Transcript of March Madness, Recapping The Last 4 Days Of Basketball, Sweet 16, Cal Wins The Break Up, Who’s Back and More

Hey, Pardon My Take listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Hey guys, it's Francis. Look, life moves fast. Dating is a tough thing to find time for and to be intentional about. At least so I thought until I found The League. I've found that the people I've met on The League are people I really have a lot more in common with than the people you typically find when you're just aimlessly swiping and scrolling on other dating apps. Instead of endless searching, I get a curated batch of profiles each day. There's less noise, less back and forth, less flakiness. These are just people I'd actually want to meet, have a conversation with, have a meal with, spend real time with, create that meaningful connection. Join me on The League. Download the app and apply today. On today's part of my take presented by DraftKings, it is March Madness recap. We've been doing nothing but watching ball for the last 4 days and we're going to get to all of it. I don't even know if it's going to make sense because I think we're all running on a little bit of fumes, just staring at TVs, watching ball, seeing crazy outcomes.

Iowa, shout out Iowa. We're going to do who's back of the week. We also have Zach's Sweet 16 thoughts. I tasked him with giving us his Sweet 16 thoughts, whether it be facts on teams that have made it or whatever. Whatever he wanted. He was open-ended for Zach, uh, and we're gonna have a great show. And it is brought to you by Planet Fitness. Everybody can get strong at Planet Fitness. High-value membership that supports any fitness journey, as low as $15 a month. Over 2,800 club locations, most clubs open 24 hours. We have Planet Fitness corner here in the office. We've hit the treadmill, uh, I know the stair climber is getting big, the free weights Everything there, the cable towers, the Smith machine. Let's all get stronger with Planet Fitness this year. I'm trying to get back in shape, doing the Chinese workout as a little warm-up, then I hit some free weights with the Planet Fitness. So we're all strong on this planet. Join today in club, online, or in the free PF app. Hours, amenities, and offers vary by club. Check out planetfitness.com or stop by your local club for more information.

Must be 18 years or hold to enroll, or 13 to 17 with a parent/guardian. Okay, let's go. Welcome to Part of My Take presented by DraftKings. The crown is yours. Today is Monday, March 23rd, and PFT, we've watched a whole lot of basketball. I don't even know where to start.

Uh, the Big Ten.

Oh wait, I actually do know where it's alive and well. I know where to start. Max, why aren't you wet?

Oh yeah, oh, forgot about— no, forgot about—

oh, he's going to get wet.

Forgot about those cats, Max.

Villanova losing feels like it was 10 years.

It does. It does. It was Friday night, right?

He just got up Friday afternoon.

Friday afternoon.

Friday afternoon. He didn't even say a word. He just got up, went to get wet.

Listen, if you were to ask me my comments about Villanova losing, we got to fire our staff. Yeah, we got to get rid of the staff. We got a bad staff here.

That was so Kevin Willard for people who missed it because there was a lot of madness. Utah State beats Villanova. Villanova essentially down the stretch just couldn't hit a shot. And, uh, Kevin Willard though, it was— I think it was in the first half after the Utah State team ran— it must have been like 3 or 4 just perfect blobs for easy buckets, layups— said, I gotta fire my staff. The most like disconnect between real life, real life human beings and online media. Yeah, because it was such a clear joke And people— I couldn't believe it reminded me there were people who actually thought he was being serious.

It reminded me of when, uh, was it Brian Kelly that tried to do the throwback to like, I'm in favor of executing my players? And then like, Brian Kelly, obviously not a stand-up comedian. Yeah, completely botched the delivery. But like, that's what psycho coaches do when they try to make a joke. It comes off sounding like they're, like they're mass murderers.

I thought it was a funny joke. And then we had the people trying to cover for themselves being like, well, Even if it was a joke, that's not a joke you make. Imagine if you're an assistant and you hear your boss say that.

Yeah.

Okay.

Gary Williams, fucking joke. Gary Williams, we hear that every day.

Yeah.

From Maryland.

Yeah.

Fired his guys, fired all of his assistant coaches probably twice every game. Yeah. If you heard the stuff that he would say to his staff.

Yeah.

Listen, coaches are psychos, okay? Their jokes aren't always funny unless you're in the coaching.

I thought it was a fun—

unless you're around coaches and you get it.

Yeah, I thought it was a funny joke. But yeah, Villanova. Max was sick on Friday, so we didn't even get to see it. I texted him a couple hours after, and I was like, this is so perfect. Or like, not perfect, but it's— we were commiserating together because like Wisconsin sucked me in all season and then killed me. Max had his, his, his like blinders up all season. He's like, this team's not good, this team's not good. They took a They played really well, took a lead in the second half, sucked him all the way in, only to have him just be so upset. He said he was so, so mad.

Yeah, I mean, of course he wanted to get a win. Once you're in the tournament, you want to get a win. There he is, looking nice and wet. Nice and wet, Max.

Looks like you just spilled a, a large drink as you went to, to take a, a chug. Max, we were talking about the game, um, what, what everyone is talking about. Well, I mean, no, we're saying Kevin Willard because there's a couple Friday I want to talk Santa Clara, Kentucky, then we're going to get all into the weekend. But Max, how— you got sucked back in for a minute. Yeah, they were up 10 in the second half.

They looked good.

They were hitting, they were hitting all their threes. Utah State went to the line 33 times. We went to the line 12.

Oh, okay. So wait, was that, was that your fault for not getting to the line, or you— was that you alluding to the refs?

I mean, every time Utah State got near the rim, it was a foul. Take it however you want. Yeah. Uh, Kevin Willard though, I'd rather we choke. We absolutely shit down our legs in the last 2 Kevin Willard, you thought that was a joke?

Of course it was a joke.

It's crazy that anyone thought it was a joke, but everyone hates Kevin Willard, which is fine. Yeah, I'm like, I'm happy. Like, not John Fana.

Nope, great friends.

Yeah, Fana, he's— if Fana has a wedding, Kevin Willard will be there. That's a fact.

You know what, 100%, I'd like to, uh, I'd like to invite Kevin Willard on Max's bachelor party.

Yeah, absolutely.

Seems like a good guy.

We'll get it. Yeah, we'll get in touch through Fana. Absolutely. So yeah, that happened. And then Santa Clara, Kentucky was the other game of note on Friday. I felt so bad for Santa Clara. That was though peak madness, just an incredible— the buzzer beater, go to overtime, half-court heave. Santa Clara should have won and they just— oh, it was brutal.

Yeah. And Syndeck was trying to call a timeout. You saw him kind of chasing after the ref. That's the problem with the basketball coach in March though, is like that voice has been gone for the last 3 months and it's not coming back. You have to be in front of the ref calling the timeout. There should be like a buzzer system.

Yeah.

For that late in March where you can just like buzz in, let them know, because he's not going to hear you, especially not in an arena like that. He's trying to get the defense set up. Might have changed the outcome, might not have. But yeah, that was, that was great March Madness.

It was, it was, it was beautiful March Madness we had after the first 2, the first 2 rounds. People essentially just have an entire morning on Saturday decide that they're going to say March Madness is dead. I know, I'm sure you saw it too. There's a lot of March Madness is dead, everyone pointing to the NIL transfer portal. Um, I still watched every game, I enjoyed it. Yes, there was not a lot of upsets. I also think that it's one of those weird things where everyone wants to just blame the thing they don't like in NIL transfer portal, because I don't know if you saw, but Todd Golden had a very good point. This was before he lost, um, essentially saying part of the reason why there's less upsets is teams are just getting way more efficient in scoring at the rim and becoming almost like raising their floor and becoming upset-proof in the fact that you get really big dudes. You play two big dudes, almost what Roy Williams was doing before anyone else played, two big dudes at all times and absolutely hammered the, the boards. And when you do that against smaller schools, you're not gonna— like, how, how, how do big schools lose to small schools?

Is like 3-point variance.

Yeah.

And, and having a, a, a team relying on 3-pointers that goes cold— when you have a team that can just hammer it down low, you're probably not gonna lose to the small guys.

We don't have to make everything mean something. No, that's what, that's what I get sick of when it comes to college sports. Like, every year shit changes, I get it. And then every year, whatever happens in the first round of if it's the, uh, even if it's a 4-team playoff like there was in college football or like the NCAA tournament, you have to make it mean something. We don't have to go through this every year. Yeah, okay, there's not— there has not been as many Cinderella stories. That's— it's whatever.

The last 2 years, the last 2 years, and Friday was, I think, 16-0, the favorites won outright.

Yeah, the last 2 years, I get it, there haven't been as many. Um, but I still think the games are good, with the exception— really, I would say like Friday The games weren't great.

There was, there was a stretch on Friday when we had a couple of the 1 seeds and 2 seeds.

And yeah, Friday the games were great. But guess what? On Saturday we saw some of the best basketball we've seen. On Sunday we saw some incredible games. Yeah, like the games fucking kick ass. And if you don't like kick ass shit, then you can fuck off.

There's also— it's playing the results a little bit too, because what happens? Everyone pretends that every single year there would be a 13, 14, 15 seed like in the Sweet 16 or winning, you know, first round game. Yes, the last 2 years there have not been a ton of upsets. What happens if Sienna beat Duke? Everyone would say that March Madness is back.

It was close, right?

Like there was a little, little things that if they go a different way, everyone's like, oh, there's no problem. I just think it's more that the NIL transfer portal is the big boogeyman and everyone points to it. It's more complex than that in my mind. They're also— the committee gets— has all the analytics now to seed correctly. Remember back in the day when it would just be Oh yeah, it's vibes. Yeah, it was just vibes. Oh, you won, you won 25 games. Oh cool, you're, you're, you're a 2 seed.

Yeah, you won a national championship 20 years ago. Okay, yeah, you're probably 3 no matter what, right?

Yeah, now they have it down to a science.

You're right. Like, if, if Sienna had won that game, if they had had like, uh, like one guy that could come off the bench and play for them and they had won that game, then yeah, the story would be completely different. You're not going to get upsets all the time. I thought the games have been awesome.

Yeah, so all right, so The games. Let's go. Let's go to Saturday. I also have a bigger— well, I could do it right now. I have a bigger gripe of just— I think I'm out on nostalgia porn. Everyone's just nostalgia this, nostalgia that. It's crazy. There was a guy— there was a tweet that went viral today that was essentially like, I miss the old courts when they wouldn't make it March Madness. Like, okay guys, this is so— like, you know, it would be like the home court of the host. Like Boise was hosting. I think there was a famous one Boise hosted. I think it was when Iowa State might have lost. Like, I miss this. Really? It's not that big of a deal.

I like it. I like the brackets on the courts just fine.

It's okay, though. Like, everything— have you noticed that, though? Everything is nostalgia porn now. Like, this America's gone. I don't know. I'm okay just living in the moment for a minute.

I saw one that was like, this is what they took from you. And it was a video of Nantucket in the summertime. Yeah. So if you go to Nantucket, I'm pretty sure it looks exactly like that video that you're posting. Right. And there's been a lot of vague posting recently. Where you just, you just like post, like if you were to post the final score of a basketball game, be like, you're not going to like the reason this was a score.

I just think it's a really sad way to live if you just constantly are saying to yourself, it was so much better in the past. Okay. Every time, every person in the history of the world when they've been alive have been like, it was better in the past.

Right, right. We all like it when, like when we didn't have jobs that we had to go to when we were kids and our biggest worry was like, getting home from school and watching sports and then playing video games. We didn't have bills. That, that was awesome.

The court one was where I was like, I think we've gone too far. We're now nostalgic about court. Like, we got to chill out.

You know what sucked about that era when, when we had those courts? You couldn't watch all the games at the same time.

Exactly. Yeah.

You had to wait. Yeah. I would get text messages. One game I was in high school, I signed up for text messages that would let me know if there was an upset that was happening. And I would get— there was a Kansas Who are they playing? I want to say like, uh, Bucknell, Bellarmine, or Bucknell or something like that in the first round. I got a text that, uh, there was an impending possible upset, get to a TV, 10 minutes left. And I went to a TV and the game was over.

Yeah.

And Kansas—

yeah, if you wanted to enter a bracket, you had to physically see the person in the 3 days before the tournament, right? You could be in a bracket of 12 people.

Things are a lot—

12 people you saw.

Things are a lot better overall now, but the problem with the internet is we do see all the shitty stuff too.

Right, right, right. So, okay, that was just— I just had a quick point on that. But yeah, let's, let's talk some games on Saturday, Sunday. You want—

I mean, the Big Ten, Big Ten, just dominant.

This, this just shows how good of a season Wisconsin had to finish 5th in the Big Ten.

Well, and also the fact that High Point might be like the 3rd best team in the entire tournament. And you guys, you guys gave them everything they could handle.

I wanted credit. I mean, everyone was bemoaning the lack of Cinderellas. Guess who gave you at least one Cinderella story? It was Wisconsin. So shout out Wisconsin for being the team that can still get bullied.

But yeah, with the Big Ten, I mean, we got still in it, we got Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, Michigan State, Michigan, Purdue, and then Iowa State, which is pretty much Big Ten. Yeah, it's like by vibes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty crazy though. The— there's— the Big Ten has done very, very well in this tournament. So let's start with Saturday. Michigan looked awesome. I feel bad that, uh, that was the last time we're gonna get to see Robbie Avila play college basketball. Yeah, he's a true college— if you want to do nostalgia porn, that guy, that guy is like a true college basketball guy.

I love that that guy can still exist. I know, in today's college basketball world. And that bruise was getting bigger. Oh yeah, it was like his entire arm. Yeah, was just black and blue by the end of it.

Um, Michigan's just really good.

Michigan's very good. Like, what they've done through their first two games You don't want to pick against them. They're just dominant. They're doing like offensively, they're as good as any team has been in a very long time.

Yeah. And defensively, they're, they're nasty. So they're, they're going to the Sweet 16 with in Chicago against— we're watching. It's going to be Alabama. Alabama is absolutely killing Texas Tech right now. Hank, were you a little nervous about how Duke played in the first half? A little bit, but they righted the ship second half. Yeah, they looked bad in the first half and then they absolutely crushed TCU in the second half. No problem. Yeah, they found it. They found— they found exactly— they remembered that they're Duke.

Yeah.

And it's their tournament to lose.

It is, right?

And now they got to go against Rick Pitino and St. John's. Oh, I mean, it's all-time region. It is all-time Sweet 16 region of the year. Probably ticket of the year. That's probably one of the best Sweet 16 tickets you could have.

Listen, we have not seen a lot of great professional basketball games in that arena in the last 10 years, but this year between the Duke-Michigan game and that entire regional, that's going to be a hot ticket. That's sad, but yeah, well, it's true.

Yeah, no, he's just stating facts.

Listen, I will be the first to tell you, Hank, you try to come at me about the Wizards last— nobody will say worse things about the Wizards than me.

That's facts.

Yeah, but that's, um, that's gonna be such a great regional. Duke against St. John's, UConn against Michigan State. Yeah, I love it.

Yeah, and then the, the next game was Houston just Houston looks so good. Can I, can I push back on something though? What with Houston, everyone's saying, oh, Houston, uh, they're playing in Houston in the Sweet 16, it's going to be like a home game. Yeah, Illinois, Nebraska, and Iowa have some pretty big fan bases that are all going to want to travel, especially Nebraska, right? And Iowa. I, it, or sorry, when I said that, they say Illinois, Nebraska. Yeah, yeah, but Nebraska, like, especially just in the fact that they have never had any tournament success. But yeah, Iowa's first Sweet 16 in a long time. I don't think it's going to be like they're going to take over the place, but I don't think it's going to be, you know, 80% Houston at this— at this game— at these games.

Have you ever been to Houston, Big Cat?

Yeah, I've been.

You know how long— you know how long it takes to get around town if you don't live there?

Yeah.

Yeah. That's what they're going to have to deal with.

But I don't—

they might be— they might be late to the game because they got stuck on 3 different overpasses.

Did you see Oklahoma City on Saturday night? And I know it's closer, but they, they broke the decibel record. They— there was a Game 7 NBA Finals this last year.

Uh, Thunder Princess, I think, would have something to say about that.

They broke the record. So I'm just saying, I think there's going to be more fans. Those are some really rabid fan bases that are, are going to be more than willing to travel.

Yeah, of course. I, I just think Houston, man, I— they would be the last team I would want to play against.

They're really good.

They're so good. Like, it's so physical. I just, I keep falling more and more in love with him.

Yeah. And then, uh, so yeah, Houston, that wasn't even— that was where we were when we started Saturday. I think that's where it reached its peak of this tournament sucks, uh, discourse, because we went Michigan blowout, Duke, which became a blowout, um, and Houston blowout. Tom Izzo, though, going to another Sweet 16, 17th Sweet 16. He— we're gonna have him on on Wednesday. He's 26-9 in second weekend, second games in a weekend. So that's either the round of 32 or the Elite Eight. So when he gets there, he just wins. It's insane what he's able to do, what he's like. I, I was thinking about it and I know we're very ring culture oriented and, you know, he's only won one. This tournament is so fucking hard. And if you ask, I mean, you could ask me, Max, You— I mean, Max, you won too, but like, there's a lot of fan bases that if you said, hey, your season starts in the Sweet 16 almost every single year, you'd sign up for it in a heartbeat. Every single year they have at least a chance. It's crazy. Like, they just go to Sweet 16s and then, and then the tournament kind of starts for Izzo.

Yeah, I mean, before Jay Wright won that first one, the whole thing was that he couldn't get— he couldn't get to the second weekend. He would get upset in the first weekend every single year. So like getting to that second weekend is a huge accomplishment in itself.

And it may—

and the best part about it is when you get to the second weekend, you just get— this next week is the best. Yes. Because you get another week of prepping for the big game, you know, watch it going back, like looking at highlights and stuff and prepping yourself for the big game, trying to look at your path to get to the— like, this week is the best if you get to that second week. Yeah. I haven't been there in 9, I think 10. Might be 10 years now. And it's like, that's every year Michigan State, they're like, hey, yeah, we're going to be in the second weekend. That's 17 of them is insane. Tom Izzo is somehow underrated, I think, because it's just the, the whole entire world has changed. College basketball has changed. And Tom Izzo is just standing there being like, yeah, that's okay, I'll just keep winning.

And Fears is just getting better. I loved on the broadcast when they were like, this, this young man, he's making so many better decisions on the court. And that's all thanks to the great coaching of Tom Izzo. He hasn't kicked a guy in the dick in like a week and a half.

Dude, that's big.

And that's huge. He's got a chip now. He carries around a chip with him, like for Alcoholics Anonymous. Yeah, he has not kicked a man in the penis recently, but he was dominant. He was as dominant of a point guard as you'll ever see. And yeah, Cohen Carr was great too. That whole team, it's like Michigan State, when they, when they get to the tournament, they have this knack of just their guys become superstars before your very eyes in like the span of a week and a half.

A reporter asked Tom Izzo this and he was spot on. Like, how is it that every year your team is basically the same? And it's, it's a gutsy, like, war dog of a point guard. Some guy who's got just a freak athlete, Koen Carr. And then you got a few guys that you throw in there that just play Tom Izzo ball, fundamental, rebound, hit big shots. It's never the sexiest. It's not like they're going to play, you know, in the '80s, '90s. But it doesn't matter. It's winning basketball. He's now 61-26 all time in the NCAA tournament. That's stupid.

It's pretty incredible.

That's, that's insane. And he just— he's 71 years old and he just keeps— and it's like a young man's game. Look at, look at some of the, you know, national title winners and just where the game's going. Tom Izzo is just there being like, I don't care. I'm not going to change what I'm doing and I'm going to keep winning.

My favorite moments from Tom Izzo are always when he's like yelling at a player And then his player starts yelling at him and then he stops yelling and smiles.

Yeah.

He's like, this is awesome.

Yeah. He loves exactly where I want to be. Yeah.

He absolutely loves getting yelled at. He's like, yes, I'm finally getting some shit now. Now I feel alive.

Yeah. Yeah. So congrats to Michigan State. Also, I mean, it's got to be a little weird for Tom Izzo. Pat Kelsey told a story about how he met Tom Izzo like 20 years ago when he was first an assistant at Wake Forest. He's Tom Izzo has been around for that long where it's just all these stories are going to start popping up being like, yeah, I went to your camp when I was 10 years old. I'm now 50. Pat Kelsey's 50.

Yeah, it was.

And he had a glowing story about when he met him when he was 20.

There was some picture, I want to say it was, was Rick Pitino when he was at Kentucky that they put out on, on Thursday or Friday and they did a fucked up thing. They added like a sepia tone to it to make it look— I swear the picture looks like it was taken in 1954.

That's kind of—

but it was like from the '90s. Yeah. It's like when you go back and you watch you watch games from the year like 2009 on YouTube. Yeah, like that shit was— it was in high def when we watched it, right? But they make it look older when you go back and you watch it online now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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Bonus bets expire 7 days after issuance. For additional terms and responsible gaming resources, see sportsbook.draftkings.com/promos. Limited time offer. Okay, Saturday night is where we started to really pick it up though. It felt good. Yeah, Texas and Gonzaga was a great game. Texas is our Cinderella, by the way. The University of Texas, plucky little underdogs, is the 11 seed going from the, from the First Four, uh, into the Sweet 16, which we, we noted before the tournament happens feels like every other year. But they take down Gonzaga, and Texas, um, Voke— how do you say his name? Voketaitis.

Voketaitis.

Unbelievable. He's just— he can't hit free throws, but everything else is— he's just a monster around the rim.

And he wasn't missing his layups.

Yeah.

Get his own— his rebounds this time. He was just dominant. He was just good, big, physical. Gonzaga. Yes. Down year. But Texas has some dudes. They can make some noise. I think they're 300 to 1 right now to win. Okay. Which is like, yeah, they're probably not going to. But that's pretty good value for a Sweet 16 team.

Yeah, it is.

Like one that, that gets the type of players that Texas gets.

Yeah. Yeah. And Sean Miller also needs more credit. He's 9-1 in round of 32 games. Pretty damn good. And I, I, the storylines, if you're like, hey, there's not enough storylines, the idea that if Texas could beat Purdue and Arizona can win their Sweet 16 game and you have Sean Miller going up against Tommy Lloyd to potentially stop Arizona going for the first Final Four in 25 5 years, the thing that Sean Miller couldn't do, that would be juicy.

And I mean, to, to have a guy that used to work with Nick Lachey when he was a college basketball coach do all this would be pretty incredible.

Yeah.

Do you see that clip of the interview where they were talking to Sean Miller about like Nick Lachey being a ball boy on one of his teams? He was like a grad assistant and Sean Miller had no idea what the person was talking about.

That's perfect.

And the person knew everything about Nick Lachey's history with Sean Miller. Sean, Sean's like, I don't, I don't know who this young man is. But yeah, that would be, that would be a hell of a storyline. Yeah.

So Sean Miller, great tournament coach. Mark Few, I don't know. Gonzaga came into this season with a ton of promise. Huff's injury changes a lot. You could see it like the way EK has to play when there's not another big. Like I said at the beginning, you know, having those two bigs out there, that, that, that lowered their ceiling. But Gonzaga, Mark Few, the, the bar that he's raised it to, not getting to Sweet 16 is a disappointment because he is a guy who just expects— you expect to go to Sweet 16.

You can pencil him into a Final Four every year. That's what we always say about Gonzaga.

He's just a great coach. He's just always going to the Final Four. Yeah. Um, but yeah, that was an awesome game. Texas, like, it felt like it in many moments, like Texas was not going to be able to pull it off, and they just kept on holding off Gonzaga, kept on holding them off. Jordan Pope making big shots.

So yeah, they've got— Texas has Vukotic, who is— he's a very physically dominant and a skilled big man too. And then they've got a few players that are just like super athletic, and the way they move, you think that they're awesome and they have the capability of taking over a game, but they're like wildly inconsistent too. Like guys that will be able to jump out of the gym, guys that are faster than everybody, but they're just missing like that one little shred of consistency.

Yeah, yeah. And they, they had a disappointing regular season. I think they went 9-9 in the SEC, uh, but they always had that high ceiling of a team. And now they're realizing it. This is why the tournament is great, because you have a chance. You can have a season that you deem as a disappointment in the regular season, but if you can rip off a few wins in, in the postseason, you, you can walk away being like, that was successful. And again, Sean Miller is one of those guys, tournament coach.

Yeah, this would be—

mark it under tournament coach for everybody.

Like everyone that's still playing right now. What an awesome week going back to school. This would be the best, right? I guess unless you have spring break this week. But if you go back to college and you just get to chill out on campus for like 3 days. Yeah, that rocks. Good for you.

Yeah, that was, that was a great game. And then Nebraska-Vanderbilt was the game of the night, maybe the game of the tournament. Because one, that crowd, Nebraska, it was just all Nebraska and they were so loud and they were screaming about every single call and you could feel it, like you could feel it in the gym. I— it was, it was such a cool environment. And they have the storybook, uh, Braden Frager, who is from Lincoln, Nebraska, hit the game-winning shot. And then Vanderbilt with possibly the overinflated balls have the ball go in and out for a buzzer beater that would have been like top 10 buzzer beater in, in, in history of the tournament.

Yeah, the bank shot. The ball was in.

It was in. It was as far in as you could get it in.

Backboard, rim, rim, out. There's a— there's some screenshots out there that will keep you up at night if you're a Vanderbilt fan. The ball, it does— it went in, it went in and then bounced out. But it was like a ball don't lie situation where good for Nebraska. Well, Nebraska earned it.

And Nebraska is showing You know, they are so fanatical, especially with how football's gone recently. They're so fanatical for their sports that having a team like this and the way they're getting behind it, it's just an awesome thing. This is— these are the type of March stories you are drawn to. It's also a reminder Fred Hoiberg is just a really fucking good college coach.

He—

I think his time at the Bulls probably got some people off the scent. He was really good at Iowa State. He's really good at Nebraska. He's so good at Nebraska, the Bulls might hire him again, which would— I wouldn't put it past them. Jerry Reinsdorf being like, who's this up-and-comer, Fred Hoiberg? Yeah, but did he really like the way he switched up his defense in the second half, going to 1-3-1 zone? And like, he just always had Vanderbilt— because Vanderbilt's guards are good, but he had them in a torture chamber all night.

I loved, uh, I love seeing the Nebraska fans wearing the football helmets and football pads. It's like, yeah, we're rooting for the basketball team, but like, we would We would kill a man if this was a football game. Yeah, like, I want this for a football program so badly. But yeah, the fans were really into it. I saw our good friend Dana. Yeah, Dana was there.

Dana Holgerson.

Dana Holgerson having the time of his life out there. I love seeing him happy. Uh, it's good, it's good. I think for the sport that we get Iowa, Nebraska—

it's crazy—

in basketball in the Sweet 16, and they split in the regular season. Yeah, home and home, the Corn Bowl.

It's so perfect.

Cornhub.com.

For both of these schools to reach this point in the first time in Nebraska's history, the first time for Iowa in I think it's been 20, 30 years, and be like, oh shit, you're here? Like, the guy we hate, you're here? Yeah, you showed up.

It's good.

It's—

this is really good. I, I'm pumped to watch this game. Neither— I don't think I— if you'd ask me at the start of this tournament, would I be looking forward to a game between Iowa and Nebraska, I would say no. But now, yes, you can't help— you can't help but look forward to this.

No. And Vanderbilt— this was also— see, this is where it's like, we did not have a Cinderella, but if you watched Vanderbilt-Nebraska on Saturday night, it was not only a great tournament game, but it's two teams that are so far from blue bloods in basketball and have no real basketball history to like fall back on, both trying to reach a point that would be huge for the program, and the stakes couldn't have been higher. Those are the type of games where I'm like, hey, you don't like tournament? Here, watch this. Watch this crowd. Watch these two teams that have not had a ton of success in basketball and watch them go toe-to-toe and the shot making at the end. And it felt like Nebraska was going to lose a million different times. They just kept on having big shot after big shot after big shot. It was an awesome tournament game.

Yeah, it was great. It was great.

Um, this is our— the portion of the show for, uh, our good friend Tom Fornelli. We have to talk about Illinois. They're a buzzsaw. They, they— VCU did the thing where they were scrappy for, you know, Illinois came out looked like it was a complete mismatch, which it was, especially like height-wise was just insane. And then VCU came back. You're like, oh man, VCU. And it was like, nah, we're not doing this.

No, Illinois is too smart.

We're, we're not doing this.

Yeah, they're too well coached. Yeah, they wouldn't let that happen. It's not Hubert Davis on the sidelines in Illinois.

Did you see the Penn fans on— was it Thursday doing the "that's all right, that's okay, we're going to be your boss one day" chant?

That's always a good one to break out.

Yeah, but it's not. Like, I get it, Ivy League, whatever. Illinois is a good school. Yeah, but I get it.

If you go to Ivy, you just assume that everybody's going to work for you.

But that wasn't— yeah, that wasn't Penn, uh, and forgive me because I'm sure people will be upset, that wasn't Penn, Arizona State.

Actually, I would say Arizona State, much higher likelihood that you go into business as like a shitty entrepreneur.

Yeah, true.

And like, true, basically like run a scam.

True. But it makes some money. Safety school.

No, but that, that's— listen, if you go to Penn, if you go to Princeton, if you go to any of these schools, you do that at Duke. Yeah, UVA, the Ivy League of the South.

Yeah, Michigan.

At the end of the day, you know, you lose a, you lose a game and you do have that mentality of like, well, at least I get to be an asshole to you for the rest of your life, right?

Right. At least I can walk around and the first thing I'll tell you is that I went to an Ivy League school. Yeah, I have that going for me. But yeah, Illinois looks awesome. We're going to Arizona this week for PMT spring break and I I don't know what the line is because we can't bet it here. I'm gonna have to take a look. If they could get through Houston, they have—

I mean, the bracket broke really nice for both Illinois and Houston. The problem is they have to play each other, right? Uh, but I, I—

that's gonna be an awesome game. The most efficient offense, the most efficient defense. It is. I don't know if they're— I know Illinois is the most efficient offense. I don't know if Houston's probably top 5 defensively. This over, by the way, is just torture. Because all we needed was Texas Tech. Sorry for everyone to show up. All we needed was Texas Tech to be not complete ass. And they were complete ass tonight.

Big time ass. It was bad.

Like, they just had to be a little bit not ass.

They just had to. Yeah, they had to run plays.

If they had scored 65 points, we'd be—

and this is not Alabama playing like deciding to be good at defense.

This is just insane offense.

They're great offensively. And Texas Tech was complete ass on offense.

Complete ass. Um, the other, the other games. So yeah, Illinois is really, really good. I don't, I, I don't know what else to say. They, they— it's hard to talk about the teams that just are buzzsaws in the first 2 rounds.

It's—

and Illinois is in that category. Yeah, I mean, complete buzzsaw in the first 2 rounds. It's tough.

We haven't had— we haven't seen them tested really. I mean, VCU got kind of close in the second half, like within 10.

Well, I think it was more first. They, they tied it in the first half and then, and then Illinois closed out the half strong and then I don't know if it got close again. I feel like it didn't.

I would like to see Illinois playing a close game in this tournament.

Yeah.

Or at least get tested.

It will be the Houston game.

It would be the Houston game. I just—

it's going to be an incredible matchup. The Sweet 16 matchups are awesome. Yeah, absolutely incredible. And then we— every Saturday night, every night game should finish with Arkansas playing High Point because that was so much fun.

That's one game where I'm bummed that I don't get to watch High Point play basketball anymore. I think that's good. Those might be the two best point guards Yeah, Fears, you got to toss Fears in. But between Acuff and Martin from High Point, those are two of the best point guards in all of college basketball. And that game was just so fucking fun.

And it was— High Point had them in the spot that they wanted them to be in, in that it's exactly what they did to the Badgers, like keep it close, keep it close, and then have Chase Johnston make a couple crazy threes and win the game. And he just didn't make the crazy threes.

They were— these were crazier threes, right?

They were. But that's the— that's the game plan for him. That's like people were saying, oh, how do you take the ball out of Martin's hands? Well, they were down, you know, 6 or 7. Like, that was— that's the whole way that High Point can win that type of game, is Chase Johnson has to do that thing where he's just unconscious.

And I, I thought that Brazil from Arkansas did a good enough job, like, altering the offensive High Point.

Yeah.

Uh, to, to the place where Arkansas could kind of afford to slow it down at the end. They had a big enough lead where they could take their time in half court and not have to rush everything and just kind of like— it's crazy because it was 94-88. But if Arkansas continued to play their like high-speed offense and just let Acuff drive whenever he wanted, this game could have been like 105-101. Yeah.

Yeah. And Acuff, his last 5 games that he's played, postseason games, 37 points, 24 points, 30 points, 24 points, 36 points. He's averaging 30 points, 7 assists, 45, uh, and a half field goal percentage. He's just insane.

He's the best.

He is so much fun to watch. He just makes the right decision all the time. He gets— we were talking about it with like the cool, cool limp. He also has the cool speed switch up on court where you think that he's going slow and then all of a sudden he, he will hit the turbo booster, kind of like lull people into being like, oh, he's, he's, he's not like trying that hard. And then he'll just hit that turbo and be at the rim. And his body control and the way he just kind of controls the game, it's just awesome. He's, he's one of my favorite players to watch. And I'm happy that he— we get to see him play more basketball in this tournament. Do we think that there has ever been a bigger won the breakup more than Cal and Kentucky right now? It's— it was a good choice. Maybe Brady and Belichick.

Who would you say won? I would say, I would say Belichick because he's with Jordyn.

Yeah, Jordyn.

And also Brady's being a weirdo these days.

That's true.

Really strange. But how so? Oh, he won't trade players to the Patriots.

True. The, the flag football game where they got killed.

Yeah, he's dating like—

we might have been wrong on that.

He's dating 23-year-olds. Belichick's actually very normal compared to what Brady is up to.

True. Cal is living the best life. He has gone to back-to-back Sweet Sixteens and Kentucky could not. Kentucky is just in a crisis. Kentucky is in a complete crisis with Mark Pope.

Yes. Like at Arkansas, Cal has almost an attitude of like, let's have fun.

Right.

And but they're having the best time ever. But they're dominating. They're really, really good. And at Kentucky, you could see all the pressure getting to them. And now I think with— I mean, a lot of it does have to do with having Acuff as your point guard.

Oh, for sure.

It's like, I don't— I can do my Cal thing, which is I roll the ball out there and then the boys play basketball.

Yes. Acuff is— is— makes probably any coach— would make any coach smile a lot more. But it's just funny to see how happy Cal is right now and how miserable— like, it couldn't have gone worse in the first 2 years. For this breakup and the breakup. I don't think they would have taken it back because they like they had to do it. Mm-hmm. Kentucky will win a national championship before Arkansas.

Who said that?

Still, still a lot of time to go.

That's Big Cat.

It's still a lot of time to go.

I mean, you're probably— you're probably—

I don't know. Acuff is so good.

You're probably right. Acuff, I think, is the most fun player in this entire tournament to watch.

Who did you tweet that, Memes? Today, some Arkansas fans came back to it.

Oh yeah, they bumped it.

They did. They win the national championship today?

No, but they—

as soon as they got eliminated, they bumped it.

They're circling it.

Fair play.

They're monitoring the situation.

Part of winning— part of winning in the tournament is going and just getting old takes, exposing everyone.

We should do— should we do a list of like the part of my take top 5 most kick-ass guys to watch in the tournament?

Yeah, sure.

My number 1, Aikoff.

Yeah, Akuffo is easy.

No, Akuffo easy number one.

Sounds like you have it. Give it to us.

No, no, no, no, I don't have it. Just, I was just thinking like Arkansas might not— Arkansas is not the best team, I don't think. No, but they have the most fun player.

Oh yeah.

And debatable, like he's probably far— he's probably going to go in the top 10 in the draft. He's probably not going to go like super high, um, but oh, I, I think he'll—

I think he's gonna go— I mean, he— his defense is a problem and he's not the perfect height for a point guard. I, I feel like you'd be stupid if you don't. I would take him top 5 personally.

I think he's awesome.

I personally would take him top 5. You watch him play basketball and you don't think that like he can't just own a— like, be like, hey, here you go, it's your franchise.

You're going to have fun.

That good.

You're going to have fun.

Yeah.

So I would put him number 1 as most kick-ass guy. It might just be a cup, a cup, a cup, all a cup, a cup.

And then Martin, maybe 5. Yeah, but Titus, Vokatitis. Yeah, yeah, should be in there.

Okay, we can put him 3.

Absolutely.

I would like to put JoJo Tugler. Okay, number 5.

I think Edgifer's got to be on there. Yeah, he's, he's an awesome story, an awesome player. Well, maybe Wednesday we do our All Kick-Ass team, or all—

yeah, all Kick-Ass tournament, all Kick-Ass tournament team.

I like that a lot. Um, anything else on Saturday? I, I had to— this is also the, the show— this is the worst Monday, by the way, I think, in the year. Uh, I think it's worse than the Monday after the Super Bowl because you get to a point where you just think that this is your life now, where you just wake up and you're like, okay, it's, it's time to watch basketball for 14 hours, right?

If you, if you go out and you drink like 20 beers one night, you're going to wake up the next day and you're going to— you're not going to feel great, right? But then maybe by that Monday you'll just be like kind of a little off. Whereas if you spend like a week drinking beers and then you try to go back to work on Monday, you're going through withdrawals. Yeah, you need it. Like, we do need a little bit of basketball.

Yeah. No, it's— it's this— this is the day that I just— I'm always so scared of because I just— I spend every single second watching basketball for 4 days straight. And it's really the, the 2 weeks before that with conference tournament week, and then you just hardline. We have nothing.

Like, I would—

we have the Crown. Is the Crown— is the Crown starting? No. I could use some Crown.

I would pay probably $1,000 to watch High Point versus Florida tomorrow night. Yeah, right.

Crown is in April.

April.

Yeah. Sorry, boys, we lost this over Texas Tech. So we went PMT parlay. We won 1 out of 4, actually plus money.

Plus money because money, I think it was 5 to 1. Yeah, about just every time.

This one sucked because it was—

they—

the pace was there, just Texas Tech was complete ass. What are you saying?

Which is it? Means PFT went 4 for 4.

Yeah, PFT did go 4.

I did. How's the pistol?

Hot as a pistol. Lava hot. Cool inside. Uh, Yeah, that's— this one's on me.

It's on us. Oh, yeah, us. Great job Saturday, though.

Great job Saturday. Great job Saturday. That was a lot of fun. And Friday we got close.

And Thursday we got close.

Thursday we got close as well.

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That's—

I mean, 5 would be pretty tasty. I'd probably go with like 5.5 to 6.

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Okay, let's talk some Sunday. Sunday, Sunday. By the way, I'm just looking it up. Texas Tech shot 16% from 3. Disgusting. 4 for 25. Terrible. That's insane.

They didn't stop.

4 for 25.

Yeah.

All they had to do is make 3 more.

They were, they were going like iso ball, but every single iso possession they'd have would just be like an awkward step-back 3.

Yeah, it was just bad, bad offense. And Nate Oats and Alabama are into the Sweet 16. Does Aidan Holloway play?

I'm I don't know. He's got to get that, the tax stamp thing worked out. It's really the tax stamp that pisses me off.

I— this will be an interesting story because I feel like, I feel like he might play. Although, are you going to mess up the vibes? They killed Texas Tech. I don't think so. That was a pick-'em game. They won by 35.

Yeah, they're playing really well. But Aiden's a good player.

This is a scary team. For anyone. I know Michigan is really good, but the one thing that Michigan— like, when Wisconsin beat Michigan in Ann Arbor, they just hit a million threes. If you hit a million threes, you can beat anyone. Alabama just gets hot and just hits a million threes.

Let the Aidan Holloway situation be a reminder to everybody that you don't have to let the police look through your phone. Yeah, it's kind of on him.

Well, they were—

I'm— I actually, I point the finger at Nate Oats for this. Because Nate Oates, you got to do a better job of explaining the First through Fifth Amendments.

Yeah.

To your players, given the history that you've had, there have been some legal issues.

Yep.

Day one, you should have— get the guys from Morgan and Morgan to come in and be like, do not talk to the police if you're in trouble. Shut the fuck up.

They really had him, though. They had been looking at his trash.

Yeah, they had him.

They had him figured out.

They dug deep and they found— yeah, it was like 2 pounds of weed, which could be a little baggies, could be personal. Yeah, that could be.

Does— is there a chance that he was providing weed for the whole team and now they, they have to ban drugs because that was an incredible performance?

Where was that game today?

That game was being played in Tampa, Florida.

Okay.

And Alabama just won by 35 points against— yes, Toppin being out changed all of the season for Texas Tech, but still a good Texas Tech team. And they shot 45% from 3, 19 for 42. Pretty damn good. Yeah.

Oh no, they just did a sad Texas Tech fan in the stands giving a sad head down, gun up.

Jeffrey. Oh no, guns up.

That was pretty bad.

That is bad. That's really bad. Okay, Sunday we started off Purdue.

What?

Oh, Purdue just played a perfect offensive game. Purdue is humming right now. Right now. Say something nice about Purdue. I'm proud that Purdue's a Big Ten team. Are you? Yeah, because I just— I've just switched to this has got to be the year the Big Ten wins the national title. I've gone through all the emotions of coping and now I'm just like, hey, good job, Purdue. Just go, go finish it.

I'm starting to come around a little bit on Fletcher Lawyer.

Yeah, he's actually in the office. Nice guy.

He's a very nice guy. Very smart player. I like his interviews that he does with Rothstein. It's good. Yeah, it's good. I'm coming around on him. The Braden Smith situation, I'm going to— that's going to take me a while to let my guard down and really accept him. But Fletcher Lawyer, very fun player to watch.

They're just— Purdue is a team that is built for the tournament and the fact that they have been there in every single moment with those 3 seniors. And like, even at the end of the game, when I think it was maybe 3 minutes left and it was a 6-point game, You're like, all right, you need to have a guard who you can trust, who can get you into your offense late in the shot clock, still get a good shot off, hit free throws, all those things. That's what Purdue is. And they were, again, almost perfect from offense. They shot 53% from the field, 57% from, uh, the 3. And they— I think they were— I saw a stat. Yeah, okay, so Purdue's— in their win over Miami, they were 53.2% from the field, 57.1% from 3, 95.5% from the line, 21 for 22. They're the 3rd team in NCAA tournament history to shoot 50-50, 95 in a game. Marquette was the last team to do it in 2003, round 32 with Tom Crean and Dwyane Wade. That's insane. 50-50, 90, and they were really 95.

20, 20, 21 of 22 from the line.

It's nuts.

Yeah.

So they played a perfect game.

And Matt Painter is a very good tournament coach. I think we have to include him in that list. Yeah.

He also had a pretty good quote, uh, uh, quote on Friday where he kind of pushed back on the entire Travis Steele, you know, Miami of Ohio, we tried to schedule these teams and we couldn't do it. He was like, hey, we played the MAC, we can't figure out who's going to be good year to year. Yeah, and that's true. It's not on Purdue. They, they scheduled mid-major teams. It's not on them to be like, oh well, We— it's our fault that Buffalo was bad this year or Northern Illinois was bad this year. You know what I mean? So I think there's a little bit of truth to that.

Yeah.

And it's an imperfect system because every coach is trying to figure out the perfect schedule so that they can maximize their chance of getting in the tournament. They're, they're obviously not going to take like risks that have very little upside.

No, why would they?

Right.

But did you see Miami's player Malik Renault? After the game?

No. What do you say?

So he went— he found his way into the concourse right after the game's over.

That was real.

I think that was—

I thought that was fake because I was like, no way is that true.

I saw like 4 different angles of it, so I think it's real. Memes, can we confirm or did I get got?

I thought— I thought it was real.

Yeah, I think it's real. He went— he went to get some pizza after the game wearing his uniform. Shout out to that guy. You're done playing. You're done for the year. Why not?

That's incredible. Why not?

I weigh in tomorrow.

I just assumed that was fake somehow because it's so ridiculous. That's awesome.

Yeah. Good for him.

That's fucking awesome. Yeah. Why not?

I think that— what's the line? Whose line is it anyway?

Purdue, Texas, 6.5 on DraftKings Sportsbook, which is live again in Arkansas. 7.5. Yeah. Okay.

I like, I like Purdue.

Yeah. I mean, it's been a lot of favorites. A lot of favorites have been winning.

I like Purdue a lot in that.

I don't know. Texas.

Yeah.

Purdue's just good. They're just a good tournament team. And they're, they're— this senior class has won a lot of tournament games. So maybe, and maybe it's one of those, like the next game I was going to talk about, maybe it's one of those the years where no one's talking about them, like Tennessee's in the Sweet 16, held on against Virginia. Like the years that not all the pressure's on Purdue, there's other dominant teams. Tennessee, there hasn't been a lot of discourse about Tennessee being a national title threat. Maybe they aren't, but they're in the Sweet 16 and they got a shot against Iowa State, who's missing a key player. Maybe he'll be back, Jefferson. But that's maybe that's what happens is when you're not, when you're least expecting it.

We do talk a lot of shit about the one-and-done era. And this is— yeah, Purdue is actually doing the exact opposite. This is like a— this is a mid-'90s— it's a mid-'90s team.

Yeah. Yeah. And Iowa State, Kentucky— Kentucky is just— that was just a brutal game to watch. They had 20 turnovers. Yeah.

Mark Pope on the hot seat.

He's got to be.

I think he is. I think— I mean, I think they're going to bring him back. I think he's safe for this year, but I think he's going into next year. Seat is— seat is warm.

Here are two things that you're not going to want to hear if you're a Kentucky Kentucky fan. The first one was after the game, Nate Heisel, who plays on Iowa State, said part of their game plan was if they can get a couple kill shots on Kentucky 10-0 runs, that Kentucky will lay down and quit. He said they talked about it before the game. They're like, if you can jump on them— and they— it was the— I mean, Kentucky came out hot. They were up, I think, 20-5 or something like that. But then it just— all the momentum went the other way. And you could kind of— they couldn't get the ball in bounds. They turned it over 20 times. It was just throwing the ball everywhere and you could feel it. They kind of quit.

Yeah.

Not great for Mark Pope.

No. And I mean, at least Louisville lost. So that took a little bit of the sting out of it if you're a Kentucky fan. But then I don't think they— you've got— yeah, you got Patino in the Sweet 16, you got Cal in the Sweet 16, and then Kentucky did not look very good at all.

And the other one was, which I think there's probably some truth to it, which just stings extra hard. Tyrese Halliburton said, went to text the guys who played at Kentucky about this game and forgot they think they Arkansas alum now, which is— I bet you that like their allegiance goes to Cal before it goes Kentucky, 100%. Yeah, there's no way that half— I mean, maybe a couple of the guys, but a lot of them, they have a lot more of a close relationship with Cal than they do with the University of Kentucky.

Yeah, I mean, Cal's job unabashedly was, I'm here to make you as much money as possible, right?

Right. So, yeah. All right. The Malik Renu was 100% true.

Good for him.

That's awesome. That's a great move to not even get out of his—

I like that he waited in line, too.

Yeah.

He didn't just go up there. He was just— did he have— did he have money like in his— do those shorts have pockets?

He probably went and grabbed his phone.

Yeah. Yeah. Good call. Yeah.

There's the— yeah. He's just like, fuck it. I'm just going to go. I don't like the food here. I don't play in college basketball anymore. I'm out of here. Go grab my food. That is awesome. But yeah, the— that's got to sting for Kentucky. Maybe when we, when we host Kentucky Sports Radio in the summer, Mark Pope hot seat feels inevitable, feels very much as a Colonel.

It does sting to know that other, other coaches and teams are talking about your squad like that.

Yeah.

Like they'll give up.

Shout out our guy Matt Jones, though. He, he removed himself from the game.

OK, good. That I did not see that.

He said he was very close to yelling at a ref from press row and then he realized that's his time to leave the game.

Self-regulation. That's important. Yeah.

Thank you for your service, Matt. Yeah.

Good job, Matt.

That's incredible. Thank you for doing the right thing.

Yes.

When no one was watching.

Sometimes the, the most important part of the First Amendment is knowing when not to use it. Matt.

I would like to know what he was going to say to the ref.

Probably something really polite. Yeah.

Hey, that's a bad call. I guess you stink, but it was on press row. Remember that?

Y'all are sorry. Yeah.

There's also the Kentucky part of NIL. It doesn't always work out. It's not always the most amount of money because Jaden Quinton got paid $2 million this season, allegedly, to transfer from Arizona State, and he scored 20 points all season. $100,000 per point.

Sheesh. Yeah.

So it's not always like, hey, you can just throw money at it, it will work.

Yeah. There's going to be some people that aren't going to be too happy with that.

No, no. Probably a lot of colonels.

Yeah, a lot of colonels.

A lot of colonels.

I'm not happy. Frankly, it's unacceptable.

Yeah. St. John's, Kansas. Great. What a game. It was a bad game until it was a great game.

But first half was kind of ugly. Uh, St. John's came out remarkably shooting threes like at an amazing clip. Yeah, did not expect that to happen.

Yep.

Uh, but yeah, then at the end it kind of felt like it was a great game down the stretch. The, uh, the Kansas offense with Peterson looked a little disjointed when he was the primary guy with the ball. Um, that was all season. Yeah, it's all season, and it finally caught up with him, the fact that he didn't get that many minutes. Playing with that first-team offense. So it looked a little awkward. But I mean, Kansas, they fought back. They almost won.

Yeah. And then we had Dylan— Dylan Darling, who had a buzzer-beater. His only made field goal in the entire game was the buzzer-beater. Pretty damn cool. The end of game, Bill Self did the right thing. So Kansas had 2 fouls. Obviously, 7 is the bonus. Uh, the start of 1-on-1. So there's 12 seconds left, you might as well burn the fouls and take some time off the clock. They just didn't do it correctly the first two times.

It's fouled immediately.

They fouled immediately and ended up having 3 seconds left, and Dylan Darling just blew right by the Kansas defender right to the rim. Incredible finish. Rick Pitino back in the Sweet 16. He's 73 years old. I think this is the fourth team he's done it with now. He did it with Providence, Kentucky, Louisville, and now St. John's. I don't think there's a more perfect fit than Rick Pitino at St. John's.

No, it was meant to be.

It really was.

It was. And seeing that list of coaches— Shire, Pitino, Izzo, Hurley— all going to the same regional, that's awesome. Yeah, that's going to kick so much ass. Yeah. Yeah. The end of that game, Self, I think, got outcoached and now he seems like he he's thinking about whether or not he wants to come back and coach basketball next year.

Well, this is now 4 straight years that Kansas has not made the Sweet 16. Again, going back to the Izzo stat, it's insane. Like, he just goes to the Sweet 16, but 4 straight years at Kansas not going to the Sweet 16 is a problem.

I mean, that could be pretty crazy if Kansas— if Bill Self decides he doesn't want to coach anymore, and then UNC, it sounds like they might be moving on. Oh yeah. And if those are the 2 big openings, that's going to be kind of chaotic.

Pretty good.

And I feel like there aren't that many huge names out there that you could—

well, there's one huge name, Brad Stevens.

You got to, you got to make him say no.

You got to make, you got to make, you got to call Brad Stevens and make him say no.

You do have to make Brad Stevens say no.

Brad Stevens, Jay Wright. That's every Jay Wright, every coaching opening.

We got to make him say no.

We got to. How old do you think Brad Stevens will be before we stop saying you got to make him say no?

Never, never. I will. I will personally never stop saying that.

You got to make him. How many times do you think Brad Stevens had to say no?

He probably wakes up every morning and says no.

Do you think he has a no guy?

It probably—

he probably does. His agent. Yeah, his agent is probably just—

but I'm sorry, but that doesn't count. If you're— if you're thinking about Brad Stevens and you're trying to make him say no and his agent tells you no, you're not— you don't give up.

Wait, I love—

you keep reaching out to Brad Stevens.

I love this tweet. From Aaron Conrad. What is this person? Is this person a real reporter or just a—

my dad—

Mark Price for 3 Podcasts. Okay, so he's in the business. He says, uh, my case for Brad Stevens to UNC: he has coaching in his veins, he's been a successful coach and GM in the NBA, he can speak to recruits about the NBA landscape, character— he's a family man, Chapel Hill is a place to raise a family, understands NIL, cap, talent. He wins. Did this guy— did this guy just find Brad Stevens and think no one else knew about Brad Stevens?

Well, did you miss the part where it says he's a family man and Chapel Hill is a place where you can raise family? Have you ever tried to raise a family in Boston? Nobody has. There's no families in Boston.

Oh, look, here's the— you're right, Max. Max called it. This is from another person. I'm told that North Carolina plans to fire Hubert Davis in wake of today's collapse versus ECU in the NCAA tournament. Replacement for the Tar Heels that has been contacted thus far? Jay Wright.

Mm-hmm.

Perfect. Jay Wright, Brad Stevens. Got to make him say no.

I think there's, there's another guy that anytime a big college opening comes up, you have to make him say no to.

Who?

You know him quite well.

Who's that?

Billy Donovan.

Yeah.

I think Billy D is another guy you got to make him say no.

Then we could hire Fred Hoiberg.

And then Hoiberg. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Billy Donovan. You got to make him say no.

Make him say no.

Very good college.

What's Steve Lavin up to these days? Probably waiting by his phone.

Yeah, I don't think— yeah, he and Seth Greenberg are probably like, someone's going to call us.

Yeah.

The— if you're, if you're an NBA coach, you're definitely not leaving to go to college. No. Billy Donovan gets paid a lot of money to put out a subpar product and still have a job. Yeah. Think about, think about— you could, you could coach the Bulls make— I don't know how much he makes. Let's call it $6 million a year. Google how much. I think he just signed a new contract, a ton of money. And if you go 42-42, your, your boss is happy. Or you could go to UNC, and if you get bounced in the second round, everyone wants you fired. Oh yeah, I was right. $6 million a year. Yeah, I think I'd stay with the other one.

Yeah, it's pretty good security.

Yeah, but still, Brad, are you a little nervous about Brad Stevens? I think he has an agent and the agent has a guy whose sole job is to just pick up the phone and say no. Or he just has a separate phone for college coaches that he just has like auto. The voicemail just says, thank you so much for the consideration, but it's going to have to be a no.

Hey, this is Brad Stevens. No, it's like the opposite of the way Kevin Hart answers the phone.

Yeah, exactly. It would be shocking if he ever took another college job. Yeah, but that Aaron Conrad guy, he's on to something.

Yeah. I mean, I don't know.

No one had thought of Brad Stevens until he tweeted about that.

That would be crazy, though, if it's Kansas and UNC at the same time.

Yeah, it would. I think Bill Self is going to be back.

This is— it does seem like, like just pissed off coach after you lost.

After you lose, Bill Self back, Hubert Davis. Not fired, but mutual parting of ways because he is family.

He is family and he did some great things for the university.

Yeah. Why are we on— we're on Aaron. I'm looking at his website.

Oh, who else in the family can you bring back there? Rashid Wallace. Roy Rashid Wallace, head coach.

MJ coaching would be awesome.

MJ would rock.

Tyler Hansbrough. Yeah, we'd have to put in his contract. He has to come back for Pro Show.

I go to Jordan.

Luke May.

Jordan should be on the cheerleading team.

Jordan could do it.

Yeah.

Yeah. Tennessee, Virginia. Congrats to Rick Barnes getting to the Sweet 16. He, he has— he actually, he's the opposite of Bill Self in the run that he's been. He went Sweet 16, Elite Eight, Elite Eight, and Sweet 16 this year. See if they can get further. But he's— Tennessee's one of those teams I can't really quit, and I don't really like them.

I think, right?

You know, I'm saying—

no, I hear you.

Like, I don't really—

they don't—

watching Nate Emmentt play basketball, it's the opposite of Acuff.

They don't really do anything really well.

They rebound.

Yeah, yeah, good point. Good point. Yes, they've got— they've got a big man that can be fun to watch. Um, they don't really shoot foul shots that well. They don't—

couldn't get the ball in for a while.

They forgot— forgot how to inbound the ball. So did Kansas, by the way. Yeah, like, what's going on with these teams where they just don't teach you how to throw an inbounds pass? They freak out. But yeah, Tennessee doesn't really do that. They don't really do anything special, but I guess they're just a good team.

Yeah.

And Rick Barnes gets a lot of shit for not going to Final Fours, but, but he's a good— he always has his guys there in the discussion.

This time again, it goes back to the— this is a really hard tournament to win, and there are a vast majority of fan bases that would be very happy with consistently having a shot at a Final Four by playing in the second weekend. Right. Because when you're in the second weekend, you got a shot at the Final Four and you lasted longer than Kentucky and you lasted longer than Kentucky. The Iowa-Florida game was a shocker of the day. That was the upset we were looking for. Florida goes down. It is now— I think I saw the stats— since 2007, there's only one national title defender defending national champion who has gone past the Sweet 16. So that was the UConn Huskies when they went back-to-back. They go out before the Sweet 16. I could— I, you know, Florida, I, I bet on them in February. They, they ripped off a bunch of wins, but they were kind of leaking oil down the stretch. And Ben McCollum is just an unbelievable coach. He has won everywhere he's been. It's his first year at Iowa. He's now gone further in the tournament than Fran McCaffrey ever did in 15 years.

At, which is a shocking stat. I don't know if you guys knew that.

First year?

His first year.

Kind of crazy.

And I was not— I mean, Bennett Sturtz is a stud, but outside of that, it's like he's had to, he's had to just be a very, very good coach. That last play they drew up for the corner 3 was perfect. They slow you down, they grind you out.

They're just a real—

like, he's an awesome coach.

I would say, yeah, the last, uh, the last 2 plays, Florida got outcoached. Yeah, the first one when, when Iowa was bringing the ball up the court, somehow they got themselves into a very clear like 3-on-2 situation, wide open corner 3. Florida's last play, kind of what we had talked about with Florida for the last few weeks, they just don't have the guards.

Yeah.

To make it happen. And they had— they tried to have their guard take the ball pretty much the full length of the court, make a last-second dish off and just didn't really— I don't think they got a shot off. I don't think they even attempted a shot on the very last play.

They were trying to do I think Lee was trying to drive and then dish it underneath the basket for like a dunk.

I don't think— I don't think his big man knew that that was happening. Was that Condon that was on there? Yeah, it was not a cohesive play. And then also there was— there we get a little chippy in this game. Oh yeah, some rolling around, some fights.

Ben McCallum was out on the floor.

Yeah.

Yeah. So he is— his rise is pretty insane. I mean, he was so good when he was coaching Division II. He won a bunch of national titles. He is now— he went a year at Drake, went to the tournament, won a first-round game, lost, and then now this is his first year at Iowa. He is, as a head coach in basketball, he is winning 80% of his games. That's insane. 80% of his games. He also is very funny because it's like he has that male pattern baldness that ages him a little. He's only 44 years old. Yeah, he doesn't seem like an up-and-comer. No, because he wears a suit. Respect him for wearing a suit.

He wears a suit.

Suit guy.

He yells. He sweats. That's what I really miss. I miss seeing these guys get sweaty as fuck out there.

Yeah, but he's, he's a really good coach. And down goes Todd Golden. And it's like, this is again, the Todd Golden goes, I think his 3, his 4 tournaments are 0-1, 0-1, 6-0, 1-1.

Yeah. I mean, McCallum got under Golden's skin too. Like, Golden snapped and looked like he wanted to fight him. And then after the game, McCollum said they were going for the ball and then everybody all of a sudden got sensitive. Their people got sensitive. It's kind of like twisting the knife a little bit.

I like him.

He's a little spicy.

Call him a little soft.

He's spicy.

Yeah. But this was— they were, what, 10-point underdogs winning outright, taking down the national defending national champs. And I do think having one— I know it's Iowa, so it's a big school, but having one of the one seeds out before for the Sweet 16, especially given how like top-heavy this season was, is a— it's a shocker. Like, I, I don't think anyone expected this. I thought everyone thought that yes, it might not be all 4 1 seeds in, in the Final Four, but all 4 1 seeds should be in the Sweet 16.

So the remaining 1 seeds, I think, uh, Duke has looked beatable.

Yep.

I think Arizona's looked really good, but they haven't really been tested at all.

They got tested a little by Utah State. That game got—

it got frisky in the second half. Yeah, I don't—

Michigan has looked—

Michigan's looked dominant.

They've looked dominant in the tournament. Yes, they did not— they were not as dominant down the stretch of the last, like, 2 weeks before the tournament. But maybe it doesn't matter this weekend.

I think Michigan set records for, like, the most efficient offense in the history of the tournament through 2 games. So, yes, so they look good.

But yeah, it's basically throwing out the Big Ten tournament because the Big Ten tournament, they got tested by Ohio State. They won on a buzzer beater against Wisconsin and they lost to Purdue. So if you throw that out, you're like, hey, I do, I do believe in this is kind of the UConn theory of like once Dan Hurley can get out of conference play, everything's going to look a little bit better because you just spend 2 and a half months slogging through opponents that everyone knows what you're doing.

Yeah.

And Dusty May, great, great coach in the tournament.

Great tournament coach.

Yeah. So Yeah, we had the UConn-UCLA game was great because it was just Mick Cronin. There's that one clip of Mick Cronin and Dan Hurley both saying like, get the fuck over here at the exact same time. Yeah, just two nasty, nasty, angry men.

Mick Cronin got teed up for clapping at the ref. Yep. That was, that was kind of weird. I think they thought it was a sarcastic clap. Yeah. Like, you got to listen, if you're reffing Mick Cronin, I know that you're assuming that he's going to be saying some shit to you. You got to let the claps go. Yeah. You look soft if you're teeing up a guy with its club for claps.

I'd agree. So that game, UConn back in the Sweet 16. I don't really know. I still don't know if UConn's all that good, but it doesn't matter because they have a really, really good coach.

I mean, Caravan looked—

Caravan had the best game of his career. Yeah.

What do you have, like 27, 27 points? Career high. Yeah. Yeah. He looked like the first round pick that people thought he'd be a couple of years ago.

Do you think McCronin is— how many times do you think McCronin smiles in the offseason?

I don't know. I think when his dad's at the game, I think he'll like look up at Hep C and be like, you know, give him like a—

what's up—

like a half of the mouth grin and then focus. So I would say like half a smile per game.

Yeah. He just— this was the most— for a team that was actually pretty good. And, you know, Billadoo getting hurt in the Big Ten. Tournament definitely hurt their ceiling because he's very, very good. But for a team, if you just went off of Mick Cronin's, you know, vibes this year, you would have thought they won 4 games, right?

They were the worst team in college.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they were in that game until the last 5 minutes until UConn pulled away. They were in it to go to the Sweet 16 with one of their, their second best player being out. Yeah.

But that's the, that's the trick to being, I think, a great college coach of any sport is to just never be happy with anything.

Yeah, that is— that's fair.

It's be like completely maladjusted individual.

What game are we most looking forward to? It's a stacked Sweet 16.

It is.

I'm excited for the Sweet 16. Duke-St. John's. Duke-St. John's is up there for sure. That Friday— I mean, Friday night is going to be special. Arkansas. I mean, I think that's Iowa, Nebraska.

Do you think Duke-St. John's is going to be the the matchup of the richest alumni bases? Hmm.

No. In the—

like, like a possible matchup of any two teams in this tournament?

In this tournament? No. Michigan-Penn.

You think Michigan over Duke?

Yeah. Well, I don't know about like gross because Michigan's so much bigger.

I would say, I would say like average.

We got Larry Ellison. He's technically Michigan even though he didn't go to Michigan.

His girlfriend.

His girlfriend went to Michigan.

I think so.

What?

I think Duke, St. John's.

You think so? I don't know. I mean, Michigan, Duke then would be the number one. Duke, Michigan's definitely more than St. John's, I think.

Total. Yeah, but maybe not average.

Oh, I think Michigan's average is higher than St. John's.

State school. I think there's a lot of people to get in scholarship. Duke, it's like you got to know St. John's. I'm saying St. John's.

It was Michigan versus Michigan versus Duke, it would be.

We could probably, we could probably even look this up for Wednesday.

Can you look it up?

Zach, can you look that up?

Highest average salary schools? How do you look?

Arkansas might be sneaky up there just from the Waltons.

Okay.

And Purdue's and the Jerry Jones.

Penn is, is 4.

Oh yeah. Penn.

Uh, all right, we need the full list. Top 50 schools by average. All right, uh, let's see. Vanderbilt. Oh yeah, we forgot about Vanderbilt. Yeah, we forgot about Vanderbilt. Michigan is 35. Where's Duke? Duke's not there. Is that— is that universities or— oh, Duke's 18. You're 16. So Duke-Penn or Duke-Michigan or Duke-Vanderbilt. St. John's, I don't even think is in the top, top 50. I don't know if St. John's is known like that. Is it? It's Rapoli. I think it's just Rapoli. Oh yeah. Just changing the average. That would make sense. Mike Rapoli is probably having a great time. Shout out Noble. Yeah. Friday is going to be incredible.

Yeah.

St. John's, Duke, Alabama, Michigan, Michigan State, UConn, Tennessee, Iowa State. Tennessee-Iowa State is the least appealing. That's going to be an awesome game. St. John's is an 83% acceptance rate.

Yes.

I don't think— yeah, I didn't think St. John's— yeah, you were treating St. John's like—

no, I was completely wrong about that. Yeah, I assume from— we have a coworker that says a lot of things about St. John's and I took them all as fact. And I thought that they all worked at very powerful hedge funds on Wall Street and made a ton of money.

No. So I think it's like a good city school. But it's not—

yeah, I mean, 84% is crazy. Yeah, that's a crazy high admission rate.

Yeah, you got, you got sourced by, by Boston.

I did. I think there's probably like—

you got sourced by Boston.

There's probably like 3 guys that go to school or that went to school at St. John's that Rico does not like, and then he probably told him straight up, I make more money than you. Yeah, and then Rico hung on to that for a while. Um, but in terms of games I'm looking forward to the most, I would say, yeah, Duke-St. John's Friday. Oh, for Friday?

No, no, I'm saying Hank's right. Just Friday. Friday is going to be incredible.

Friday's great. Arizona-Arkansas is going to be a great matchup.

Yeah.

Illinois-Houston, another great matchup.

It's going to be— this is why— this is where the tournament— I understand it. We— I, I 100% agree that it would have been nice if we had one or two upsets of from the 13 to 16, right? Like just even one 13-seed or 14-seed. Just to give you that moment on Thursday afternoon or whatever it is. But now that we're here, this Sweet 16 is fucking awesome.

Yeah, I'm OK with this, right? I really am.

Yeah. OK, PFT, why don't you do a couple more ads and then we have Zach's Sweet 16 thoughts and then we'll do who's back of the week before we get back to part of my take.

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Okay, Zach, but before we do that, I just, I just— Todd Golden said in the press conference they were trying to foul up 2. He said that last year that he thinks it's a better play if you foul up 2 because The worst thing that can happen is a tie and you have a chance and you have a chance. That's insane. I think it's something—

don't play.

How about don't have a— I mean, Ty Golden blew that game with the— I'm watching the playback. Maybe that's what they were trying to do because they got 3 guys caught in the backcourt and that's why.

That's what I'm saying. It was the easiest 3-on-2 that, that Iowa could ever—

maybe that's what they were doing is they were— I mean, Ben McCollum did a great job of getting Bennett Sturtz open. To get the ball. But what was the plan? To have Bennett-Sturz get— he's like an 85% free throw shooter.

Fouling up 2 is crazy.

You know how— you know how crazy it is? Stephen A. Smith thinks it's a good idea.

Oh yeah, crazy.

Like he said this before, you might see Todd Golden do something unconventional tonight in the championship game. For example, Florida might foul with 2-point lead and 22 seconds remaining in the game. It's told in The Athletic, goes back to a 2019 Final Four meeting with Golden and Ken Pomeroy. The godfather of college basketball analytics. Pomeroy had stopped pitching optimal end-of-game decisions to coaches because he found them too risk-averse. Doc Golden in January 2020 is the coach at San Francisco. Golden opted to foul BYU up 2 points with 22 seconds remaining. They targeted a 54% free throw shooter. All right, well, that— a 54% free throw shooter makes sense.

Complete sense.

Bennett Sturtz was the guy who got the ball because Ben McCollum drew up a play to get him open. And then you had guys just running out of position and nowhere near— like, you know, it's crazy. How about just play no threes? Wouldn't that make more sense?

Yeah, I mean, fouling up 2 does not make any sense.

It—

how much time was left on the clock when they ran that play? It was, it was, it was way less than 22. Yeah, okay, 22 seconds I think would make more sense. Yeah, I think than doing it with 8 seconds left. Yeah, like, get it, play defense. How about that? That my groundbreaking end-of-game scenario that I would coach in that situation would be play defense.

Yeah, I, I don't know, you just gotta go no threes, give up. I mean, you have a better chance of playing no threes and having like one rim protector standing under the basket, right? Yeah, that's, that's weird. That's very weird.

Okay, Zach, I do have 16 sweet facts for us.

Let's go.

Okay, yes, my first one's gonna be Arkansas. Research from Arkansas alum Robert Maurer directly led to the creation of optical waveguides, also known as fiber optic cables, which some may consider the backbone of the internet. I just want to say thank you, Arkansas, for the internet.

Whoa, yeah, shout out Arkansas.

So not Al Gore?

No, he was a big part of it.

Okay.

Duke, there are 28 players with a one-and-done season who attended Duke. They can— their combined earnings strictly through contracts in the NBA is $1.6 billion. If they wanted to combine that, they could be one of the richest 30— richest people out of the top richest 3,500 in the world.

The Brotherhood.

Wait, so all of them combined would make them a top 30? That's just one-and-dones.

That would make them top 3,500 in the world, just the one-and-done guys.

So 28 guys have gone to Duke for just one year and been like, I gotta get the fuck out of here?

Yes.

Okay, it seems like—

that seems like a problem.

It seems like the move to make is, is to quit Duke.

Yeah.

So you're saying if you quit going to school at Duke, then you'll be rich?

There could be a huge upside on getting there and just deciding I'm out.

Yeah, in like 6 months' time.

Got a fact here for Illinois for us. Uh, major contributor this year, Andred Stojakovic, is originally from Thessaloniki, Greece. There's legends of hidden treasure buried beneath the streets of Thessaloniki. Some say that a pirate's treasure is hidden in a secret chamber, while others claim that a king's gold is buried beneath the city hall. So basketball doesn't work out, he could become a treasure hunter back home.

Okay, all right, like that.

Quick one for Michigan State. As of today, March 22nd, 2026, none of the starting 5 players for Michigan State follow City Sweeney on Instagram. Michigan State Spartans may be out on Heavies.

Did you, did you do the research yourself on that?

You just type in, go to followers, double-check Sidney Sweeney.

Wow.

Nobody follows Sidney Sweeney. Yeah.

Starting 5 guys are just maybe out on a big titty.

That's natural. That I have to imagine they're one of the only starting lineups that has that fact about them.

That's crazy. Hey, Zach, Roback question. Roback.com promo code take 20% off first purchase. Q-tips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts. Roback.com promo code take. You follow Sidney Sweeney, right?

Uh, there's a great chance.

What do you mean?

I'd have to check. I, I can't, I can't just say that straight away that I do indefinitely. I definitely see Sydney Sweeney on explore page and through different vessels of swiping through Instagram, but I would have to confirm on my phone.

What, what percentage of, uh, part of my Take members follow Sydney Sweeney, I wonder? Max, do you?

Hi, Max. I do.

I think I do.

Why? What's your guys' problem?

I don't think I do. I just like that one dress.

Hand up. I might be out on Big Naturals because I don't follow Sydney Sweeney on Instagram.

Wow. So you kind of played yourself. You opened up a world. Max and I respect— Yeah, I do. Big Natties.

I do follow.

Hell yeah. I respect her content 100%. Have to. Okay, good. Michigan State facts. Something to consider.

Yeah, just something to think about.

I'm more of a Darius A-cup man myself.

I've got one here for Houston for us. Uh, Houston has now matched the record for the biggest blowout.

I'm just looking at memes and Max. It was a good one.

It was a good one.

Uh, we got a University of Nebraska at the University.

What was the one you just said?

Oh, uh, uh, Houston. Houston has now matched the record for biggest blowout in the tournament history with That being a 59-point over Texas A&M. They've delivered this kind of point differential on or higher on 3 different times in school history. Twice to Tex, dropping 125 on Texas Tech in 1966, who only scored 52. That was a 73-point differential. And then they beat Florida Tech 120 to 54 in 1980. That was 66 points. Also defeated Alcorn State 113 to 54.

Max, you got to stop cycling through the Sidney Sweeney Instagram. It's on the— Or don't. Yeah, I mean, it's very, very distracting.

I'm cool with it. We do this all the time when we bring up Sidney Sweeney. We just—

we kind of look at—

yeah, we have to go through.

Yeah, we gotta see what's new. Yeah, yeah. She got a dog. Dog. Cool dog.

Very cool dog. Imagine being that dog.

It's a cute pup.

Yeah.

Okay, I've got a Texas here for us. Uh, some are considering saying that Texas Longhorns have selfish tendencies on the court after ranking 289th in assists this season, averaging under 12 per game. They also contribute to Texas being the number one steak-consuming state in the nation. Shout out to Texas, they're eating good.

Love that, love that.

We've got the University of Nebraska here. At the University of Nebraska, players on the men's basketball team along with fellow students rub the feet of a bronze Archie the Mammoth statue on campus for good luck. Furthermore, I've counted 6 businesses specializing in pedicures in a 1.9-mile radius of Nebraska. They may be in foot fetish territory.

Oh, okay, feet guys.

A lot of feet guys over there. Um, Purdue, uh In all of college basketball, only 2 players have started every single game for their school in 4 consecutive seasons. Both of them go to Purdue. That being Fletcher Loyer and Breen Smith.

Yeah. Yeah.

Experience matters.

That's old school basketball.

They don't bring that big fucking drum to basketball games, do they?

I don't think so.

They should do that for the Sweet 16.

Yeah.

For Michigan, you know, Michigan is located in the lower peninsula state of Michigan, being the Great Lakes State. Michigan has 4 more Great Lakes than it has NCAA national championships. Not the best water-to-ring ratio there in Michigan.

Okay.

Also a lot of nuclear power plants for some reason.

I think it's the fresh water.

Yeah.

I mean, you just pulled up the Sydney Sweeney dress picture and PFT almost passed out.

I did. Yeah. I catch my breath. He looks— I appreciate it. It's a great dress. You know me, I'm a fashion guy. Yeah. Fashion is life. Jesus Christ.

He did it again.

It's a great dress.

Knocking them out.

Okay, I've got Iowa State here. The first female lawyer, Arabella Mansfield, is from Iowa. She went to a different college in Iowa because it was in 1866, but there's a good chance she would have went to Iowa if it was around then. Shout out to women.

Yes, shout out.

Here at St. John's University, was founded in 1870 in the dark because they did predate the invention of the light bulb. They also surprisingly were around before the telephone, automobile, and airplane. Tennessee, Bishop Boswell went to the same high school as Drake May. And Jacoby Gillespie also really enjoys building Lego sets.

Oh!

And Iowa, our coworker Stefan has to be stoked because Iowa did win. Me as a Florida native, not so stoked.

Yeah, you were rooting for Florida. Tough pull. That was a tough pull. We're now watching Sidney Sweeney underneath the water.

Yeah, it's, it's good photography.

Yeah, that's— how do they get that?

Wow, that's crazy.

Yeah, solid swimmer.

Imagine being in that water.

She could sell that water.

Sorry for your loss, uh, Zach. I forgot you rooted for Florida. All good.

And also sorry for your loss, um, I Show Speed got his ass kicked in football. Crazy that they got him to play, like the most famous person in the world, to play flag football.

I didn't even see—

Zach says we'll get to that later.

Okay, okay, okay.

Uh, UConn here, uh, starting player Terrence Reid Jr. is not only insanely good at basketball, also a talented saxophone player. His mother gave him a decision when she told all her kids like, look, you're gonna be basketball players, we're gonna do more. So they said you could play choir, maybe an instrument. He tried the choir for like a year, wasn't really into it. Tried the trumpet for a little bit, also not into it. Landed on the saxophone. Now keeps the saxophone at the, uh, at the practice facility because he goes and practices saxophone late night, doesn't want to wake up his roommate. So he keeps it close on the court so he can go back to it.

He was awesome. He had 31 and 27 against— we should have mentioned that— against Furman. Insane stat line. Insane. And then he had 10 and 10 and 13 tonight against UCLA.

Walking bucket.

Yeah, well, walking rebounds too.

I've got Alabama here.

That's got to be a— is that a record for most combined points and rebounds in a tournament game?

Let's find out.

Oh, I think, I think I saw that it was like since the '60s, maybe since like, was it Elgin Baylor?

Keep going, Zach.

Oh, I've got Alabama here. Guard Jaleel Bethia is the only player in the Sweet 16 with a Powerade Jam Fest dunk contest win under his belt. Entire tournament, that was all 16.

The Jam Fest?

Jam Fest, yeah.

Wait, what did he do?

He won the Jam Fest, the dunk.

Yeah, he's the only guy in the tournament with a Jam Fest dunk contest win.

You know, the Jam Fest, the Jam Fest dunk contest.

Yeah, dunk contest for the McDonald's All-American Game.

McDonald's All-American, that's a great name for a dunk contest. Jam Fest, surprised that wasn't taken already.

Bill Walton had 44 points. I wonder how many rebounds he had in that game, the game that he shot 21 for 22 from the field. That's Insane.

Damn.

R.I.P. Yes. Good facts, Zach.

I like it.

Thank you, sir.

Who do you have to win now that Akron's out? Who do you have to win it all?

I'll go St. John's.

Okay. The light bulb thing.

What was that?

Was it because of the light bulb?

I mean, a pretty strong invention.

I feel like a lot of these colleges might have predated the light bulb.

Like, there's a few. Definitely no telephones. How would they call their dealer?

Like, I know they had candles, but that's still pretty dim.

Yeah.

Right.

And some— one person sneezes.

How do you like know where everybody's going to hang out after the game?

Well, I don't know if they were playing basketball then because basketball hadn't been invented.

Yeah, maybe chess, checkers, you know.

Oh, that's what you're talking about. The game.

Any game. No, just after games.

After games. Where are you going to go?

There's a competition. It's like beers.

Yeah.

We don't know where we're going.

That's going to be a tale as old as time.

All right, let's finish up with Who's Back of the Week. It's brought to you by our friends at Twisted Tea. Twisted Tea is a refreshing hard iced tea made with real brewed tea and 5% alcohol. Twisted Tea is a perfect drink to keep the good times going all day and all season long. Whether you're hanging out at a friend's house, catching a game at the stadium or at the bar, or day drinking with friends, Twisted Tea is there to turn your day up a notch and make a good time a great time. Grab a refreshing Twisted Tea today. We love the half and half. We love the peach, the original Twisted Tea. All right, Max, stop with the Sydney Sweeney.

It's enough.

It's too many.

Hank, uh, my Who's Back of the Week, it's, it's Tom Brady.

It's football.

Oh yeah, football is back. Yeah, it's back. Yep. Thanks.

Uh, they had the flag football event this past weekend. Tom Brady played in it.

I mean, he could go out next year in the league and probably get 4,000 yards, 30 touchdowns.

Did he win the game? They did not win the game.

They got smoked.

Oh, what happened? I mean, they were going up.

It was kind of like pros versus Joes.

They were going up against, you know, flag football is a different—

different—

there's also pros.

No, this— and this— the pros were the Joes.

Yeah, the pros were the professional flag football team. Yeah, yeah.

And this was their, their Super Bowl.

Now, do we think that if they had trained, they would beat them? Or is it definitively flag football? We got to send those guys.

I think that if you gave— if you gave the pros like a solid 2 weeks of practice with, with coaches that coach flag football, I think the pros could be better. Yeah, but it would take like— there are differences in the game.

Well, I saw that one clip of the guy basically moving his hips and having everyone miss his flag. It's like that guy knows what he's doing, right?

Like Shakira could dominate.

Yeah. Who are the quarterbacks? How did Jalen Hurts play, Max? Threw a deep ball to DeVonta Smith. I saw Joe Burrow threw a pick six. That was tough.

Yeah, I saw Joe Burrow almost got lit up on one play. And then Bengals flag football. Bengals fans are pissed that he was playing. I saw Barkley.

Wait, did Jayden play?

Yeah, Jayden played. Did he look good?

Is he okay?

He looked really good. Real good. His mom let him play. That was a funny joke that Tom Brady said. We all laughed.

Yeah, I didn't watch a second of this.

No, I was not about to watch the Fanatics Logan Paul flag football work that they were trying to put on during March Madness. Goodell was there.

Who?

Roger Goodell.

He was there? Yeah.

Doing what?

I don't know.

Probably checking him out, scouting talent. Yeah. I mean, I was impressed. I saw some of the highlights of, of the flag football players doing the, like, little shakes, getting away from would-be tacklers. They're, they're super talented.

The weird throwing guy play.

Yeah. Yeah. And he was awesome. He was talking shit.

Love that.

Talking a lot of shit.

Wait. And so which team did Logan Paul play for?

The Losers.

Okay. Yeah, he was on one of the losing teams.

Big time loser.

Got it.

And then he apologized to Tom Brady after the game.

4. I feel like you know a lot about this for their fake feud.

I saw one. I saw one thread, one very important thread.

There was just a bunch of details about it.

Yeah.

Okay, good. Who's back? You get another one? Just crazy long lines at TSA at airports.

Yeah, it looks like a nightmare. Yeah, true and utter nightmare.

What is that for? TSA PreCheck? Well, they're all on strike. Yeah. So what about CLEAR?

I don't think clear works either. I think clear helps.

Clear's got to help.

It helps. And it depends on what airport. Did you know that there's a new like pre-check for the pre-check?

No. Oh, I think we talked about.

Yeah. Touchless.

Yeah.

It's touchless. Pre-check is the new pre-check.

Yeah. I think we did talk about this. Yeah. All right. So thoughts of person who went flying right now.

That's not fun, especially if you're an F-35.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Touchless IDs, voluntary biometric. They have all of our information, everything, pictures, everything.

Yep.

Just give up. Okay.

My Who's Back of the Week is interesting stats.

Okay.

I've got a very interesting stat here and one just to keep an eye on. So, Zach, could you just continue to update this stat over the next couple, couple of games? If you haven't watched the NBA, this stat might not have come across your desk. Um, Jokic, since Joel Embiid won the MVP, has 87 triple-doubles. Joel Embiid has played in 91 games. So Jokic has almost as many triple-doubles as games that Embiid has played in since he won the MVP. So just, it's a stat that we should keep an eye on and monitor, uh, and see if he can, if he can get 4 more of them. Because then that would tie him.

Wow.

Which would be an interesting stat.

Max has gone to his happy place. He's brought back Sidney Sweeney.

He's bringing back the Sidney Sweeney.

Wow.

Memes, you would agree that that would be a wild stat, right? If we had a graphic that said 91-91, right?

Yeah. Very wild. Memes, why were you mad at Florio today? No, he's just number 1. Why? He's always— oh, he's back to number 1.

He's number 1.

What do you do? He's just talking about the dead cap with Justin Fields and Aaron Rodgers for the Jets. So he's doing his job.

He's doing his job.

He's number one. I could tell you're mad. I'm not mad. Right. But he's number one. But you are a little bit mad. No. You responded to him. You're like, you're number one. He's number one. That's why he's always number one. Okay.

My other who's back of the week is J.C. Tretter. So you might remember that the NFL and the players union had a little a little doo-doo-doo a couple months ago. And then they just had an election for their new representative for the NFLPA, and they elected JC Tretter, the guy that said—

Oh, congrats!

He was trying to never become president of the NFLPA.

Good for him.

And I don't really understand everything that happened. Um, so I reached out to friend of the program Pablo Torre to see if he could give us 10 words or less, uh, for us and our audience to understand what happened. He said, uh, union wants to give suicide bomb another try. Got it. Is his description.

That's a good way to describe it.

Of what just happened. I did a little research into J.C. Tretter because I was trying to remember exactly what I knew him for. I had never seen this story, but he went on the Ross Tucker podcast and he was saying that it was— he was talking about like the, the running back situation with how running backs are not getting paid and what they can do to increase their leverage. I forgot that he went on Ross's podcast, and he said it would be a smart strategy for a player to fake an injury to sit out of practices while seeking a new contract. He seemed to recognize his error during the show, saying, I don't think I'm allowed to ever recommend that, at least publicly. Oh, but I think each player needs to find a way to build up leverage to try to get a fair deal. So this guy has— and then he got sanctioned by the league. He lost to— he lost like I think it was like arbitration or something like that.

He's a moron.

He's a moron. So it looks like Roger Goodell now has his doofus set up as they go into the next CBA that I think is going to have to be ratified in the next couple of years. So, yeah, if I was an NFL player, I would not be too confident about my representation right now.

Definitely not. Okay. My who's back at 2. 1 is women's ice hockey because the Wisconsin Badgers won another national title, 5 in 7 years dynasty. A lot of Ohio State chatter. They were trying to go for dueling dynasties. 5 and 7 years is crazy. That's a dynasty.

Yeah, that's sad that they were like, we— if we win, then we're also a dynasty at the same time.

No, no, no. So congrats to the Lady Badgers because that's a hell of a run. I think we also had 4— we had 4 women who won gold medals and then like 30 days later won national title.

I was super impressed with Bucky too, getting out on the ice wearing the skates.

Skates. Yeah. Yeah.

That's got to be tough to pull off.

So listen, we're just a women's ice hockey school now. That's fine. They fucking win. 5 out of 7 is awesome. And then my other one is rivalries. Did you guys see Luca and Goga?

I did.

Unbelievable. So it goes that Luca and Goga Bidas from the Magic. They got into it and Luka got a technical. Apparently Goga said to Luka in Serbian— Petac, he said in Serbian, he said to him, I will fuck your whole family. And then Luka was like, yeah, I don't play with that, which makes sense. And then Petac was asked about it today or later on. He said, I have all the respect for Luka and what he's done. I really respect everybody's family. Where I come from, it's really sacred. We really respect each other's families. I would never directly say that.

So he didn't directly say, I will fuck your family.

So he's just telling everyone behind Luca's back that he will fuck his whole family.

Your family is going to get fucked.

The entire family is getting fucked.

Maybe not by me, but it will be. That's some Kaiser Soze shit.

Yeah.

Isn't that what Kaiser Soze did?

Yeah. Yeah. I won't— I never— I didn't say it directly.

Coca-Potatze. Yeah, this is going to be— my prediction is maybe the last we'll ever say Goga Petacze's name on part of my take.

Now we got, we got NBA playoffs coming up. We got to get it going.

You think, you think? But yeah, he might think Petacze is a needle mover. Yeah.

I mean, if he's going to fuck guys' families.

Yeah. If he is fucking up, if he will not fucking up, he's going to fuck Luka's entire family.

This is, this is the point of the year where it's also like, Oh yeah, the NBA is playing games against March Madness. That's crazy.

You know what? When we did our NBA preview with Rosillo, we made a joke about ESPN talking about like the Lakers possibly having what it takes to win an NBA championship this year. And then the next day on Get Up, sure enough, they ran that story, which was bullshit at the time. But now the Lakers are kind of good.

It happens every year.

Now the Lakers are actually—

I see this every year.

But now they're actually kind of good.

Okay. But then they're going to play the Thunder or the Spurs and lose.

Yeah.

And everyone's like, oh man, they got— they lost 4-1, but man, were they competitive.

Right now they're good.

Right. But again, what's going to happen is they're like, they're good, but the other two teams above them are better and have been better all year and younger. Like the Lakers have won 9 out of 10. Guess what? The Spurs have also won 9 out of 10, and the Thunder have won 10 in a row. So yeah, I'm going to sit back and when everyone tries to tell us the Lakers are going to win the title, I'll just be like, okay, cool. All right, sounds good. All right, Zach, finish us off.

My Who's Back of the Week is household name and globally recognized personality, IShowSpeed. Oh, I just thought it was worth touching on here. In that same flag football classic match, did anybody see Speed just going toe for toe with DeVonta Smith?

I did not.

I mean, just—

I didn't even know he was in the game because I didn't— I saw, yeah, headliners, and he was— I don't think he was number one headliner.

What was the result of that play, Zach?

Uh, DeVonta Smith was running at 100% speed. Speed looked to be running about 85%, so he had like a half step on him. He did score a touchdown. But I mean, if you just—

I think I saw another clip of Speed like falling down. Did he fall down?

Is DeVonta Smith like— he's first round, right? 2021.

Yeah.

10th overall.

9th or 10th. Yeah.

Speed just playing football for fun and he's right there.

Well, not really. He kind of burned him.

It's also a compressed field. I saw one clip where he fell down, though, Zach. I thought about you when I saw that.

Got right back up.

This actually is weird. Yeah, it's, it's good, Zach, because he's not that popular. So No one really knows that this happened.

Deontay Smith?

No, IShowSpeed.

Oh, you don't mean that.

I do. I really do. Do you think IShowSpeed was the most famous person at that field that day?

Top 5.

Oh, you told me. Wait, there's a different answer.

He was top 5.

You asked me about Brady in an imaginary flag football game.

He's top 5. So there were 5 guys that were bigger than Trump. More well-known than Trump there.

I might be spitballing at top 5. I might take it back and go top 1. But our conversation back here was Brady or Speed. That was a totally different thing, Max.

And I would take Brady.

I would probably go Speed. Brady's a big name though. He's got a lot of rings.

Didn't Speed start a show and his first guest was Brady?

Yeah, some would say Brady came to him.

It depends on how you look at it. Oh man. All right. Do you have anything else? I just— I need to stop eating for a minute. I need to stop eating and looking at a screen for a minute.

It's been— it's been a long, long weekend.

I had to make a rule on Saturday night that if anyone saw me putting food in my mouth, they could hit me in the nuts because I just couldn't stop eating.

I left. I left the office on Friday. I went to a birthday party. I went home, I was walking into my back door and I just puked. Oh, I just—

yeah, you texted.

I just— I was worried because Max went home sick that day and I was like, hey guys, I don't know what's going on. I just like out of nowhere threw up. I think it was just strictly from all the food that we ate.

I think it actually might have been just withdrawal from the 20 minutes that you had to drive and not watch basketball.

That might be it. Yeah, I missed it so much.

Body was like, I can't do this.

Just spewed everywhere. Also threw up on Friday. Oh, did you?

I threw up in my sleep.

What?

Yeah.

You okay?

Yeah, I'm fine. You just woke up and you're throwing up?

Yeah.

Oh, no, dude. Yeah, we've been eating too much too late. I mean, I've eaten too much too late every day. It's just our UCF Knights were just the most frustrating team ever to watch play basketball on Friday night. We got— we got cucked.

Did— did they break the news to you?

What?

The very next team after us. Picked Iowa. Oh, so who, so who took UCF? We did.

We did.

No, but like, who, whose decision?

Zach. But it's a team— well, no, it actually wasn't a team game. We told Zach to take the wheel. Iowa was never on his radar, so that's the one solace in this, is he was never thinking Iowa.

Not, not for one second. Not—

you're not even thinking Iowa right now.

Now all I'm thinking about is Iowa.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, that's true, because they did beat Florida.

And we, after the UCF game Friday, we were like, there's no other team in it, so it's fine. And it was Iowa.

Yeah, we were doing the— we were trying to do a little Monday morning quarterbacking, being like, well, could we have picked a winner?

Yeah, Iowa. I don't think we could have. No, we picked so late.

You guys got LIU.

We got—

we got absolutely fucked. Second to last pick.

Yeah. Also, who's back of the week is, uh, baseball is back. Yeah, we should do like our personal team previews.

You're just predictions on Wednesday. On Wednesday, we can do our predictions for who's going to win the World Series. Yeah. Baseball is back. Opening day. We're going to be in Arizona for opening day. I was, I was pissed when I looked at the schedule. I'm still mad the Cubs have 5 March games at Wrigley.

I know the Nats, the Nats open up here. I was pissed about that too.

OK. Should we finish off numbers? 10.

16.

Just one.

Just one, unless we don't get it, and then let's do two.

I got to piss so bad. 43. Do 58.

I'll do 56.

I'll do 19. Then we do 16.

I did 16.

Okay, I'll do 23. 58. Shane, you have 19? Shane, what do you have? 19. We got to get this thing fixed so it doesn't make this noise, cuz it stops after a while.

I don't mind the noise.

Yeah, but it'd be nice to just leave it off. 53.

53, anyone? So close.

No one.

No one.

53. Do another one. One more. Good. 49. 49.

Love you guys. Should we do 2 more for this week?

You got anything else? You got any happy birthday?

Are we going to do any for this week?

No. You have any happy birthday?

Happy birthday to our good friend Spider. Oh nice, love you Spider.

Anyone else? Anyone else? His birthday already happened, but also if you're doing already happened birthdays, is Is there anyone else? March 23rd.

I'm, I'm, I'm worried that I'm so bad at this game. I'm worried that I'm missing somebody.

Yeah, Dave Portnoy.

Oh, that was yesterday.

That's Spider's birthday today. Yeah, so you wished Spider happy birthday.

Okay, happy birthday to Dave and Spider, but we're doing March 24th, I thought. But you did Spider because I didn't have anybody else. Happy birthday To, uh, Damar Hamlin. Okay, how about that? Is that good enough for you?

Well, no, that's actually not real. It's a clone.

It's his second— well, no, he was born twice.

Yeah, but his second birth was in January.

He's, he's alive and well. I think we should celebrate the life of Damar Hamlin.

He played in that game.

Congratulations to Damar. It's another year with you is so special. Yes. Love you guys.