson fans.
So this is from a hilarious Twitter account that everyone should follow. Board Geniuses.
It's Message Board Geniuses.

Speaker 1 This Clemson fam called Tiger Bomb 1. I stayed up all night watching every New Mexico State game, start to finish.

Speaker 1 And from what I've been able to determine, there are two things the staff needs to be on the lookout for. First, if they shoot threes, we better be careful.

Speaker 1 They are not bad misses, or we may get out-rebound. And second, I hope our team is well-rested going into this matchup.
We can chalk this up as an automatic W if we win in those two key areas.

Speaker 1 Clemson is playing New Mexico, not New Mexico State.

Speaker 3 That's awesome.

Speaker 1 But Tiger Bomb 1 stayed up all night to watch every single New Mexico State.

Speaker 3 Are we sure he didn't watch New Mexico and called them New Mexico State?

Speaker 1 I don't know, but that's just very

Speaker 1 the idea of just watching all of them and being like, we got this.

Speaker 1 What is New Mexico? New Mexico State,

Speaker 1 let's see, their basketball team this year.

Speaker 7 Well, they dealt with some off-the-court stuff last year. Yes.
After Chris Jans left, and now he's doing a great job at Mississippi State. Yes.

Speaker 1 But I think it's been downhill for they were 13-9 in Conference USA. So easy dub.
Easy dub for Clemson.

Speaker 1 My cool throne is Jim Harbaugh, who did in the most Jim Harbaugh way ever a garage sale at his house in Ann Arbor.

Speaker 3 Is this common when coaches get fired or they leave to go somewhere else? For Jim Harbaugh, it is. They just sell all their shit.

Speaker 1 A man who has millions and millions of dollars, he's like, well, we got to... He doesn't waste things.
He doesn't waste a nut.

Speaker 3 He would probably win the Excel Olympics. Yes, for sure.
He's proficient in Excel.

Speaker 1 I just love the visual of Jim Harbaugh being like, here's all my junk, because you know he's going to get good prices for it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it's not a bargain hunter's dream. The khakis would probably go for like 500 a piece.

Speaker 1 Oh man, game one khakis.

Speaker 3 He probably has like some dips of skull that have just like a little bit left in them. And he's like, fuck it, sell those too.

Speaker 1 When we next interview Jim Harbaugh in person,

Speaker 1 we got to ask for some game-worn khakis. Yeah.
I bet you he'd give them to us.

Speaker 3 I think so. Some of the transition lenses, too.
A mock turtleneck. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The whole deal.

Speaker 1 I would like that.

Speaker 1 Jake.

Speaker 7 My hot seat is us here on Part of My Take because we have some new competition in the sports podcasting world.

Speaker 1 Ah, yeah, Lou Holtz.

Speaker 7 LeBron James has started his own podcast with J.J. Reddick called Mind the Game.

Speaker 1 You'll never guess this, but their first episode. You ready for this? Are you sitting down? You sitting down?

Speaker 3 I'm down.

Speaker 1 They were drinking wine. Oh, really? Yeah.
Good for them.

Speaker 1 That's just what average guys do when they podcast.

Speaker 3 I would actually listen to a LeBron James podcast if the topic every day was who's the goat, MJ or LeBron. Yeah.
And they just broke it down in a different way every single time.

Speaker 1 Topic one, who's the goat? Topic two, remember when you gave your five-year-old daughter wine?

Speaker 3 Yeah. Topic three, you remember when you showed your penis on national television? Yeah.

Speaker 1 People forget that.

Speaker 3 People forget about LeBron just

Speaker 3 slashing America, including youngsters. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Well, they started as asking a very simple question: what makes a great basketball player?

Speaker 3 What was the answer? I don't know.

Speaker 7 I'm just reading the synopsis. Okay.

Speaker 3 Being six foot eight.

Speaker 1 Being able to shoot the ball in the hoop.

Speaker 3 Wine.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah. They had two bottles of wine on the table.

Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah, my cool throne is baseball.

Speaker 5 Happy opening day.

Speaker 7 We talked about it with Stanford Steve a little bit, but we have opening day in South Korea between the Dodgers and the Padres at 6.30 a.m.

Speaker 3 Eastern time. Way to stay relevant, baseball.

Speaker 7 Hey, it's not going against March Madness.

Speaker 1 Kind of is. But it's not.

Speaker 3 The timing. It's in the spirit of it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's a crazy move.
What do you say, Max?

Speaker 5 I need to add this.

Speaker 9 Did you see Jose Alvarado?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 9 He's a pitcher for the Phillies. He's a larger man.

Speaker 9 They asked about the power coming from his legs and if that helps him with his velocity. And he talked about how he's a big grizzly bear.
And then he said, I'm fucking fat.

Speaker 1 Or

Speaker 1 fuck it.

Speaker 5 I fucked it up.

Speaker 1 Well, you're fat too, so. Yeah.
Wait.

Speaker 9 He goes,

Speaker 1 wait, I had it up. Come on.
I just had it up. I just had it up.
Come on, Matt. He's waiting, yeah.

Speaker 7 6.05 a.m. Eastern.
Dodgers Padres in South Korea.

Speaker 3 In other baseball news, did anybody see Chapman's Instagram post that he put up a couple days ago?

Speaker 1 He likes his mom's breasts.

Speaker 3 He likes his mom's breasts a lot.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Isn't that just nature?

Speaker 3 Way more. Well, usually you grow out of that like, what, 37 years ago? How old is he?

Speaker 1 He's older and he, yeah.

Speaker 3 36 years. Yeah, usually you would grow out of that 35 years ago.
He was honking him. He was really into his mom's boobs.
Yeah. He was honking.
That is the source of life.

Speaker 1 He was fondling.

Speaker 3 He was a weird dude. It was very strange.

Speaker 1 That weird, weird dude.

Speaker 3 That might have been the weirdest, like, self-promoted Instagram video of all time.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Maybe it's cultural.

Speaker 1 Dude, is that what happens in Cuba? I don't know. I'm just trying to help him out.
He did win a World Series for me.

Speaker 1 Max, give us the quote.

Speaker 1 Bro, I see, like, a fat boy. You know, like, I'm fucking fat.

Speaker 1 Can you send me that clip, please?

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's the best.

Speaker 1 He's awesome. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. Good hot seat, cool thrones, guys.

Speaker 1 Let's get to our interview with Mark Titus. We're going to break down the whole bracket.

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Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest, one of our favorite longtime recurring guests. Eight years running.
I think he was first on the show.

Speaker 3 I believe it was March of 2016.

Speaker 1 Might have been March of 2016.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it was. I was guest number like three or four.

Speaker 1 Three or four. It is March.

Speaker 3 Everybody was like, who the fuck is this guest? Yeah. This podcast sucks now.

Speaker 1 our co-worker just kidding mark uh he's been he's been uh with us now at barstool for almost or over a year over a year

Speaker 1 uh first year review

Speaker 1 you gotta work better you gotta work harder i gotta work i gotta do more work

Speaker 5 suck you're actually on a pip uh no i i i said this last time i was here i love it um it it took a little while being a new guy here does suck i will say that i'll be completely honest um

Speaker 5 because i was under a microscope that i didn't necessarily think I would be under.

Speaker 5 You sort of get like a, you get like a reality check of how not important you are, too, when you sign on to work here.

Speaker 5 Because I don't think I'm the biggest guy in sports media by any stretch of the imagination, but I felt like when I came here, I had like sort of some sort of reputation or I had some sort of people kind of knew me a little bit.

Speaker 5 But then I got to barstool and there was just a lot of, I realized I'm being introduced to a completely different audience of people that are like, who the fuck is this guy?

Speaker 5 A lot of, he's only here because he's Dan's friend,

Speaker 1 which is true. Yeah,

Speaker 5 but also, like, we became friends because I was doing some shit before I got to Barcelona.

Speaker 5 So that part was, I was not anticipating that, but I love it here, and I think year one was awesome. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What do you have for it? Your one was awesome as well.

Speaker 3 You have anything big for year two? Face tattoo.

Speaker 5 I'm getting a face tattoo. I think face tattoos, this is the golden era of face tattoos.

Speaker 5 They're everywhere. A lot of celebrities have them, and I just feel like maybe that's what I need to shake it up.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I've noticed that. There's a lot more people, like if you're a moderately successful, like punk musician now, or like a pop punk guy, you're getting teardrop tattoos on your face.

Speaker 3 We need to put something in place where we monitor, if you have a teardrop tattoo, you should have killed somebody.

Speaker 1 That's what I'm terrified by then. Like, Pitler is doing it to now.

Speaker 3 People just do it because they're depressed.

Speaker 5 Do you remember when Mike Tyson got the face tattoo?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, freaked out about it. Biggest thing ever.

Speaker 5 And now, I mean, if you watch the Grammys, like half the people there have face tattoos.

Speaker 1 If you're an artist or an MMA fighter and you don't have at least neck, you're like, what have you been doing?

Speaker 5 Yeah, so.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but year one I thought went great.

Speaker 1 Also, you know, I'm so happy you've been here and joined us. I pitched you hard.
What it was like two years ago? I was doing my Cal sitting in your living room

Speaker 1 being like, you got to come, you got to join.

Speaker 1 And part of that was just that when we get to this week of the calendar, I didn't want to have to text you being like, hey, can you come on the show?

Speaker 1 I wanted to just be able to be like, hey, can you come on the show and just walk five feet and come on the show?

Speaker 5 Let me text my bosses, make sure it's okay. Yeah, so this is good.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. So

Speaker 5 I'm way more prepared, I will say, for this year's NCA tournament.

Speaker 5 That was probably the hardest part is like the second I signed on, it made a lot of sense for me to get hired right before the NCA tournament because it's the, you know, it's my big time, I guess.

Speaker 5 But having like my first real assignment here to be in the gambling cave with you and Dave and everybody else when I really didn't know, I know Dave like a little bit, but like when I was in there,

Speaker 5 I had met Dave like three times in my life, and suddenly he's like screaming at me about picks yeah it was

Speaker 3 Milk and Barcelona just sit here and be perfect it was perfect yeah

Speaker 1 we essentially put you into Navy SEAL's buds training yeah where it's like the first day they drown you and bring you back to life they're like all right now you got to go lay in the ocean

Speaker 5 that is how college basketball guys recruit is you show all the the big tittied women and all the gear and all the money and then the second year on campus you're like get on the line we're running suicides that's how it kind of felt for me was like you're selling me on this this dream in Chicago and this fantasy factory and all that.

Speaker 5 And I'm like, yeah, dude, yeah, I'll sign right here. And I sign, and you're like, go sit next to Big Ev.

Speaker 1 Treadmill.

Speaker 5 Go have Dave yell at you. And Big Ev was yelling at me.

Speaker 1 And we were like, where the fuck am I?

Speaker 3 We were just sending you links daily to smoke shows and guess that asses. And then you signed up here.
You're like, okay, now you have to sit on a couch directly next to Mincy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we hardened you. Let Minceyard.

Speaker 3 Yeah, let Mincey breathe on you for a while. I'll be better prepared this year.
Who was your final four last year?

Speaker 5 Not good. I had Bama winning it.

Speaker 5 Bama made the 316.

Speaker 5 I can't remember who else I had.

Speaker 5 I had Bama winning it is all I really remember. And then they lost to San Diego State.
But I don't remember last year's bracket being that bad. As far as embarrassments go,

Speaker 5 I wasn't Jake Marsh, who has two years in a row now

Speaker 5 picked the

Speaker 5 champion lose on Devon.

Speaker 1 And who's your national champion this year?

Speaker 7 North Carolina.

Speaker 1 So shout out to the Howard Wagner. I actually, Howard Wagner.
I actually, I mean, we could just dive into it. Like, and we could start with the West.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I actually think that that is the most chaotic and like ripe for upset

Speaker 1 region because the region of drama. Yeah, the region of drama because it's LA.
It's a Russian.

Speaker 1 But we kind of caught him. It's L.A.
Yeah. And that's it.

Speaker 1 It seemed like that was he had predetermined that one.

Speaker 1 But I was looking through the bracket because it's always like Sunday night, we just give our instant reactions, then you have a couple days to digest it.

Speaker 1 And I'd spend basically Monday through Wednesday filling my head with stats and a whole plan on how I'm going to gamble on Thursday and Friday.

Speaker 1 And then the minute the game's tip, I throw it all out the window. But

Speaker 1 that West region,

Speaker 1 I actually think it's the region of teams I don't trust. Right.
I don't trust the sink, like Alabama, which you just mentioned. They have been playing some of the worst ball possible down the stretch.

Speaker 1 Arizona,

Speaker 1 they throw out clunkers left and right. And if you slow them down, it's like

Speaker 1 they can't run the half court. I don't trust.
Baylor, they turn the ball over, and they're like chaotic.

Speaker 1 You know, Baylor can look awesome one day, and then it can look like they don't know how to play basketball the next.

Speaker 1 And North Carolina is probably the weakest of the four one seeds, they definitely are.

Speaker 5 And Bama, yeah, like you said, they don't guard anybody. I don't think Baylor guards anybody.
Dayton

Speaker 5 is an interesting team in terms of like they were ranked at certain points in this season.

Speaker 5 They have Deron Holmes, who's one of the best players in the country, but they're actually as like a team not really putting it together.

Speaker 5 St. Mary's is interesting, but like

Speaker 5 the way they play so slow and I don't know if they have the top end talent to really go on like that. I think St.

Speaker 5 Mary's can win a few games in this tournament, but when it comes to the Jimmys and Joe's versus the X's and O's type thing, I don't know if they have the horses really.

Speaker 1 Can I throw out one crazy thing in this West? Go ahead. Michigan State.

Speaker 5 I know. It's hard not to.

Speaker 1 It does

Speaker 1 feel like

Speaker 3 if we're going to have the Izzo conversation that we have every year, it's like this team's not that good, but they overperform in March.

Speaker 1 And they also, so you guys were doing your bracket show, so you weren't able to watch the CBS bracket reveal, but we were joking about it.

Speaker 1 They showed Michigan State, and someone was like,

Speaker 1 they're playing really good ball. They're just not winning games.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so,

Speaker 1 like, you do have to win the game, but that also, they are that like kind of lurking team. where if they could put it all together and start making shots for once,

Speaker 1 who the fuck knows?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I have, my problem with this Michigan State team is I think the teams in the past, the Michigan State teams in the past that have had those runs, that have not necessarily been seeded high, but have, like last year's team was a seventh seed.

Speaker 5 They make the Sweet 16, right? And they didn't make the elite eight. Yeah, they made the Sweet 16.

Speaker 7 They lost to Kansas City and Legardo.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 5 But they beat Marquette, who was a very good team last year, and they beat Marquette in the second round, and it sort of felt like we got a little taste of Izzo in March.

Speaker 5 Every other team, I felt like there have been stretches through the season where Michigan State has shown the promise, and then they just put it together in March.

Speaker 5 I don't feel like this year's team has really ever shown that. There's been like no point in watching Michigan State this year where I'm like, this feels like a team that can go on a run in March.

Speaker 5 Yeah, they have. That's the biggest difference.

Speaker 5 They felt disjointed the entire season, starting with when they lost to the Dukes to open the season.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I remember that game.

Speaker 1 It's very funny looking at this Michigan State team because if you look at the Ken Palm and the Bart Torvik and they're analytically a top 25 team but you're right they never they never had that one stretch where you're like ooh Michigan State watch out for them they had like a couple what did they beat no they didn't beat Purdue did they I don't know they beat Illinois

Speaker 5 that was like their big one uh and then they and then they beat Penn State and Michigan after that which you know neither one of those teams are all that great uh and then they turned around and lost three in a row so they

Speaker 5 when you see them at their best yes they

Speaker 5 it wouldn't shock like if you get Michigan State at their best they can they can hang with anybody I mean, we saw it in the Big Ten tournament. They were right there with Purdue.

Speaker 5 But I haven't seen consistent, and obviously, to go on runs in the NCA tournament, you have to string together multiple good games. I haven't really seen that for Michigan State this year.
So

Speaker 5 I don't know. But it is Izzo and March.

Speaker 5 And as much as Izzo haters want to say he's won one national title, and it's been a while since he's been to a Final Four and all that, it's not that Izzo goes to the Final Four every year.

Speaker 5 It's that you have situations like last year,

Speaker 5 they had no business beating Marquette. Like, Marquette was very much a better team than Michigan State.
And on that night, it was just like you thought the seeds were flipped around.

Speaker 1 So, Izzo's really good at that.

Speaker 5 He doesn't always have the best team, but it does seem like every time March rolls around, that is the best version that Michigan State can possibly be.

Speaker 5 I just think that this year's team, their best version isn't really that good.

Speaker 3 It's a great way to go through life, though, if you can somehow reach a point where you chronically set the bar very low for yourself and then outperform those expectations. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Then people are always happy with you.

Speaker 1 And then people are like, oh, you're a great coach.

Speaker 3 Good job. That is pretty much what he's doing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 He did a great job of that. Another coach, big story in the region of drama,

Speaker 3 Long Beach State, Dan Monster.

Speaker 3 So I'm obsessed with this story because

Speaker 3 he got fired and then he's like, yeah, can I still coach? They're like, yeah, I guess you can still coach even though you're fired. And then he just keeps winning.

Speaker 3 And I hope that if they can somehow pull off the upset, if Arizona has,

Speaker 3 I'll put it this way.

Speaker 3 It's not necessarily like if Arizona has a bad night, if Long Beach State, because they play really fast, they're like one of the fastest paced teams, but they just don't score that much.

Speaker 1 But if they, if they're also really bad to go against Arizona, Arizona, if you want to play fast with Arizona, Arizona will just out Arizona.

Speaker 5 They love that.

Speaker 3 I think the over-under is like 160, 163, something like that.

Speaker 3 But if they can make shots, if they can score, and they beat Arizona, you have to hire that guy, right?

Speaker 1 You have to rehire.

Speaker 5 You have to rehire Dan Munson.

Speaker 5 Jake's storyline, I don't know if we didn't talk about this on Sunday. Dan Munson was the head coach of Gonzaga.

Speaker 1 He should never have left.

Speaker 5 He hired, I think he technically hired Tommy Lloyd, but Lloyd never coached with him because he left for Minnesota. Which was a failure.

Speaker 5 Then Mark Few takes over, and then Tommy Lloyd becomes Mark Few.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's an alternate world where Dan Munson just stays at Gonzaga.

Speaker 1 Because he kind of was the start of Gonzaga. Right.
And then left for Minnesota, and then that failed, and then Gonzaga just continued to be Gonzaga.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Arizona last year lost to Princeton, and Jake and I have talked about it a lot.

Speaker 5 It's like the biggest upset in college or in March Madness history that nobody remembers because it happened on the same day as Purdue losing.

Speaker 5 But Arizona,

Speaker 5 it is interesting because they feel like a program under Tommy Lloyd that has they've racked up a ton of wins.

Speaker 5 There's a lot of promise in the program, but they are sort of they have underperformed in the NCAA tournament the last few years.

Speaker 5 With the final four being in Arizona, they are in a region that's wide open.

Speaker 5 There aren't a lot of West Coast. I mean, you look at the top seeds, it's Baylors, I guess, in Texas, but Bama and Carolina.

Speaker 5 If they get to the Sweet 16, they're playing in L.A., they're probably going to have some home court advantage. It does feel like a great draw for Arizona, but

Speaker 5 they can't get out of their own way.

Speaker 5 And both this particular team and them under Tommy Lloyd the last few years,

Speaker 5 they are the kings of beating themselves. So I don't think they're going to lose to Long Beach, but who the hell knows what's going to happen with Arizona?

Speaker 5 Because they were number one in the country at one point this year.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I would love to see Long Beach win, but

Speaker 3 I think it's going to be a blowout.

Speaker 1 I think Arizona is going to crush them. This is, though, if you're filling out your bracket, I feel like this is the region that you take a shot.

Speaker 1 Because I think it's going to be a mess no matter what. So it's like there's going to be very few people who get this portion of the bracket correct that you might as well take the shot.

Speaker 1 I completely agree.

Speaker 5 I think this is the, if there's a double-digit seed, if there's a six or higher seed, whatever your line is where you're like, that's crazy. I can't believe they're in the final four.

Speaker 5 I think it's coming out of the West, which is why I got really crazy with my bracket. I picked Arizona to make the final four.
Love it.

Speaker 1 Wow, good.

Speaker 5 A lot of people think one seed. I was going two on that.

Speaker 3 Yeah. What do you think about New Mexico?

Speaker 5 I like New Mexico. New Mexico is good.

Speaker 5 They play defense. They like to run, too.
They have the story, which I don't know how much that matters, but the pedigree of

Speaker 5 Patino and Mashburn, I love that. I love the idea of that.

Speaker 5 It is so weird, though, because the Mountain West, as you know, Dan, we never trusted the Mountain West for years and years.

Speaker 1 Rightfully so.

Speaker 5 I don't think the Mountain West even had a good tournament last year, but San Diego State made the national championship.

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 5 So, like, as a conference, I think it was one team had a good run, and that's all it really takes is now

Speaker 5 all of a sudden the Mountain West has six teams in, and I like all of them, and I think they're all very good.

Speaker 1 No, yeah. The Mountain West usually is just, they're bad in the tournament.
It's just a fact. And then San Diego State kind of corrected that for them.

Speaker 1 But remember, we had, I think it was two years ago when the Mountain West had four teams in, and they were out by like 3 o'clock on Thursday. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What the fuck? I remember, was Colorado State, like Michigan?

Speaker 5 I remember there was like a college, David Roddy, who's like a fucking bowling ball.

Speaker 5 I love that Colorado State team. And I think they were playing Michigan in the first round.
It was like a 6-11 game. And I was like, that's an upset.
That's an obvious.

Speaker 5 And Michigan beat the fuck out of him, if I remember right. Maybe it was a close game.
But

Speaker 5 every time I talk myself into Mountain West teams, they let me down. But New Mexico, I think, has a great draw.
I mean, Clemson

Speaker 5 has, Clemson came out of the gates hot. They have PJ Hall, who's a great player, and obviously they have a good team.

Speaker 5 But they're not playing their best basketball right now, and New Mexico kind of is. Baylor, I don't think really guards that well.

Speaker 5 So, yeah, I think New Mexico has a great draw for sure. I have them going to the Sweet 16 out of the pod.

Speaker 3 What about your champion last year, Alabama?

Speaker 5 They are definitively worse than they were last year, so that gives me pause.

Speaker 5 They don't guard anybody. They're very

Speaker 1 soft at the rim. Florida was getting layup after layup after layup on them.

Speaker 5 And it's not that they don't guard anybody, it's that they're okay with not guarding anybody. I think that that rubs me the wrong.

Speaker 5 It's not like they're a team that like Kentucky doesn't really guard anybody, but it sort of feels like John Caliperi's losing his mind over that, and he's trying everything to get them to guard.

Speaker 1 Oh, he's got tweaks, by the way.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, I saw that. Yeah, he's got some.
He's got some tweaks. He's got some tweaks.
He's got some tweaks.

Speaker 5 I think Cal looks at his team and is like, we have to figure this defense out. He just can't quite fully do it.

Speaker 5 Nate Oates is like, fuck it.

Speaker 5 I like my team.

Speaker 5 We're just going to outscore everybody,

Speaker 5 which I would like a lot more in a seven-game series. I don't like it in a one-and-done series.

Speaker 5 But

Speaker 5 it's hard to match Alabama. I mean, when they get up and down, everybody on the floor has a green light.

Speaker 5 If you catch them on the right night, you think you're seeing the best team in college basketball. But I just don't, they don't have the top end.

Speaker 5 They don't have a Brandon Miller. Their best player is Mark Sears, who's a good player.
I don't know how many NBA minutes he'll even get in his career. So that's what worries me about Bamas.

Speaker 5 I don't don't think they have the top end talent and they don't have the defense.

Speaker 3 So, St. Mary's, Alabama, second-round upset alert?

Speaker 5 Yeah, it could be. I mean, that is about as much of a stylistic clash as you can get in college basketball.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, if St.

Speaker 5 Mary's can slow it down and frustrate Alabama. Does St.

Speaker 3 Mary's have an Australian player this year I can get behind?

Speaker 1 They have to, right? They have to, right? They always.

Speaker 3 I need an Aussie that I need to be like, I'm obsessed with that guy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they always do.

Speaker 1 All right. So, and then

Speaker 1 the opposite of the West, going to the East,

Speaker 1 the most loaded.

Speaker 5 What did Rustin call that one?

Speaker 3 That's the region of Gladiators.

Speaker 1 Gladiators.

Speaker 3 You know why? Because he likes the movie Gladiators.

Speaker 1 It is a crazy region because you have the number one overall seed in UConn, and then you have, like, if you look at just analytically speaking, like, Auburn, Illinois, and Iowa State are all top 15 teams all...

Speaker 1 grouped in that bracket. Obviously, UConn doesn't have to play all of them because Illinois and Iowa State would potentially meet before that, but they got a tough, like UConn got got a tough draw.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying that. I mean, UConn's better than everyone, but they got a tough draw.
And everyone's looking at it and being like, Auburn's playing great ball. Illinois can.

Speaker 1 Illinois has two guys that everyone is going to have a problem with in Damascus and Taryn Shannon. And Iowa State just whooped the fuck out of Houston.

Speaker 5 Yeah, all four of them won their conference tournaments, which where are we on that? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Speaker 3 I think it's a bad thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think it's a...
good. I think it's not as bad as people want to make it.
This is my favorite time of year because everyone tries to find the key recipe

Speaker 1 To

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 the famous one is everyone's like, you know, top 20 in offensive efficiency, top 20 in defensive efficiency on Ken Palm. That's the only teams that have ever won a title.

Speaker 1 A lot of the times people are tweeting that

Speaker 1 using the end of the game.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I think after they just won our national tournaments,

Speaker 1 yeah, so of course they're top 20 because they literally just won six games against tournament teams. And if you look at it in the past, there's been many, many outliers

Speaker 1 that have not met both of those. I've even seen people throw out top 40 and top 22.

Speaker 1 Changing it all these ways,

Speaker 1 there's no key to it.

Speaker 1 You want a team that's good on offense and defense, but if you think there's a formula, there isn't.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you figure out the formula based on the past, and then someone wins it that doesn't fit the formula.

Speaker 5 And instead of just being like, all these formulas are stupid, you say, okay, well, let's just tweak the formula.

Speaker 1 Well, let's throw them in with the mix and then the formula.

Speaker 1 And then there's always the formula, and everyone's like, you know, there'll be like 20 out of the last 21 just because 2014 UConn doesn't meet any formula. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 5 And you're like, but wait, they just won the, they won the instead of going, well, maybe the formulas don't matter, you just put a little asterisk.

Speaker 5 Like, Maryland in 02, I remember, was the, they had no McDonald's all-Americans.

Speaker 5 And as Maryland was like going through in 02, it was like, I don't know if you can win a national championship if you don't have a McDonald's All-American.

Speaker 5 And then they did, and then everyone's like, okay, so maybe you can.

Speaker 1 All right, so, all right, we got that. And then it's like

Speaker 3 to Gary Williams just break basketball.

Speaker 5 And we've seen that with coaches too, where it's like Jay Wright can't get over the hump, and then he does. It's like, okay, so Jay Wright, you're now one of the good coaches.
I'll add you to the mix.

Speaker 5 Now we trust Jay Wright in March. Tony Bennett, you're the new guy that can't do it.

Speaker 1 Okay, now we trust you. Okay.

Speaker 1 Even the 12-15

Speaker 1 or 12-5 matchup where everyone's like, you got to have a bunch of 12s. Since 2015,

Speaker 1 the 12s are 9-23 against 5 seeds.

Speaker 1 And then if you look at the 6-11,

Speaker 1 11 seeds are 17-15 against 6 seeds. That's the new seed.

Speaker 1 But it's just all these things that we try to put in our head, and it really, like,

Speaker 1 they're all just shape-shifted for your

Speaker 1 here's the perfect bracket.

Speaker 3 An 11-seed is just a really good 12-seed. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So that makes sense.
Except Duquesne. Yeah.
Except Duquesne. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I want there.

Speaker 7 This year they're all bid stealers, all four 11 seeds.

Speaker 3 Yeah, you just penciled them in there. What's funny about this is you can twist it any way you want.

Speaker 3 Like if UConn loses and they lose to like a conference champion, you can be like, championship fatigue for UConn and then if they win then you can be like okay well no actually winning your conference championship is good right it puts you on a role so the bottom line is we're not going to learn anything about that debate from this region because we're going to have one conference champion that comes out of it or the rest are going to lose yeah or UConn wins the national championship the rest of the teams that won their conference tournament lose their first game but because UConn won the national championship the conclusion is winning conference tournaments is a good thing because we're ignoring the rest of the crop that like it made them tired or, you know, I'm trying to find

Speaker 3 Bruce Pearl cried at the end of the SEC tournament. He was, he was weeping.
Maybe that was too much emotion.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to find the stat. I saw a stat where it's like

Speaker 1 the conference champion is, it really doesn't matter if you win or not. The only thing that actually matters is if you lost in the first round of your conference.
Yeah, right. That's the only

Speaker 5 thing you lose the first game. You won't win the national championship.

Speaker 1 Right. That's the indicator.

Speaker 1 So it's like, and I saw a stat where it's basically like the final four is usually made up of teams that either won it their conference championship or at least were in the semifinal or final.

Speaker 5 So last year I went Galaxy Brain and I thought I really had something. Boy, I was so convinced that I thought if you're a crazy coach, you can't win a national champion.

Speaker 5 I thought if you're like a coach known for being insane on the sidelines, and my rationale, because I went back and I looked through all the coaches, like Bob Knight won some, but that was so long ago that it didn't factor into modern college basketball.

Speaker 5 And I was like, there must be something too when

Speaker 5 the pressure is high, it's a tie tie game at the under-four timeout,

Speaker 5 there's nerves setting in, and guys are all over. You need a calming influence in the huddle.
You can't have a guy who's like spastic and yelling at guys and motherfucking guys.

Speaker 5 You need a guy that's calm. And then Dan Hurley won the national championship.

Speaker 1 Right. Because Dan Hurley won the national championship.

Speaker 3 That's because his dad was sitting behind him and telling him when to use timeouts.

Speaker 1 The one thing you could say about UConn is it has been 10 years since the number one overall seed has won the national title, and 20 years since we've had a back-to-back. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So that would be the only thing, or about 20 years. But still, UConn can do it all.
Like, they can do it all.

Speaker 5 10 years was

Speaker 1 wait wait 10 years who who won the last who was the last number one overall seed uh let's see it was probably kentucky right with anthony davis oh yeah you met over 10 years yeah yeah over 10 years i was i was like you yeah ucon 2014 was not yeah it was probably or who won 2013 well louisville won but they didn't yeah louisville with the asterisk um

Speaker 5 yeah i mean like 09 north carolina uh

Speaker 5 We went into the tournament. They were so clearly a cut above everybody else.
And you're like, but it's March. You never know.

Speaker 1 You never know. And then they beat the fuck out of everybody.
Killed everyone. So this

Speaker 1 region, are you just going UConn?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 5 I do think the UConn Auburn game could get really good.

Speaker 5 The reason UConn, beyond just like the simplistic, they are the best team, the reason you trust UConn in March and what they have demonstrated throughout the season is that UConn has a plan A, they have a plan B, they have a plan C, they have a plan D.

Speaker 5 They can beat you in all sorts of ways.

Speaker 5 And you don't have to look any further than just like the Marquette game in the Big East Championship when they couldn't hit a shot to start the game, and they still play great defense. They still,

Speaker 5 UConn fans will say it's Tristan Newton, and I agree with them, but also you could conceivably, just like you could last year with UConn, you could have a debate about who the best player on the team is because it depends on certain factors of certain games and all that.

Speaker 5 And for that reason, that's why you believe in UConn. It's not just that they are beating everybody, and it's not just like you look at their record and you're like, oh, they won it last year.

Speaker 5 They're the number one. Let's just go with them.

Speaker 5 When you think about how these games will shake out, Auburn, Janai Broome's a great player, and Auburn plays great defense. And maybe that turns into a rock fight.
We can trust UConn in that game.

Speaker 5 If UConn meets Illinois and the Elite Eight and Illinois wants to get up and down and they have, you know, Terrence Shannon and Marcus DeMask are hitting everything, I can trust UConn in that game.

Speaker 5 And that's the reason I really, really like UConn is that they can adjust to

Speaker 5 whatever the game becomes.

Speaker 1 And Auburn, they kind of dispelled it with the SEC tournament, but the big bugaboo about Auburn going into the SEC tournament was away they were not as good. Right.

Speaker 1 And they will be playing if they play UConn in the Sweet 16. It will be in Boston.
The one thing does have basically a home game.

Speaker 5 This isn't me being an Auburn hater. This is just trying to

Speaker 5 really take everything into account. Their run to the SEC championship, they didn't have to play the other top, the other top teams.

Speaker 5 So Auburn looked great on the run to the SEC championship, but it wasn't like they went through Tennessee and Kentucky and Bama to do it,

Speaker 5 which doesn't take anything away from them. It's just a little bit of context where it's like, all right, is that part of it too?

Speaker 5 Because Illinois, Illinois looks awesome, and Illinois was down 10 every game they played in the Big Ten tournament and came back and went. Terrence Shannon Jr.

Speaker 5 is like the best scorer in the country right now. He's on a tear, but I didn't realize that Illinois has not beaten a currently ranked team all season.

Speaker 5 Like Illinois,

Speaker 5 yeah, that gave me pause.

Speaker 1 They lost both games to Purdue.

Speaker 5 They lose both games to Purdue. The teams they beat like Wisconsin,

Speaker 1 but they weren't ranked when they played.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and have we seen Illinois go on a,

Speaker 5 I think they played Arizona. Arizona beat them.
They beat FAU, but FAU, and at the time it felt like something, but FAU hasn't had a great year.

Speaker 1 They didn't play Arizona. That was last year.
Oh, they beat Tennessee. They beat Tennessee, or they lost to Tennessee.
Tennessee.

Speaker 5 Tennessee is the first one.

Speaker 1 And they lost to Marquette as well.

Speaker 5 Yeah, so yeah, they lost at home to Marquette.

Speaker 3 Can you dumb it down a little bit for us? Are they frauds? Are you saying they're fraudulent?

Speaker 5 Yeah, why not? Okay, cool.

Speaker 3 Fraudulent.

Speaker 5 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 5 That's what we want to say. Yeah,

Speaker 5 but that's the context you need, though, is because you're like, Illinois won the Big Ten, so they must have beaten

Speaker 5 their best team in the Big Ten, and I guess technically they are, but I would feel a lot more comfortable about Illinois if part of their path to the Big Ten title was they beat Purdue by like 10, you know?

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Our friend friend Tom Fernilli was mad about their seeding. He actually texted me, Big Cat and Hank, that he was mad online.

Speaker 3 He said that in 2021, Illinois won the Big Ten, is a one seed, and got Loyola in the second round. Loyola was ranked ninth by Kinpom.
We know what happened.

Speaker 3 2022, Illinois was a four-seed, got the three-seed Houston in the second round. Houston was ranked fourth by Kinpom.
The fix was in. Now this year, Illinois is a three-seed.
BYU is the sixth seed.

Speaker 3 Not only is BYU 16th in Kinpom, but they've admitted that BYU is a five-seed, but they had to bump it to a six because it can't play on Sunday. And who do they decide to give BYU to?

Speaker 3 That's right, Illinois.

Speaker 1 The committee hates Illinois.

Speaker 3 Does the committee hate Illinois?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, it's right there. You just spelled it out.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's plain as day. They do kind of, Illinois has to get to the second weekend.
Like, Brad Underwood has been flirting with it, and they've had some really good teams.

Speaker 1 I feel like they got to make a little run here.

Speaker 5 I cannot believe that they haven't been since 05. Right.
That's one of the things that I, even when I am reminded of it, I have to take a second and be like, it's been since 2005, right?

Speaker 1 Since they've been to the Sweet 16.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And they do have, like,

Speaker 1 I'm a big believer in the tournament, especially. Like, if you can say definitively, you have the best player on the court.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, those are the teams I will trust because it always comes down to end of game, who's going to get you a bucket.

Speaker 1 And Terrence Shannon should be the best player on the court for most of the games they play.

Speaker 5 Right. BYU is a terrible matchup, though, because BYU has length.

Speaker 5 They are very well coached.

Speaker 5 I would feel, if I was an Illinois fan, I'd be very frustrated by that.

Speaker 5 And like you said,

Speaker 5 the committee literally did say, we think BYU deserves a five-seed, but we can't play them on Sunday. That is very frustrating.
That's crazy to me.

Speaker 3 It's crazy that school can just be like, yeah, we're not going to play on this day of the week.

Speaker 3 And the NCAA tournament committee is like, yeah, fair enough. We'll just change our seats.

Speaker 1 Which I guess the only saving grace is Duquesne is definitely not an 11-seed. So at least they kind of corrected it there.
Where

Speaker 1 they're almost playing a 5-12 matchup.

Speaker 5 And I think they think that they're i don't know if punishing is the right word but it's like all right if by you if you don't want to play on sunday you're we're going to knock you down a seed we're not going to knock you up a seed yeah um and they think that that's the fix and it kind of is and for by you but it's unfair if you want to call it unfair i do think that like if you're if you're a team that's really spending a lot of time

Speaker 5 trying to figure out if you got a fair draw in the tournament you're not a serious national title contender yeah like you you the attitude for the serious national title contenders are like fuck it we'll play anybody anywhere and we'll beat their ass Because the tournament turns into just such a random series of, like, who you end up playing against.

Speaker 1 Right. Yeah, and who and who's hot on the right day.

Speaker 5 But I do feel for Illinois fans because that BYU, everybody they put on the floor is seemingly 6'5 or taller, and they're all 26 years old.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I sure don't know that, but that's how most BYU teams are.

Speaker 5 They have a big boy, too, on BYU.

Speaker 5 They're big guy. They got like a DJ Burns type dude that's a wrecking ball.
I love that.

Speaker 1 That's fun to watch.

Speaker 3 Arizona State should be like, we are not allowed to play on Fridays because we party too much.

Speaker 3 That's our holiday.

Speaker 5 I think they do. That's why they're not in the tournament.

Speaker 1 Okay, so you have UConn coming out of this region. So UConn in Arizona is your left half of

Speaker 1 the bracket.

Speaker 5 I took a shot at

Speaker 5 I like the Drake. I like the idea of Drake going on a run, too.
So I put

Speaker 5 Drake's my Cinderella of this tournament.

Speaker 5 So I had, I

Speaker 5 crossed it out four different times, but I have Drake in my Elite Eight just because I felt like I should pick

Speaker 5 one crazy team in the Elite eight, and Drake was my pick. So Drake's my, the Drake-Washington State game

Speaker 5 is one to watch in the first round. I think both teams are awesome, and I think that's going to be a great game.

Speaker 5 But I think Drake playing Iowa State, if Drake can beat Washington State, playing Iowa State and having the in-state thing going on, and they're going to have the, like you said earlier, Dan, they're going to have the best player on the floor in that game with Tucker DeVries.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 5 that's my team to watch. That's the team I believe in.
They have unfinished business. Last year, they had Miami, I don't want to say on the ropes, but

Speaker 5 they were up at halftime. They were up deep into the second half.
Let that slip away. Miami goes to the final four.
Tucker DeVries, their best player, was 1 for 13 in that game.

Speaker 5 I think they have unfinished business, and I like the idea of Drake going on a run.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I do, too.

Speaker 3 Isn't somebody at Drake related to somebody here at Barstall?

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 1 Connor Enright, the point guard, his brother Kyle, is our... What does he do here, Jake?

Speaker 7 He's part of Lisa's team on the live events side.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. He's great.
You remember last year? No, I know Kyle. Freaking out.
Yeah, his brother Connor hit the game winner against Indiana Shakespeare.

Speaker 3 Yeah, that was awesome.

Speaker 3 Okay, so Drake's or Cinderella? What's the opposite of Cinderella?

Speaker 1 I guess that's Purdue. Purdue.

Speaker 3 That would be what, like wicked stepmother? Wicked.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Who's the wicked stepmother of this tournament?

Speaker 1 Actually, that sounds kind of hot.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that does. So what is that? The team that fucks it up? Yeah.

Speaker 3 The good team that's going to choke.

Speaker 1 Hmm.

Speaker 5 Well, I mean, it would have to be Iowa State because I have them losing to Drake in the second round. I have North Carolina.
North Carolina, I think, is the most susceptible one seed. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Because

Speaker 5 they are heavily reliant on Armando.

Speaker 5 They have two identities. One is let Armando Baycott do everything for us, which is a problem because Armando Baycott is a big guy and

Speaker 5 it's not 1971 and you can't really play through a guy like that anymore. And also, he's just not that good.
He's more of like a rim runner.

Speaker 1 Someone said that in the gambling cave on Saturday. They're like, are we sure Mondo Baycott's that good? And I was like, well, he's been in college for six years, so I'd say probably not.

Speaker 1 Yeah, probably.

Speaker 1 He would have gone to the NBA.

Speaker 5 But you look up his run at North Carolina, and he's the all-time leading rebounder, and he's averaged all sorts of points, and you're like, he's kind of good, though.

Speaker 1 But you don't want to run your offense through him.

Speaker 5 So this year, RJ Davis is having an incredible year, is going to be a first-team All-American. He's the reason they're a one-seed.
I think RJ Davis is awesome, but R.J. Davis is like 5'11, 6'1.

Speaker 5 And if...

Speaker 5 If your whole offense is like, we need R.J. Davis to score 35 points, I don't love the idea of that either.
So

Speaker 5 I think they're the most susceptible one. The problem with like picking them to lose is who's going to beat them.

Speaker 5 I guess you could talk yourself into Michigan State in the second round, whatever, but the West is kind of wide open.

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Speaker 1 All right, so Midwest, Purdue, number one seed. Yep.

Speaker 1 I still don't trust Purdue, but I do think they have a pretty decent bracket. Like, I'm not.

Speaker 5 The problem with that region is who do you trust in that region?

Speaker 5 It's a different problem from the West, which is the West, I just don't like the teams. I like some of the Jerseys.
I like North Carolina. I like Michigan State.
I like Arizona's programs.

Speaker 5 can do it. They've done it before.

Speaker 5 The Midwest, I like the teams. I like Purdue.
I like like Tennessee. I like Creighton.
I like all three of those teams. Those, if you can make a list of three teams that

Speaker 5 are known to never get over the hump in terms of going to the final four, it's those three teams.

Speaker 3 Rossine called this the region of tension because every team is like, I hope we don't fuck this up.

Speaker 1 I'll tell you what, the

Speaker 1 Oregon, I keep going back to just because I think Dana Altman is one of the most underrated coaches in NCAA basketball.

Speaker 3 Fun fact, he's never lost a first-round game.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's got an incredible tournament record.

Speaker 1 He might be the new Tomizzo in that he like every year it's like Oregon's in the sweetest. You think he's dead and he's dead, yeah.
Yeah, and they were dead.

Speaker 1 I mean, they were, they were a bid stealer.

Speaker 1 I also, people, this is another 12-5 where I feel like everyone's trying to get Gonzaga because they have a down year in terms of Gonzaga.

Speaker 5 I'm not falling into that trap.

Speaker 1 I wanted to just bring up the funniest

Speaker 1 season for McNeese State. McNeese State non-conference schedule.
I don't know if you guys took a look at this. Let me just list list a couple of these teams.

Speaker 1 They beat Biblical Studies 96-55.

Speaker 1 They beat Champion Christian 110-46.

Speaker 1 They beat a school called Les Tournai,

Speaker 1 L-E-T-O-U-R-N-E-A-U.

Speaker 7 Le Tourneau. Okay, so French.

Speaker 1 They beat a French school 81-49. And the big one that they absolutely dominated, they won a game 92-23 against Mississippi University for Women.
Oh, I love that. Did they have a men's team? Yeah.

Speaker 3 When they show the score.

Speaker 1 Maybe not.

Speaker 1 The way they beat him by so much

Speaker 5 that maybe they played the women.

Speaker 3 When they show the score, is it like Mississippi University of Women, parentheses, men?

Speaker 1 It's so funny. Like, just looking at this.

Speaker 6 You get a deep dive into that school.

Speaker 1 It looks great. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Deep dive into the Mississippi University.

Speaker 6 They started letting men in, I think, like 86.

Speaker 9 They go by the W now.

Speaker 1 Honestly, a sick name for a school. Yeah.
That is cool. Yeah, they're the owls.

Speaker 6 They got plenty of men's sports, though, because I thought maybe it could have been women's.

Speaker 3 Dude, what an easy pitch for a recruit. Like, okay, you're not getting recruited by

Speaker 3 a premier program. Do you want to come to my women's college? Yeah.
Just chicks everywhere. Odie.

Speaker 1 Odie the Owl. Mississippi University for Women.
I love that. Yeah.
Just a hilarious schedule for McNee State. But

Speaker 1 they do feel like one of the 12 teams that everyone's kind of picking.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I don't. I'm not.
For what you just pointed out, one, the schedule. Two,

Speaker 5 I think Will Wade has one foot out the door already. I think Will Wade has spent a lot of time.

Speaker 3 He signed a contract extension.

Speaker 1 He also was just on Wake Up Mincy.

Speaker 3 Oh, that's true.

Speaker 5 Did Mincy ask him that? Are you leaving McNeese? I wonder if that's not.

Speaker 3 It's so funny because you can get a contract extension and then your school feels happy about it. But do you really feel happy?

Speaker 5 Yeah, if you're not, because I'm sure

Speaker 5 whatever the buyout is, I'm sure, yeah, that doesn't.

Speaker 3 I don't think that McNeese can afford a huge buyout. Right, right.

Speaker 5 So I don't think.

Speaker 1 Yeah, they're paying money to Mississippi University of Women for a buy game.

Speaker 5 But yeah, McNeese,

Speaker 5 they're not a good free throw shooting team, which I think that's important. If you're trying to pull off an upset in March Madness,

Speaker 5 when you're up by five with a minute left and the other team starts fouling, you got to ice the game at the free throw line. I don't trust them there.

Speaker 5 They also, I think Kim Pom,

Speaker 5 I think I saw that on Kim Palm that McNeese has one of the highest three-point attempt per

Speaker 5 stick with me.

Speaker 5 The teams that play McNeese shoot a ton of threes because McNeese lets them shoot threes. They have one of the highest ratios of shots that their defense gives up is threes.

Speaker 5 Gonzaga shoots threes well. So Gonzaga, the way McNeese plays defense is they're like, go ahead, shoot threes on us.
We're going to trust that you're going to miss them.

Speaker 5 And they have through the season because they are playing women and they are playing

Speaker 1 the ultimate by game BI.

Speaker 5 But they're going to play

Speaker 5 a team in Gonzaga that's not going to miss three. And Gonzaga.

Speaker 5 For having a reputation for not being able to win in March somehow, Mark Few, just because he hasn't won a national title, Konzaga hasn't lost a first-round game since 2008 when they lost to Steph Curry and Davidson.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 5 So,

Speaker 5 and I think that was like a 7-10 game, if I remember. I think Davidson was a 10-year-old.
Yeah, they were a 10.

Speaker 1 Davidson was a Wisconsin, yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Davidson was a 10. Yeah.
So that Konzaga team, yeah, I don't know. Like, everyone's just kind of enamored with McNeese winning 30 games and Will Wade being the coach.

Speaker 5 And they can shoot threes well, but

Speaker 5 that's not the 12-5 that I'm looking at.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the team that I love in this region, which, again, I fill myself with stats, and then they'll probably lose by 20 because Kansas will somehow become healthy and Bill Self is an incredible coach.

Speaker 1 But I do love Sanford and Buckyball, where they just chuck threes, and they have the opportunity to capture the hearts of America just the way they play basketball.

Speaker 5 Yeah,

Speaker 5 that's a more attractive pick to me than McNeese.

Speaker 5 But yeah, but it is interesting to have Kansas and Gonzaga right there and both teams.

Speaker 1 How lucky are both those programs?

Speaker 5 Because both these teams kind of suck for their standards and they're still four and five seeds.

Speaker 1 That pisses me off. Yeah.
Does that piss you off?

Speaker 5 It's like the worst team Bill Self's ever had and it's four seeds

Speaker 1 or something. Yeah.

Speaker 3 What about Tennessee? What about my volunteers? Tell me something good about my volunteers.

Speaker 5 I love Tennessee. I hate that they lost in the first round of the conference tournament.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 They got the shit kicked out.

Speaker 5 If I was picking a team to get over the hump this season,

Speaker 5 it was Tennessee. Like

Speaker 5 if there was a breakthrough team, you know, the Rick Barnes and March thing, but Matt Payner and March, you have all those coaches that you're certain can't get it done in March.

Speaker 5 And I had to pick one of them to buck that narrative. It was going to be Rick Barnes because of Dalton Connect.

Speaker 5 I just don't love that they got their asses kicked in the first round of the conference. Michigan or Mississippi State, I mean, that was a boat race.

Speaker 1 They beat the fuck out of it. It wasn't ever close.

Speaker 3 Let's talk about that loss because is it something that you think is like a systemic problem with Tennessee?

Speaker 3 Did they get exposed?

Speaker 5 I think Dalton Connect is the most electric guy in college basketball. But I think Dalton Connect, I do worry if Dalton Connect understands what the score and the time is at any point in the game.

Speaker 5 He feels like a guy that just has one thought going through his head, and it's get buckets.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 he's kind of a stylistic clash to what the rest of Tennessee's team's trying to do.

Speaker 5 And I find that slightly like for most of the season, I've thought that was a good thing because that's what this team has needed to get over a hump is you need a guy that can go get you a bucket.

Speaker 5 And Tennessee hasn't had that for a while. But sometimes you watch them and they feel very disjointed because of that because they're not all on the same page.
They're not all cohesive.

Speaker 5 Dalton Kinneck does rule on offense. He sucks defensively.

Speaker 5 And this is a team that's like a, you know, to play great defense as a team, you do need five guys. You can't just have like a couple guys that are locked down guys in college basketball.
So

Speaker 5 I don't know. I still try.
I have Tennessee going to the final four still. I still think they're going to come out of the region because

Speaker 5 I do think that this is the year Rick Barnes breaks through.

Speaker 5 But i'm way more concerned now than i was like a month ago for sure are you concerned at all as a fan of purdue losing i know you love it when purdue loses yep are you concerned that you're not going to get that joy this year they're going to lose at some point uh the problem is i think they're going to

Speaker 5 probably if it feels the most likely scenario is like they lose in the final four and it's still a w for purdue fans yeah you know that's a big dub yeah they still get their w but then the the purdue haters are trying to celebrate because they didn't win the national title um but purdue fans like we don't give a a fuck.

Speaker 5 They haven't been in a Final Four since 1980, and they've won 1,000 Big Ten championships since then. They've been the one seed all sorts of times,

Speaker 5 or been like a top three seed. I don't remember what the Glenn Robinson years, what they receded,

Speaker 5 and they've been to a handful of lead dates. I think this Purdue team is better.

Speaker 5 The reason for optimism, if you're a Purdue fan, is this team is definitively better than last year. They are a better three-point shooting team.

Speaker 5 Last year's team wasn't a great three-point shooting team. Lance Jones is a wrinkle on this year's team that makes them a lot better.
My problem is they are the exact same style of basketball.

Speaker 5 They play the exact same way as they played last year. And I just don't

Speaker 5 know how you can not learn from your mistakes last year, which is like every time you catch the ball, you're looking to post-feed Zach Eady.

Speaker 5 I don't understand how that's the way you're going about winning games in 2024. So that's my concern with Purdue.

Speaker 5 They are the same team, but they are better. So depending on which way you want to look at it,

Speaker 5 they're not going to lose to the 16. I think they're going to beat the 16.
I think they're going to get over the hump and beat the 16 seed this year.

Speaker 3 I like that. I like that.
Can you explain to me as an outsider? Because I'm not from the Midwest. You're from Indiana.

Speaker 3 You're intimately familiar with Purdue and the type of people that go there and the type of people that that university produces. There's a lot of hate towards.

Speaker 3 I know why Duke's hated. They're like a national brand of hatred.
I know why. AM is weird.
I know how they're cult. And we know that reputation.

Speaker 3 But what is it about Purdue that makes you hate them so?

Speaker 5 They are humorless goobers.

Speaker 5 They are.

Speaker 1 They are 75% dudes.

Speaker 5 75% dudes.

Speaker 1 That's not an actual staff, but I know it's close.

Speaker 1 It kind of is. You walk around coming up.

Speaker 3 It should be the Purdue University of Men. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Dudes everybody.

Speaker 5 They have the demeanor of nerds, but not the intelligence. They're nerds.

Speaker 1 Okay, yeah. That makes sense.
I get that. Yeah.
They're nice people. Like, they're not.
They're not like, I'm not like, oh, these assholes, but it's just, yeah, it's goobers. They're goobers.

Speaker 1 They're dorks.

Speaker 5 It's something that, like, I've had people that aren't from Indiana. I've taken them to West Lafayette for Purdue basketball games, and I don't even prime them for it.

Speaker 5 I'm not like, tell me your thoughts on the Purdue people. I'm just like, I sit back, let them go, and then I ask them, I'm like, what do you think about the Purdue people?

Speaker 1 And they're like, are they kind of

Speaker 1 like, is it? The best way to describe it is they're kind of caught caught in no man's land where they're closer to like Northwestern than they realize, but their sports are better. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so, but they're not even close to like the party Big Ten schools, like Michigan State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana. Right.

Speaker 1 But like, so they're caught in this weird like spot where they kind of don't have an identity.

Speaker 5 They kind of don't, yeah.

Speaker 5 They also have an inferiority complex with a superiority complex at the same time. Somehow it makes no sense, but they

Speaker 5 yeah, they know they're going to fuck it up in March, but then they also puff their chest and they're like, you hate Zach Eady because you're jealous.

Speaker 5 And everyone's like, I promise you, I do not want.

Speaker 5 If there's one thing I do not want from my basketball team is to watch this fucking bullshit every single night out on the basketball court, and they're like, you're just jealous because he's kind of shack plus Sakeem and you're just jealous of it.

Speaker 5 It's like, we're not jealous. I don't know.

Speaker 5 They're a tough breed to peg.

Speaker 1 I like the infidelity complex.

Speaker 3 It's like, that's why they have that big-ass drum is overcompensating for something. That's why they get big players.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You might just have small dicks. And they also, the best thing they had going for them was the free hot dogs at Jake's and that closed like five years ago.
Yeah. That kind of ruined it.
Because

Speaker 1 I've been to West Lafayette a few times, and I was like, well, they got a place that has free hot dogs.

Speaker 5 You can have a good time in West Lafayette, but the good time you're having just makes you think of the other college campus you'd rather be on having an even better time.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 But Neil Armstrong. Right.
Also, Neil Armstrong. Yeah, they got a lot of astronauts.
Yeah, they got a lot of a lot of them. You have a shitload of astronauts.
All right.

Speaker 1 Last region, South Region, our region, bracket, you know, the torture quadrant. I've looked through the Wisconsin-James Madison game in depth.
I think Wisconsin's fucked.

Speaker 3 Stop it, big cat.

Speaker 1 No, I have. Here's the thing: Wisconsin doesn't defend the three well, and James Madison likes to shoot threes.
And I obviously it's very reductive. Reductive? Reductive.
Yeah, reductive.

Speaker 1 It might be reductive. It'd be like, who makes their continuous?

Speaker 3 Jay Billis and see if that was used correctly.

Speaker 1 Who makes their threes? Because Wisconsin, you know, the story of the Wisconsin season is

Speaker 1 the beginning of the season, November, December, January, they're making their threes. February, they just stopped making their threes.

Speaker 1 Went four and eight or whatever it was down the stretch. Big Ten tournament, they started making their threes again, looked good again.

Speaker 1 If they don't make their threes, it's going to be a terrible, terrible night for me.

Speaker 1 And I just think James Madison is a bad matchup. And I'm not saying that.
The only thing I could say, to be fair, is that James Madison has not played a lot of good teams.

Speaker 1 They've played three teams in the top 100 in Ken Pom. They beat Michigan State, which Wisconsin beat twice, and then they lost to Appalachian State twice.

Speaker 1 So that is the only thing I'm kind of hanging my hat on. But

Speaker 1 I'm being completely honest and unbiased that this is a bad matchup.

Speaker 5 Are they going to be playing a good good team on Friday? I guess is the question to me.

Speaker 3 Is Wisconsin a good team?

Speaker 5 Is Wisconsin a good team? Do we have to worry about them not playing a good team? Are we sure?

Speaker 5 I think AJ Store has to be a superhero. Yeah.
I think that's the formula. I think Wisconsin is obviously.

Speaker 1 He'll be the best player on the court.

Speaker 5 They're fine.

Speaker 5 They have shown. I mean, you guys were ranked, what, sixth at one point?

Speaker 5 Fridell on JMU, I'm worried about for you guys, though. I think this is, I've been saying it all year about this season of college basketball.
It is the year of the cold-ass white boy.

Speaker 5 And if all over college basketball, there are just white dudes that can light it up. And

Speaker 5 it's not just that they score a lot. It's not that they're just catch and shoot guys.

Speaker 5 They just got a little sauce to their game. And Noah Fredel feels like one of those guys, maybe.

Speaker 3 You're going to hate him so much if he's going to fucking hate him.

Speaker 5 You're going to hate that guy.

Speaker 1 I'm ready for torture.

Speaker 1 They drag me back in, but again, I'm looking at it unbiased way. If I

Speaker 1 removed any rooting interests from this game, I would probably bet James Madison just because I think it's not a great matchup.

Speaker 5 What's the funniest outcome for the show?

Speaker 5 Not just for this game, but for the Vermont Duke out how much.

Speaker 3 The funniest outcome is Vermont beating Duke, Vermont beating JMU or Wisconsin.

Speaker 5 And Jake says good game.

Speaker 3 Jake apologizes to us for winning.

Speaker 5 Yeah, Jake shrugs his shoulders and he's good game.

Speaker 3 Oh, and then this is important, too, also at the same time, Villanova finishing second in the NIT. Yeah,

Speaker 3 that would actually be the funniest possible outcome.

Speaker 1 I think the sicko outcome is Wisconsin beating JMU and then Duke just like boat racing.

Speaker 5 That's what I picked. We talked about this, Jake, on Sunday.

Speaker 1 That's a sicko outcome.

Speaker 1 I picked that in my bracket because I think

Speaker 5 between you two, PFT is far more excited about the game, and I think him, he has to suffer his pain, and then you start talking yourself into Wisconsin again, and then Duke just fucks you up, and then you're back to.

Speaker 1 And Kyle Filipowski, like it's a lose-lose for me, no matter what.

Speaker 1 If Wisconsin loses in the first two rounds, no matter what, it's going to be pain for me. Yeah.
Like, no matter what. But can you just imagine?

Speaker 3 I have allowed myself to wonder, like,

Speaker 3 what if we win two games?

Speaker 3 What if I get an entire week of just, like, watching highlights from the first two games, getting excited, buying in, we're in the Sweet 16?

Speaker 3 It would be probably the most electric college sports moment of my life. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That entire week.

Speaker 5 Well, I asked Dan this on the yak yesterday. What is the stakes of this game in terms of like

Speaker 5 I feel like you guys are going to bring this game up? Whoever wins is going to reference this for forever.

Speaker 1 I don't think so. But

Speaker 1 I don't get to. That's the problem.
I'm going to lose, lose.

Speaker 3 I don't think so because people try to divide me and Big Cat sometimes with things like

Speaker 3 Hank, especially. There's a reason he's not on that couch right now.
But I think if Big Cat wins, if Wisconsin wins, I'm going to be upset.

Speaker 3 But I'm still in the back of my head going to be like, well, that was awesome that we got to go dancing. Okay.
I got to see the game.

Speaker 3 And probably the better team ended up winning.

Speaker 3 And then if JMU wins, I'm going to be very happy about it. But I'm going to be more focused on just what an electric experience it was than to remind Big Cat of it.

Speaker 3 Unless Big Cat starts coming at me for Commander's Bears stuff, in which case I've always got

Speaker 1 my back pocket.

Speaker 5 What could possibly be a bigger, this might actually divide us situation.

Speaker 1 Oh, a playoff game in the NFL would be way,

Speaker 1 way, way, way bigger.

Speaker 3 It's also going to be helpful that I'm not going to be there. I'm not going to be on the stream.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 So if we were both on the stream, we'd probably say some things, look at each other a certain way, and then just know that it's on.

Speaker 1 But it's a lose-lose for me because James Madison is the underdog. It's a cool story.
They're fucking, you know, their sports programs have been insane the last year.

Speaker 1 And people, I mean, just being honest, people love to relish in my sadness. Yeah.
Like, they are sick, sick fucks with that.

Speaker 5 That's why I think Duke beating you is the move. Yeah, I think you're going to be way sadder.

Speaker 1 The delayed sadness? Yeah, no.

Speaker 3 For ultimate sadness, it is Duke over whiskey.

Speaker 5 And Kyle Filipowski has a couple dirty plays.

Speaker 1 Yeah, trips some people. He like injures Chucky Hepburn somehow.

Speaker 1 All right, so the rest of this bracket,

Speaker 1 I find myself believing in Marquette for some reason, and that's really just because I'm doing the ⁇ my bracket is basically like the Big East revenge bracket, where I have my Final Four is all three Big East teams getting there.

Speaker 1 But I do like Kentucky, especially because Cal's doing his tweaks, which would be huge. And Kentucky.

Speaker 1 You would say, like,

Speaker 1 if you had to play one game and you're like, all right, Kentucky, they have so many dudes and Reed Shepherd's electric that

Speaker 1 they can beat anyone in the country because they have that style of play and they can make so many shots and they have so many guys who can get a bucket.

Speaker 5 You fall in love with the guards who can make their own offense and teams that have one of them, you fall in love with.

Speaker 5 I look at like Northwestern, who's not really playing great basketball, but they have Boo Buoy, and I'm like, if UConn plays Northwestern and Boo Boo, you know, they're not going to, but you're just kind of like, I don't know, man, Boo Bui could score 45 points in that game.

Speaker 5 The guards that can make their own offense, you fall in love with. You just do this time of year.
Kentucky has four of them.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Kentucky has fucking four of them on on their roster,

Speaker 5 which might be too many. I don't know.
That might be part of their problem is you have Dylan Ham and Reed Shepard coming off the bench when both those guys might be top five picks.

Speaker 5 It's a crazy

Speaker 5 Cal has like almost too much talent.

Speaker 3 How many balls are there on the court?

Speaker 5 I think there's still one.

Speaker 1 Just one ball. But remember, he's got some tweaks.

Speaker 5 He's got some tweaks, though.

Speaker 1 He's going to roll the ball out there. Yeah.

Speaker 5 No, I have Kentucky in the elite eight. I think this Kentucky team is just too talented to, and it's such a high-pressure year for Cal and the program.

Speaker 1 What about the one seed here? Because

Speaker 1 Houston, we know them. We know what they do.
They play insane defense. I probably will take Houston in the first round just because they were so bad against Iowa State.

Speaker 1 It feels like they're just going to punish the fuck out of the 16 seed. And

Speaker 1 they rebound the fuck out of the ball, but their offense can go away at times. I actually think Texas AM might be live.

Speaker 1 They can get down and dirty kind of grind it out and play low possession games because that's what I always look for with these upset is like, what teams can play these low possession games where you can, you know, if you're if you're an inferior opponent,

Speaker 1 you can basically make them have to execute in the half court and things won't go as well. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And if you're talking to yourself in A ⁇ M, Wade Taylor, again, is one of those guards that can just go bananas in the tournament.

Speaker 5 I think Houston, though, is my, I don't, Houston doesn't feel like an upset candidate to me because I think Houston is so good at just strangling inferior opponents.

Speaker 5 Like, when they're playing a team that's not as good as them, they, they, their defense is so fucking locked in that it's hard to they're, they're, they're not, they don't really get upset.

Speaker 5 That's not how they lose. The issue with Houston is more when they're playing another high-caliber team, do they have the individual talent to rise to that level?

Speaker 5 Um, but they don't, like, I agree that when they play Longwood, they might win by 70. Like, they, when they play inferior teams, they just completely suffocate them.

Speaker 5 I have Houston winner all in my bracket.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay.

Speaker 5 Houston is my national champion.

Speaker 5 I probably think it should be UConn, but it's boring. And

Speaker 5 Houston, for long stretches of the season, has looked like the best team in college basketball. They were the best team in the best conference.

Speaker 5 Iowa State definitely humbled them, but I think they...

Speaker 5 Houston's defense gets all the headlines that not enough attention is paid to how good their offense actually is. And L.J.
Cryer and Emmanuel Sharp can both shoot.

Speaker 5 And the idea when you watch a Houston basketball game is like, this is disgusting. This is ugly.
The ball's not going through the basket. I don't think that's the case.

Speaker 5 I think they can score.

Speaker 5 And I don't think they're going to lose to inferior teams. And I don't think there are a lot of teams that are better than Houston.
So I ended up picking them reluctantly as national champion.

Speaker 5 But I don't know. I think they proved it this year that they belong.
I mean,

Speaker 5 the tear they went through in the Big 12 is impressive in year one. So I love Jamal Shedd, too.
I think he's the best defender. He's a guy.

Speaker 5 If we're talking about guards that can take over games, the antidote to that is having a guy like Jamal Shedd that you can just put on that guard and say, shut that guy down. And he can do that.

Speaker 5 And for that reason, I like Houston.

Speaker 1 I want to see Kentucky Houston in the football. That would be awesome.
Because just like stylistically,

Speaker 1 just completely opposite. All right, I got one last question.

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Speaker 1 So if you had to say your one first-round upset, we can go around the room. Who are you going to take? Okay.
This is the also, I wanted to note I had, again, I'm just filling my head with all these

Speaker 1 stats and everything. What was the stat? I think it's, if you're filling out your brackets, since 2015,

Speaker 1 I think it's two for 32, 12, and 13 seeds getting to the Sweet 16. And one of those years was when Oregon State was a 12 and they played a 13.

Speaker 1 So a lot of people will take the 13 and 12s to win a game. Just remember that statistically, the last nine, 10 years, getting to the Sweet 16 is a little different.

Speaker 1 You're one upset, PFT.

Speaker 3 To the Sweet 16. Yeah.
No,

Speaker 1 or just the first round. Oh, first round.

Speaker 7 And what do I really like in the first round?

Speaker 3 Oregon.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I like Oregon. Although, they're like only a one-point dog, I think.
I got two.

Speaker 3 I got Oregon and New Mexico.

Speaker 1 New Mexico is a favorite.

Speaker 1 Oh, they are? Okay, I was just a two-point favorite. They're a two-point favorite.

Speaker 1 Looks like I'm sharp. Yeah, you are.

Speaker 1 Your advanced analytics works. Nailed it.

Speaker 1 I'll probably go with Drake, but

Speaker 1 I actually think Akron was a little bit more famous. Is Drake favorite? Somehow.
Drake's not favorite. Drake's not favored.

Speaker 5 The point underdog or something?

Speaker 1 I think so. I'll look it up.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I mean, Drake would be my pick, too. I have have him in the lead eight, so obviously I think Drake's going to win the first round.

Speaker 5 I'll take Purdue over the 16th seed.

Speaker 1 Okay, sure. Okay.
That's a big upset. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I think they do get over the hump.

Speaker 5 I like that one. Grand Canyon is the 12 I'm slowly talking myself into.
It's nothing against St. Mary's.
It's just Grand Canyon is so fun. And

Speaker 5 Bryce Drew is an awesome coach. I think he's a great coach.
And it didn't work out at Vanderbilt, but I think

Speaker 5 they have the pedigree, too. They came to the tournament last year, and they're kind of building some in Grand Canyon.
They're on a long winning streak. Do they have the longest winning streak, Jake?

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, James Madison does.

Speaker 5 James Madison does, but they have, they've, they've, they've been on a tear, Grand Canyon has. Um,

Speaker 5 so yeah, I'll pick Grand Canyon because uh, if they can speed St. Mary's up, which is a big if, and everybody that plays St.
Mary's says that, but uh, yeah, I think Grand Canyon is a fun team.

Speaker 5 Drake is a favorite, by the way.

Speaker 1 Drake is the favorite. I was wrong.

Speaker 3 Uh, Drake is no, that means you were sharp.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that means I was sharp, but that's not really an upset. Uh, that does bother me.
I know it shouldn't. I think it's

Speaker 1 something that I wish I could correct in my own brain

Speaker 1 when, like, an 11-seed or a 10-seed is a favorite and wins, and everyone's like, the craziest upsets today. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I feel like an absolute loser to be like, well, actually, they were favorites, but I can't correct it because I'm like, dude, they were favorites.

Speaker 3 I think you can say that if somebody's like, they shocked the world. Right.
Then you can point out to them as they were favorites.

Speaker 1 Like New Mexico being a two-point favorite as an 11-seed. And if they win that game, everyone's going going to be like, holy shit, what a day.
And

Speaker 1 I hate myself.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I hate you, too.

Speaker 1 I hate myself for that.

Speaker 7 When the team stormed the court as favorites, people are like, well, they're favorites. Why are they storming court?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I have no problem with that. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because I'm pro. court storming at all times.

Speaker 5 I can't undo, well, you can't undo the wiring in your brain. I can't undo the wiring.
The decades of watching the NCAA tournament and the team wearing white losing is an upset. That's an upset.

Speaker 5 No matter what the spread says, the team wearing the white jerseys, if they lose, that is an upset.

Speaker 1 Also, you know what they should do? I wish they would go back. It's similar to the Super Bowl logos, how they ruined the Super Bowl logos because they made it so corporate.

Speaker 1 Go back to the weird courts. I know.
Like, the Iowa State game always is seared in my brain when they were playing in that weird orange and blue court. The Boise State.

Speaker 1 Yeah, when they were two-seed and lost. And I'm just like, go back to that.
Yeah. Those are the memories I want.

Speaker 5 Jeff D. Lowe's a big proponent of that, I think.

Speaker 3 I'm sure he is. Maybe not.

Speaker 1 I actually like the corporate party.

Speaker 3 Jeff loves all the weirdest parts of basketball that nobody else can notice.

Speaker 3 So your Final four, you said Houston, Tennessee, Yukon, and Arizona. Yeah, we have the same final four, Mark.

Speaker 1 Oh, really? You're fucked. Let's go.
You're fucked. We have a perfect bracket.

Speaker 3 I'm the biggest idiot on planet Earth.

Speaker 1 So am I, though. Okay, cool.
A1B. We have a perfect bracket.

Speaker 5 I think you watch too little college basketball. I watch too much.

Speaker 1 Right in the middle. You're right in the middle.

Speaker 3 Somewhere a narrative got started that I don't watch college. No, I didn't say you don't.
I don't really understand.

Speaker 3 Okay,

Speaker 3 I watch probably five college basketball games a week before March.

Speaker 1 No, I didn't mean Mark. I didn't mean for it to be a personal

Speaker 1 man.

Speaker 3 I'm sorry if it's coming off as defensive against you.

Speaker 1 You sound like a Purdue fan or something. There really are.
It can't be a joke.

Speaker 3 I've just had like three people tell me that in the last week and I was like,

Speaker 3 I don't know how much am I supposed to be watching.

Speaker 1 No, the problem is I watch too much. Yeah.

Speaker 5 I mean, it's fair to say no one is coming to PFT Commenter for their bracket picks, right?

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's all I'm saying is you're not a guy who watches a ton to where everyone's like, I want to know what PFT has to say. I kind of am, and I think it's we're on the bell curve.

Speaker 5 I think the guys who win are in the middle.

Speaker 5 I've watched too much, you've watched too little.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think that's the narrative that's just based on the fact that I watched an unhealthy amount of college sports. Yeah, you watch a regular amount.

Speaker 3 His lock of the day when we were doing our parlay was, what, University of Texas Arlington? Yeah, fucking

Speaker 1 dude.

Speaker 3 Against who?

Speaker 1 They were playing. Who are they playing?

Speaker 1 I can't remember, but it was such a great game. Fuck, it was an awesome game.
Oh, Tarleton, Tarlton. Tarleton, Tarleton.
Yeah, yeah. They won.
Axe and I were up until two in the morning watching.

Speaker 1 That game rock. Hank was so upset that I would have picked them to go to the Elite Eight if they won it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Hank and I had normal picks. Like, I had the Kentucky over, Hank had NC State, and then Big Cat's like, you got to watch this Tarleton game.

Speaker 1 The best. And it hit.
It hit. The best.

Speaker 3 And you have Houston as your champion.

Speaker 5 I have Houston over Arizona. I think

Speaker 5 Arizona beats UConn in Phoenix. The Arizona fans are going crazy.
They're like, holy fucking shit. It's going to have a little Wisconsin 2015 vibes to it where they're like, we did it.
Celebrate.

Speaker 5 And then they lose the national championship to Houston. Okay.
Okay. I think they celebrate too soon.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I did celebrate too soon. Okay, Mark Titus.
Thank you as always. Thanks, guys.
Go check him out. Mostly sports.
Mark Titus podcast, The Yak. He does it all.

Speaker 1 Let's get some madness.

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Speaker 1 okay

Speaker 1 we got hashtag mad online to end the show today reminder friday we will have a show we have stanford steve who will give you friday winners so stanford steve is uh going to give us after thursday we get our teeth kicked in stanford steve will be joining us on friday to hopefully pick up the pieces for us.

Speaker 1 Hank.

Speaker 4 All right, these are people mad about tournament stuff.

Speaker 4 Dan, guy, Dan says, in 21, one seed Illinois had to play an underseeded in-state loyal team in round two.

Speaker 4 22, they drew underseed to Houston in round two. This year, not only do we play an underseed BYU in the second round, number 16, Ken Pom.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. A lot of work.

Speaker 4 Not only do we, but he didn't say, but. These are the Ken Pom ranks of the other teams in their region.
One is Yukon, four, Auburn, five, Iowa State, 16 BYU, 21 SDSU. Yeah.
So they got a bad draw.

Speaker 3 We talked about this earlier because you actually texted that to me and Big Cat last night. By you, I mean Tom Fernelli.
Sent that over. So they make good points.
And also the BYU thing is very funny.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I like this one. Hot take when non-at-large teams like NC State and Oregon make their conference tournament, that conference should be the conference that loses a bid.
I like that.

Speaker 4 So in this case, Virginia and Colorado out.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I like that. Good choice.
This is a good rule.

Speaker 1 It also is very funny to me,

Speaker 1 which we haven't brought up because we've talked to Fanta and Rosteen about the expansion of the tournament.

Speaker 1 The tournament is already the whole country.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because you can win your conference tournament. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Why don't people, when people say they want to expand, be like, dude, it's expanded. Yeah.
No,

Speaker 1 they're all in.

Speaker 1 Everyone's in the tournament.

Speaker 3 Also, the very nature of the regular season. Right.

Speaker 1 But everyone's in the tournament because you can win your conference tournament and then be in the tournament.

Speaker 3 Yeah, 96 is too much. That's too many teams.

Speaker 1 We have a 336-team tournament or whatever the fuck.

Speaker 7 That's that stupid rule with the D2 to D1 transition. That's the worst.
When teams win that,

Speaker 7 I feel like there's one every few years.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I agree with that.

Speaker 1 I agree with that.

Speaker 3 You shouldn't take that away from teams if they prove it.

Speaker 1 But their tournament is expanded. The whole country's in the tournament.
That's the beauty of the tournament.

Speaker 4 Everyone's mad about Virginia, but why is Texas a comfortable seven seed while teams in the Big 12 with similar records got left out or weren't even on the bottom?

Speaker 1 So Oklahoma.

Speaker 4 Oklahoma, Kansas State, who just beat Texas, Cincinnati.

Speaker 1 Oklahoma, Kansas State, I don't think, had the resume. Oklahoma definitely did.
They were the first team out, and they got screwed, and it was because of all these bid stealers.

Speaker 1 It sucks, but should have won more games.

Speaker 3 I also, I respect the guy from Oklahoma being mad, but their outlet for being mad is like, well, Texas shouldn't be seeded as high. Right.
I like that. That's good.

Speaker 3 A natural course of energy for you would be to be like, why the fuck is UVA in it? But because you're an Oklahoma fan, you're like, well, they gave Texas too much credit.

Speaker 3 They should be seeded lower, which I like. I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 And you kind of tried to get us off the scent there a little bit with Cincy. Cincy, I feel like, could have had a resume worthy, but Kansas State was, I mean, they were 19 and 14.

Speaker 4 Dallas says, I don't think Dayton deserved to get in the tournament. Only two wins against teams in the tournament, and that was Longwood and Duquesne.

Speaker 4 Lost games in conference against Duquesne, Richmond, VCU, Loyola, and Mason. Best wins against Cincy and St.
John's makes no sense. Ooh, I like this.

Speaker 1 The Dayton, I mean, this is another one if we had had the first rule that was offered up, which I agree with, Dayton wouldn't be in because Duquesne would have taken their spot. I'm fine with that.

Speaker 1 If you have a bid stealer in your conference tournament, it takes out one of your bids. Yeah, Dayton, they should have won their tournament.
Wait, but hold on.

Speaker 7 But then by that, you could have taken out Creighton.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that would have been a geese. That would probably be a problem.
Like, if Providence had won the tournament, Creighton would be out.

Speaker 3 I just think they should do a better job of picking which teams are in the tournament so as to not make me angry.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Also, I hate to say it to the bubble people because I know that like an Oklahoma fan, a St.
John's fan, this is all you've been thinking about. No one gives a fuck once the bracket's out.

Speaker 1 Yeah, once we get our hands on the bracket, I don't...

Speaker 1 Could you name a team that just missed the tournament three years ago?

Speaker 1 No chance. No, it's more about...

Speaker 3 No chance. It's not necessarily when I get my hands on the bracket because you do have those two days to be angry.
You can be mad Monday.

Speaker 1 I'm just saying Tuesday. It's one of those angers that no one else

Speaker 3 is going to care about.

Speaker 3 No one's going to care about. What?

Speaker 7 I think Louisville may have been one of those two.

Speaker 1 In when? I'm still mad at it.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I'm furious about that.

Speaker 7 Do you guys see Rick Bettino's suggestion for the selection committee? He said, have a great suggestion for Dan Gavitt, who's absolutely the best.

Speaker 7 I know three guys who are watching games all year and would be a great addition. They won't just look at certain metrics.
Jim Boheme, Roy Williams, and Coach Kerry. They need to be part of selection.

Speaker 3 Just get your friends involved. Get the old guard back there.
He's trying to get them a job.

Speaker 3 His suggestion is just like: my suggestion is that it'd be a real shame if there was a horse head in your bed when he woke up tomorrow.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 3 Good suggestion, right?

Speaker 9 Big Kat, I also think UVA makes a difference in your theory.

Speaker 1 What do you mean?

Speaker 6 That nobody wants to watch UVA.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. That adds to

Speaker 1 that will add to the bubble. But they also got in the play-in, so like, I always like.

Speaker 9 But if they win tonight, like 50 to 46, everyone's going to be like, holy shit, we're going to have to watch this fucking game.

Speaker 1 Well, like I said, on Monday, it's the narrative game. Because if they win tonight, then everyone's going to be like, the Mountain West shouldn't have six teams.

Speaker 1 And if they lose tonight, they'll be like, fuck it.

Speaker 1 The thing that sucks to me is St. John's is more fun than Colorado State or UVA.
It's just a fact.

Speaker 1 They play a more fun brand of basketball.

Speaker 4 Yes, we'll end with that.

Speaker 1 That should be the tiebreaker. Just fun.

Speaker 3 Who do people want to watch? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Will the overhit.

Speaker 4 I threw away my Irish heritage on Sunday. I drank red wine and ate Italian food in preparation for Selection Sunday.

Speaker 4 I sat there watching my TV with a chicken palm, only to see my Savior not be an attorney. What they did to St.
John's and Rick Petino is criminal.

Speaker 1 Hmm. Hmm.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I would agree. Irish and Italians are so much more alike than they like to admit.
Yeah, they don't like each other. Yeah, but they're basically the same.

Speaker 3 It's like Baltimore and Pittsburgh fans hitting each other. It's like, no, you got you're the same person.

Speaker 1 It's the old, it's the famous Christopher Maltasanti when he was in the hospital bed and he's like, I went to hell. And they're like, what did it look like? They were like, it was a bar and it was St.

Speaker 1 Patrick's Day. Every day was St.
Patrick's Day. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And then the Irish person's like, I went to hell. What was it? Oh, it was Columbus Day.
Yeah. Like, it's, you are the same people.
You should get along.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Italians get, they don't have a party day. Imagine if they did.

Speaker 1 Italians don't have a party day?

Speaker 4 Like St. Patrick's Day?

Speaker 1 I feel like they just have every day.

Speaker 1 Memorial Day.

Speaker 3 No one has a St. Patrick's Day.

Speaker 1 DJs?

Speaker 9 Biggie's Tourney.

Speaker 1 Biggie's Terney. The star of the Big East Tourney is Italian Heritage Day.

Speaker 1 One of my favorite takes Max has ever had because it really doesn't make sense, but it makes perfect sense.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I get it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Makes perfect sense.
Labor Day.

Speaker 3 All the unions.

Speaker 3 R.I.P. Jimmy Hoffa.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Good show, boys. Good luck to everyone on Thursday.
We'll see you on Friday morning, fresh off of 12 hours of watching college basketball.

Speaker 3 Fresh off winning. Yeah.

Speaker 3 We're going to be the only podcast in America that has a perfect bracket on Friday.

Speaker 1 I have to win tonight.

Speaker 7 All of our teams will survive day one.

Speaker 3 You said it, Jake.

Speaker 1 Jake, I'm surprised you haven't done a who do you like in the first game, MSU?

Speaker 7 Oh, I did it on the Titus show. Oh, okay, nice.

Speaker 3 Have you done Barackatology? No, that. Good stick.
Got

Speaker 1 a I love it when it's like when like Obama was Irish, by the way.

Speaker 4 That was a fun fact.

Speaker 1 He is? Wait, what?

Speaker 4 Someone released a video.

Speaker 4 I guess when he was a president, he released that he was Irish, and then Irish people made a bunch of songs about him. Oh, huh.

Speaker 3 Did not know that.

Speaker 4 You got to hear this song. Hold on.

Speaker 1 Hey, Jake, you're a big, like, when Arizona plays Kentucky, the Wildcats are going to win. No.

Speaker 7 Just the MSU thing.

Speaker 7 But yeah, every president should fill out a bracket with Dandy Cats.

Speaker 7 There's no one as Irish as Barry Collabora

Speaker 3 It's very cool.

Speaker 1 They make the best fucking song.

Speaker 1 Barack Obama. I would love to

Speaker 1 have Connor McGregor. And there's nobody better.
And he's going to knock out Floyd Mayweather. So, Floyd, watch out.
The Irish are coming. Talk all you want, but you'll do nothing.

Speaker 1 We may be saying that 3,000 times a week in Vegas. You have to.

Speaker 1 We got caught up. We got caught up.

Speaker 3 I would love to see Joe Biden fill out a bracket. That would be

Speaker 3 see if he can do it without falling down. How about this?

Speaker 7 Biden IT.

Speaker 1 Okay. We'll workshop it.
Yeah, yeah, it's all-time me and PFC.

Speaker 3 C.B. Iden.

Speaker 1 Getting

Speaker 1 swept up in the moment and betting Conor McGregor and just being like, he fucking hung in there. He almost won it.
And then we watched it back sober.

Speaker 1 We're like, oh, Floyd was just messing with him the entire time.

Speaker 3 We, with a straight face, bet McGregor against the best defensive boxer of all time. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Sat next to the sniper sniper from Saving Private Ryan. Barry Pepper.
Yeah. Great dude.
That's the level of celebrity we are. Barry Pepper.

Speaker 1 We got our seats and we're like, okay, I'm cool with the Briar Pepper Larry. I'm very cool with Barry Pepper.
He played Mickey Mantle. He killed like.
Or Joe DiMaj.

Speaker 3 He killed like 70 Nazis in Saving Private Ryan. He's a badass.

Speaker 1 All right. Numbers.

Speaker 4 40.

Speaker 1 Three.

Speaker 1 Eight. 18.

Speaker 1 69.

Speaker 1 I didn't know that I put

Speaker 1 29.

Speaker 1 93

Speaker 1 93.

Speaker 3 Love you guys.

Speaker 3 Talking away.

Speaker 3 I'm the one. I'm saying, I'm saying anyway.

Speaker 3 Days are not, days are fine. Shy,

Speaker 3 I'm coming to your love up here.

Speaker 3 I'm coming to your love up here.

Speaker 3 Come on,

Speaker 3 make

Speaker 3 me up.

Speaker 3 I'll be gone

Speaker 3 Needless to say

Speaker 3 I've always said it's but me so little away

Speaker 3 The learning light is okay Say after me

Speaker 5 It's the better to be safe than sorry It's the better to be safe than sorry It's the better to be safe than sorry Say gone me

Speaker 5 I am the ego

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 free

Speaker 5 things that you say

Speaker 5 you love just away by the ways I've left to remember me shine away

Speaker 5 They'll all be coming for you anyway

Speaker 1 coming for you anyway They'll all be coming for you anyway Take on me

Speaker 1 Take me up

Speaker 1 I'll be