This is I on the Ball with Steve Rivera and Jay Gonzalez on Fox Sports
fourteen fifty powered by Nova Insurance Services and Sure Your Most Prized Possessions katz R
two side at iHeartRadio station. We cannot be completed far. Oh no,
we thought your directory and call again. You have to call him again.
Well he Well, we're off to a great start walking around the ball here
on Fox Sports fourteen fifty. I'm Steve. I'm not Steve Rivera, I'm
Ja Gonzalez. Steve is on the road to uh Salt Lake City, and
we are trying to We had him on the phone a minute ago and we
don't now, but we're gonna get him back on the phone, and he's
going to be here for the first segment as we're trying to pull this together.
He was there second ago, so we must have dropped the call.
All right, Sorry, sorry about that great radio to get this to get
off to a great start. But Steve has headed to Salt Lake City.
He's gonna be there all week. We're gonna get him on the phone as
much as we can, and we're trying to get him right now. We
can talk about what we want to talk about. Obviously we're all full of
NC Double A tournament stuff. Uh, and the lease is here coming off
of spring break and all kinds of other things. So welcome back. Thank
you, it's good to be back there. We go, Okay, so
we're gonna we're we're working the phone here, So go ahead and get him
on the line, and at least and in the meantime, we'll I'll just
keep talking. We've got uh, we've got a great show today. Very
honored that we're going to have the chair of the NC Double A Tournament Selection
Committee, Charles McClelland, coming into I on the ball to talk about the
bracket. You know, we're not you know, I'm sure he's heard plenty
of complaining about different different things. Uh. What we're gonna do is just
talk to him a little bit about what. Now, the bracket's done,
the tournament is starting, and in fact, uh, just after we get
him on the on on the show at at three point fifteen, the first
first four game is going to start between Howard and Wagner, I'll just find
out. You know what happens. Now you've got the bracket done, all
the complaining should be over with the dust should have settled what happens with the
tournament? What you know, what is what is the chairman's job? Uh
and uh and all those kinds of things. And then at in the second
hour at four fifteen, we're gonna have Ryan Radkey. Well we'll come on
and he was at the PAC twelve tournament doing the doing the games for Westwood
one Sports. And then he's gonna be up and Spokane for uh for the
for the tournament, uh, the first and second rounds up there. So
a lot of you know, a lot of stuff to talk about it.
It should be fun looking forward again to talking to uh uh Charles McClelland uh,
he's uh again. They had a tough job, a lot of complaining
about it, as there always is. And we'll just see, you know
how you know, how do you take that when you're when you're in his
his shoes and it's a it's a big job that they have. So we'll
see what he's got to say about about all of that. So we're gonna
have try and try and get Steve to call us to see if that works.
I don't know if he's in the hills somewhere. We will must be
in the hills on the way to Salt Lake City. We were hoping for
the best that he might be able to get get on the show. But
and at least what we're talking a second ago. You've seen the bracket.
You said, you've already done some brackets. I've done a few brackets.
Yeah, what what's your thinking right now? Should I pull him up?
Sure? Tell us what you got because I've not done any of mine.
I tend to wait till Wednesday night. You know, the first four games
are over with. Okay, we'll do another one too, because I have
different pools. I have a pool with like a TV, my work pools,
my friends. Then we may do you do, so I have to
have two right now, but I will probably make another one in my family
pool. I have to pick Arizona because I'm over. I used to do
this every year. I was like, I'm good, I'm not gonna pick
Arizona to go far at all because I don't want to jinx it. But
I just feel like everyone probably does that. And yeah, I'm undecided.
You know how often or how many times I'm gonna have Arizona in the final
four. I think I usually in probably three or four pools now to remind
all of our listeners. Oh here, I think Steve is right there.
Steve is that you? Hello? Hello Steve? Oh Man. Okay,
Uh try it again, Steve, if you're listening, give us another shot.
I'm not sure what's going on here, but we'll we'll keep trying.
But I get in three or four pools, maybe one more. Because I
was about to remind our listeners. We've put up a bracket for our listeners.
You get the winner gets the honor of having dinner with Steve and I.
We take you out to a Mexican restaurant here in town. We did
that a couple of years ago. Uh. Actually one of the winners was
a guy, a friend of ours. He went to he went to high
school with my with my kid, who the football player at the ov A.
Uh. Actually he was out of there, but he had played football
at He was a big dude. I joked that he ate pretty much the
left side of the menu at minivito and cost us a pretty penny. But
we're gonna do that again. How do we join? I joined, Yep,
you can join it. The pool is set up. It's pinned to
the top of our Twitter page and the top of our Facebook page. If
you go to our profile on either one of those, there's a link there.
It's to a it's to a site called bracket uh something or other bracket
fanatics dot com. You go in, fill out the form, fill out
a fill out a bracket, and Winter gets dinner. And if you're if
you're listening to us from out of town and you win, the pool will
send you a fifty dollars gift card to whatever restaurant you want wherever you live.
So you're not gonna win a bunch of money, but it's just gonna
be fun. We're gonna talk about it on the show. You can do
it, We'll have we'll have dat's I mean that stats, we'll you know,
post standings. Uh. We'll talk about it on the show. The
way we did it. The very first time we did it, we said,
if you beat us, you get dinner. Fortunately, Steve had a
good bracket and only a couple of people beat us, so we didn't have
to buy dinner for everybody. Sometimes they I feel like the more you know,
the more you're it's, your bracket's gonna be worse. It's hard,
right, there's gonna be so many unpredictable things that happen. Yeah, I
feel like we we so often outsmart ourselves. Right, you try and pick
this upset, that upset doesn't happen, but this other one over here does.
And that's where you know, you know, to get a perfect bracket.
I haven't heard it's like a billion billion. Yeah, it's a billion
and change or something like that. No, it's crazy. I was reading
an article today about the guy that had the no one's ever had a perfect
bracket and no one probably ever will, but about the guy who had the
closest one, like a few years ago, right, and it was just
funny like reading about him and he just kind of didn't even remember doing it,
and he's, you know, getting all these messages like that he's had
the closest to perfect bracket. Yeah, No, it's a I you know,
it's funny because it's like you feel like, on the first day,
you just want to hit most of the games, right, just be in
it and not have like one region where you've lost you know, five of
the eight teams or you know or six of the you know. It just
it's just crazy and I hate doing that. I've won one pool long time
ago, me too. I was like fourteen, I won my family pool.
I won money. Yeah, I probably won like twars. No,
I actually run kind of a very strange pool because it's not a bracket.
You pick eight teams and then based on the seed, you get points for
t win, and it's whoever gets the most points. So if it's like
a number one, you wouldn't get right. The way we break it down
is number one and two seeds get one, three and four get two and
so on. So uh, fifteen and sixteen seeds get eight points for a
win. It's funny to see the strategies that people have on that, because
you see people pick all right, they pick a bunch of try and score
a bunch of points in the first in the first couple of rounds, and
then hang on for dear life. Then you have others who spread their yeah,
you know, and then the way the scoring goes is it's it's you
get those number of points in the first weekend, you multiply by two in
the second weekend, multiply by three in the third weekend. I've seen I've
seen people win both ways. I've seen people who get take some chalk try
and get some upsets, they get lucky with the upsets, and then who
do you do that for? Uh, that's just spread. I've just been
running it for a while with friends and stuff like that. It's a lot
of fun. That's fun. It's a different pool. It's a buddy of
mine that worked for a department store chain. That was the pool that they
did. And then when you're said, let's do this one. This is
fun and we've been doing it for many years. But you still have to
do the regular rock. Yeah I do, I do. I probably do
three regular brackets and then that how far are you picking Arizona? I haven't
decided. I know, I know, probably at least in a couple of
them. I'll put Arizona in the final four. And then I'll have one.
Yeah, I'll have one without they can do it, Yeah they can.
Well that's it. And you know, and again, and I think
a friend of mine, okay, and I tell this story at this time
every year, very close friend of mine. Guy went to high school with
guy, the guy who was at that department store chain that brought us to
that pool. So just a die hard fan Arizona fan. He's the guy
that rushed the court with me. I told you about the time we rushed
the guest for the ul A game. That guy. Okay, that's how
big a fan he is. Every year, without fail, puts Arizona to
win the national Championship in a bunch of brackets without fail. In n ninety
seven, he did not. He did not even get Arizona to the final
four in any of his brackets. And that was the year they won it.
And he's never forgiven himself for it. We give him crap about it
every time. Well, he would he rather have them, he'd rather have
them win though. Yeah, he was happy they won, but he was
like the one time that I don't take him. And I'm not saying he
just would get him the final four. He would pick him to win at
all, year in and year out, and then they win it and he
didn't have them. Yeah, my brother puts Arizona every year that I've been
here. Yeah, you know, I'll pick him to win the national Championship.
I'm sure I'll pick him to get to the final four and maybe not
win the national Championship. I think at a minimum, I'm gonna have him
going to the lead eight in my Yeah, in my bracket that I like
put the most thought into. No bias. Well, I mean there's always
going to be a little biased, but yeah, I have them in the
lead eight losing to UNC, which it's really hard for me to say that,
oh loud. I actually I take it back. Yeah, I hate
you. You are you are a dookie family, So absolutely I wouldn't Mom,
you don't listen to you. You You taking North Carolina would be like
me taking a s U. So I get it. Yeah. So but
this was like my one that I'm this is like the one where I this
is my best becket no bias in the final four. In the final four,
I have Connecticut, U n C, Kentucky Tennessee. And then I
say that again, Connecticut U n C. Okay, Kentucky and Kentucky wow
in Tennessee all right. And then I have Kentucky UNC. I can't believe
I'm saying this live Kentucky you n C and Kentucky winning. Wow. Okay.
I've actually seen a lot of articles that have Kentucky going far. There's
a lot of people who are who are saying that about them, and uh
three A three seed is like has a lot of good potential yeah, yeah,
no, no doubt. I mean, and again, as we've been
saying all year long, there's eight, ten, twelve teams that can win
this thing. And then you know, and that's not even counting for a
San Diego State or Miami or an Fau coming along and out of nowhere and
getting up into the final four. When you think about the teams that you
say, Okay, these teams can win it. We're talking a dozen.
Do you think Arizona's in that? Yeah, Oh, absolutely think Arizona's in
that. I think Kentucky's in there. I think Duke is in there.
I think Houston, North Carolina obviously, Yukon, Purdue, Tennessee. I
mean, there's a whole bunch of them. You know. I put all
one and two seeds I think can win it, all of them. Three
seeds I don't know I got I'd have to look at a bracket again to
see what I think of the of the of the three seeds and the four
seeds. I don't think you go when you're predicting. I don't think you
go much deeper than I'm thinking going. You know, if you can pick
a five seed, right, yeah, I think you're you're you know you're
up again. What do you think about this whole McNeice going. I mean,
they're never even heard of them. Yeah, well, I mean you
hear of them, but they're one of those teams that gets in as a
sixteen seed every year. Right. But you know, I look at I
look at the four seats, Auburn, Alabama. Let me see on the
other side, Auburn, Alabama, Kansas, Duke. You know, you
go and say why not, but you're not. I'm not going to pick
any of those guys to win at all because I'm not going to go deeper
than the three seed. But do you know, Douke, can't all those
teams can Alabama, Auburn, you know, Kansas if they're if they get
their their injury problems fixed, of course they can't. So I think I
had Kansas going far in another one of my rockets, to the final four,
maybe to the lading, I think to the leaders. Yeah, but
you know, look, if you don't have Yukon into the final four,
you're just making a huge mistake. Going back to back though, that's crazy.
Has anyone ever done that? Yeah? I think Floorlorida, Florida went
back to back in the mid two thousands. But that was the last time.
I think I'll stay too rare in two thousand and four, four or
five, something like that. That's just so rare, incredibly rare, incredibly
rare. All right, Well, Steve has not been able to call in.
He's been able to send in a couple of texts, and the thing
keeps dropping, so we're not gonna be able to get him for now.
Try and get him on the backside. Coming right up, Charles McClelland,
the chair of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. We'll get some of his insight,
a little bit on you know, how it went, but more looking
forward, you know what happens now, how do they feel about the bracket
that they put together? And we'll get some of his thoughts. So stick
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schedule your free evaluation today. Steve Rapia and Jacin Saliz they have their eye
on the fall on Tucson's sports station SAT, Fox Sports fourteen fifty. Welcome
back on the Balking on Fox Sports fourteen fifty. I'm your host for the
day. Ja Gonzalez, my buddy Steve Rivera is on the road to Salt
Lake City in the middle of nowhere, somewhere up No can get them on
the phone and A Lisa's you're with me. And we're honored to have Charles
McClelland uh the chair of the NCAA Basketball Tournament Selection Committee, also the Southwestern
Athletic Conference Commissioner Charles is In is in Dayton right now getting ready to watch
the first four game. Get this tournament kicked off that you've had such a
big role in as the commissioner. First of all, to Charles's welcome,
thank you so much for taking the time to do this. Hey, no
problem, and thank both of you for having me on the show. Well,
we appreciate it. You know, let's let's let me just get the
back part of it out of the way. And I saw you, you
know, a number of times talk about how this was a really hard,
hard bracket to put together. You talked about the I don't know if you
call them bid steelers, that's what we call them, but the unexpected bids
that came and the difficulty of that. How do you feel about this bracket
now? Maybe after the dust has settled for a couple of days. You
know, we feel really really good about the bracket. One of the intriguing
things this year about college basketball, and we said this time and time again,
is the parody. There's a lot of parody in college basketball. You
can point to the transfer portal, so teams have the ability to go out
and plug holes with individuals that can come in and immediately contribute. You know,
part of the issue when you get down to those last seas, those
bubble teams, is that all of those have you know, some sort of
lump on their resume, and what you're trying to do is sort to do
differentiate between you know, all of those teams and to be able to have
all of the bids that are supposed to be available to you helps that process.
What hurt us and what made it more difficult this go around was that
five of those bids actually were taken away from us, so you know,
it left an absorbent number of teams out there. One of the things that
we looked at and analyzed was over the last three years, that's only been
two beds stolen in total over three years, and we had five this year,
so that's a big number. Well, they did a just in time
for you to be the chair of the committee, right, you know,
I thought the same thing out all of the years, while this year so
this is you've been on the committee since twenty nineteen. Aside from that,
is it kind of the same process every year. Do you go through all
the same things, have all the same angst that type of thing. You
know, how is it year to year? You know, the process is
pretty standard. The NCAA does a pretty good job of setting forth our principles
and procedures. You know, we have an enormous amount of data that's available
to us, and as long as you stick with the process, you know,
it goes very very well. Again, you start to come into some
issues when you start talking about bids being stolen and not have I think all
of those slots that you normally were accustomed to. Now no slot is guaranteed,
obviously, but when you start looking at the history of it, you
kind of start to lean towards Okay, we know that we're in the territory
first four, how many do we have Do we have just four? Do
we have one? Do we have eight? And again, as we sat
and watched that and all of those bids start coming off the board, that's
when we realize that we're in a territory that we haven't been in quite sometimes,
which is harder setting the top seeds, you know, like the one
and two seeds and trying to get those right quote unquote right, or getting
the last few teams in, which is a tougher task. You know,
I think they're equally different, not so much of the top four teams or
the top eight teams or the top twelve teams. I think everyone agrees where
they fall out on the top teams is just a matter of the order in
which they go in. At the top, there's a lot of discussion,
a lot of debate. You know, Arizona was on the four line of
the one seed and our unveiled three weeks ago. Arizona was in contention this
time. North Carolina was in contention, Tennessee was in contention, Marquette was
in contention. So you have to compare those just as closely as you compare
the bubble team. So getting them in is probably easier for the top half
of the bracket. Seeding them is difficult. Getting them into the field on
the bottom end of the bracket is most difficult. Yeah. Well, so
I worked at the pac CFF tournament. So I was there and I watched
Arizona get beat by Oregon. Arizona fans, as they always do, just
lost their minds. They've wrecked their tournament, seeding and all that kind of
stuff, and it's kind of like they wound up where we thought they were
going to be all along as a two seed and as one of the higher
two seeds. You know, they had that loss to USC in the last
weekend of the regular season, lose to Oregon, and in the end,
none of that really meted or did it well. We take a look at
the entirety of the season, but I can tell you Arizona standing was based
upon what they did from November all the way through March. There's not necessarily
one game that would have made Arizona jump up or fall down. We look
at the entirety of the season and that's true for all of the teams that
we take or look at. The one thing that I would say about that,
though, is the more games you play, the more opportunity you have
to build your resume to you know, to solidify your spot. So you
know, we looked at the Arizona loss. I don't think it hurt them,
you know, in the overall process, because we took what Arizona had
done for the entirety of the season, got it okay. So let's let's
keep it close to home. On that. I watched Oregon play very impressive
beat Arizona, you know, you know, beat Colorado, come out of
know where they weren't going to get in the tournament. How difficult is it
to see the team like that that you weren't expecting to to have to seed?
And now you've got to take a good, good hard look at them
and find the right place for them. What are you looking at there and
how do you do that? Well, we will take a look at the
matrix. We'll take a look at the games that they've won, the games
that they lost, you know, Rode wins road losses comparison to other teams
that are in the similar proximity of where Oregon, you know, fail.
So as we go through our process, we voted twenty two at large teams
in on Wednesday, and we started to seed on Thursday. So by Friday
we had the top sixteen, top twenty teams already in the seed. So
even when we compared organ with those teams, we knew that they fell below
that line. So once Oregon was able to pull out a victory, knowing
that they had an automatic vid to the tournament, they were already kind of
in that range of where they were going to be. And then we have
a process that we call scrubbing, where we compare teams that are already in
the sea and move them up and move them down, and ultimately we did
that with Oregon and they fail. You know where you see them today.
Have you ever seen a week like we had last week where so many of
the top seeds got beat and some of them back. Purdue loss, Houston
lost by thirty, Arizona loss, North Carolina lost, and to teams that
you wouldn't think they were gonna lose to. The only one that kind of
came out of there unscathed was Yukon. Have you ever seen anything like that?
And is that difficult to deal with? You know from a tournament.
It's been a long time, but it's a microcosma of what has happened this
entire season. When you look at college basketball this year, there's been a
tremendous amount of upsets and they've been at home. Normally you win those games.
When I say at home, the team that has been upset gets upset
at home. That was a theme throughout the regular season. So it wasn't
It was surprising, but not necessarily as surprising because we've seen this type of
pattern in the regular season. So talking a little bit about the job for
you you got on the committee back in twenty nineteen. You're the chair now,
going in going into your job, and I mean I probably know the
answer, but how big of a college basketball fan were you before you started
you took on this work. I mean, is it a passion for you
or was it just was it part of your job? I mean, how
big of a fan are you of college basketball? And what is this experience
done for that? You know? A huge fan. I played basketball,
so basketball was in my blood. A huge fan of basketball. But I
can tell you the one thing that I have learned from this process is that
being a fan of basketball is different than being on the committee trying to select
the teams. What I would think as a fan is not necessarily what gets
you into the tournament, you know, and a lot of people talk about
the high test. This team looks good, but it's more than just watching
basketball games, and there's so much that goes into this process, and I
think, you know, that's what we have to kind of feel the unveiling
back to the general public that the criteria that a normal fan such as I
before I got on the committee would use to say who deserves to be in
the tournament is totally different than once you get into that committee room and you
have to follow these principles and procedures. You learn so much being in that
room. Well, speaking of that, then, is what is the one
thing? And I know we get a little more bits of information about the
process every year. I think we learned a little bit more about it.
But what's is there one thing that you feel the fans and the public don't
know about the process that maybe you'd like them to know or they should know
that would help them understand the process a little bit more that we don't talk
about all the time. Yeah, we would probably need another thirty minutes on
this interview for me to kind of run through some of those things. But
the one thing that I can tell you is the bracketing process, and everybody
talks about you know, we set this up. We set that up.
So for example, one of the things that I heard afterward was was Nebraska
going and playing Texas A and M with the athletics director leaving Nebraska going to
A and M and oh my goodness, to committee set that one up nice,
And that's totally not what happened. You know. The number one seed
gets an opportunity to choose which region they want to go to, and then
from there the number two seed gets the next closest site all the way down
to sixty eight. So we have no control over who plays. We just
have to follow and follow those bracketing principles and how it falls and how it
falls. A lot of people think we strategically do that, but it's based
upon Yukon choosing where they want to go, and a lot of people wouldn't
understand that Yukon's choice affects the other sixty seventeen. All right, we only
got a couple of minutes, and I know you got to go because you're
as mentioned in Daton for the first the first four of what you're going to
start in about ten minutes. Let me just ask you, what's your job
now the bracket's done, you're at the tournament, you're going to go to
games. What do you do the rest of the month for the tournament?
Well? Being on the committee is not just bracketing and putting the bracket together.
It is actually we are the individuals that are responsible for each site.
So different committee members are dispersed amongst all of the sites, and we're responsible
for the overall game management of those games. So my responsibility is here in
Dayton. For these next two games, I will leave here going to Turner
Studios T and T Studios in Atlanta where we can monitor all of the games,
and then we'll have the opportunity to go to each regional site, whether
it's the Sweet sixteen or the Elite eight. But from a committee standpoint,
the management of the tournament is one of our responsibilities as well. So once
we're done bracketing and seating and putting the putting it out, then we have
to go manage the sites and manage the game. What's the percentage of this
that's fun and the percentage that's work, Well, it's ninety five percent fun.
I can say a Sunday probably was the most unfun, most agonizing day
of the entire process because you've left out some really good teams. You know
that there's some student athletes that are disappointed. Coaches jobs are on the line,
you know when it comes to this tournament. So it did not go
you know unnoticed in the committee room that these are very significant decisions. They're
hard decisions. But you know, once you put the bracket out, once
you get over you know the heartache when you come to today and you see
the tournament is one of the best sporting events in the world, and it's
just you know, I'm honored and blessed to be a part of it.
While we were honored to have you, I know, you got to run
and go get over there and get to those games. So we appreciate the
time. Good luck the rest of the way. We'll see you in Phoenix
at the Final four because a whole bunch of us will be there for that,
so I hope to get a chance to meet you there. That was
good. Thank you for having me on your show. Thank you. It
was Charles McLelland, a chair of the NCAA Tournament selection committee. Got about
seven minutes or so till the first game starts. So yeah, we appreciate
him taking the time to talk to us. Fascinating stuff. Fascinating, you
know, I mean, you know, we talked to We had a Paula
Boyven a few several months ago who was on the College Football Playoff Committee and
all the things that you find out that we don't know, we know very
little about the process. Fans need to have a little bit more grace,
you know. Yeah, with this stuff like they're doing their best. Yeah,
you know, and I know where the media and you want your questions
answered. And the questions, you know, when the bracket comes out are
not always you know, why these number one seeds? It's always why didn't
this team get in? And that team didn't? Why didn't they? And
that's the hardest thing. And I hate the fact that that's the first place
everybody goes. But I understand too. But at least he pointed out that
they recognize that they're leaving out team. Yeah, good teams, good players,
good coaches, and that's just what has to happen. And some of
it couldn't be helped. Right. They had five teams that stole bids.
I know, that's crazy this year. So there are five teams that would
have been in and are not because of what happened. And that's a lot.
That's crazy. It's a lot of teams. Okay, thank you again
to Charles McClellan from the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. That interview will be up
on our podcast tonight. If you missed it or you cut the tail end
of it, you can catch the whole thing when we post the podcast tonight.
We're gonna take a break. We're going to try and get Steve on
the phone. He was able to spit out a text and said he was
in the middle of nowhere in Utah. We'll try and get him on and
hopefully had a chance to listen to this and we'll get some of his reaction
and just find out what he's up to. So stick around and we'll be
right back. If you're an Arizona men's basketball fan, you know it's been
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online today at a team security dot net. Steve Rivera and Jacon Salez they
have their eye on the ball on Tucson's Sports Big JEF Fox Sports fourteen fifty
streaming live. I mean, iHeartRadio. WAM welcome back time to the ball
here on Fox Sports fourteen fifty. Jacon Zalez, my partner, Steve Rivera
is on the road to Salt Lake City, but I think we've got him
on the phone. Steve, you there, I'm here. I just saw
little house in the prairie, any sub junction with Jeff thro along the way
but not in the cement pond, right you saw in the well. Welcome
to the show, Steve. Appreciate you joining us. We're honored to have
you on and know that you're busy guy had ended up to Salt Lake City.
Where's your brain at on Arizona right now? Because we just had this
conversation with Charles McClellan basically said, you know, those losses to USC and
Oregon, Arizona seed was pretty well set. They knew that they had.
They said they had the seed, the higher seeds done on Thursday. You
know, good Arizona moved up maybe, but it was the body of works
in November and that put him in the two slot. And you know that's
what I was kind of trying to say yesterday. What are your thoughts right
now in Arizona? Yeah? No, so that says that they're a possible
number one, right so, which of course about four of being some of
the top four teams in the country. Now they have to play now,
they have to play like it Well enough of the talk, Uh, Duke,
seems so long ago, right, bro Alabama seemed so long ago.
It was kind of now was the time? And Tommy and if you're gonna
think that Tommy's a very good coach. He's here's the time to prove it.
Okay, this is how he's measured that and that's it, and that's
you know, and that's the good fortune or if you want to call it
the bad fortune of being Arizona. You don't get measured on your thirty win
seasons. You get measured on how you do in March. Yeah. No,
and we already know that you can get the thirty wins the lead.
But he can do it now. He has to do it here, right
right, So on your way up, you know, what are you thinking
in terms of your thoughts on storylines for you know, for this tournament and
for Arizona and what they do. Is it all based on or they win
or lose? Is it based on who plays well who doesn't? What are
some of your thoughts? Well, if they fall in this game, that's
gonna be a sragic thing. The twenty points underdogs are twenty point favorites.
Uh, they shouldn't be able to have all these guys pretty easy. But
I think everyone's watching for one came of love and see how he plays because
he's been in a major sluve Atoks for him helped Feeling plays because he hasn't
played well. And those two. You know, if if you have a
good backcourt in the tournament, you have a good chance. So these two
guys can finally be copa setic and play well together. Who happen? Yeah?
Yeah, you know, I've sit there and I think, I mean,
I I you know, I'm a fan that goes in there with the
with the best thoughts, right, I mean, just for the same reason
I thought they were gonna win the Pac TWELF tournament. I thought, you
know, they're gonna start playing with some some urgency. So you know,
uh, but I you know, my my feeling ultimately was I just felt
like Oregon, because they were playing for their lives, had more urgency than
Arizona, did you know? In that game? And and as we said,
Arizona seed was set. So what what you know, what do you
worry about? Well, well, you know what I said this to you
about a month or so ago, that one of Arizona's downfalls that they have
a lead and they sponsored it in the second half. They've done that number
of times. We did that last year a number of times. Did right,
well, they can again, and they did it again against Oregon.
Yeah, you know, you're looking at a fourteen point lead and then they
have a ten point lead that half and then they blow it all together.
That can't happen here. I'm not concerned about tomorrow, Thursday, and Saturday,
really, but I am if they the Baylor Oh I think we lost
him. Well no, can you hear me? Oh there got your back,
Yes, got you back. Yeah, So I said, I'm concerned.
I'm not concerned about thirty or Saturday. I'm most concerned about Baylor.
But I guess you can't get to Baylor if you don't win the first two
right right exactly. And you and you look at you know, you look
at the four teams you know that are that are in their pod or whatever
you want to call it. Dayton, Nevada, long beach state. None
of those teams scare the crap idey. They've already beaten cold, cold Gates
on the other side. But you know, you know, you just don't
look. There's good records. Dayton's twenty four and seven. Nevada is twenty
six and seven, a long beach state, you know, snuck in.
They don't scare you like a TCU would if TCU was sitting on the other
side of the bracket or somebody like that. You know, one of the
I mean, these are three mid major teams that are in their pod that
they have, you know, that they have to mess with in the first
weekend. You'd like to think that, but you don't have one word to
say to that. Princeton. Let me say, because you know the history
and I know the history is the current all of it. The teams that
don't scare you scare you, right, because it's not the teams that they
are good. There is one will be three number ones for a reason.
There were the underdogs. They had a chip on their shoulder. They had
to prove something against the teams that don't scare you. They don't really don't
have to prove anything, and that's what they show up day. Well,
we just show up and we play it we win. It doesn't work that
way. Yeah, Is there is there any I don't know, any sense,
you know, because Gonzaga is in the you know, in Salt Lake
City, you know, with you guys, any thoughts about you know,
some familiarity as a distraction, anything like that with with Gonzaga being uh at
the same site as Arizona. No, I don't think dope. Mark and
Tommy invite me to dinner, and you got Kansas over there. You know,
I'm really curious about Kansas. Well, don't forget about Bill Wade.
It's like it's just like the A P R A PR boat. Oh that's
right, you know, the fancy double A committee, right, whatever that
thing was called. You know we are we already forgot about it anyways.
But you know, I mean, you know, you look at you look
at the the you look at where Arizona is, and you know, people
are not people Yukon fans are complaining about their bracket because they've got they got
Iowa state. You know, he's in there, Aron is in there.
Uh, Illinois in there going wa wait, what were we supposed to get
the easiest road? That's the funny thing. I heard that all day when
it came out, and then Monday, and then if you're the best team
in the country, why would you be afraid of anybody? Well, and
maybe maybe the team is not, but the fans are always going to be
kind about the easiest road, though there's no easy you never know, Arizona
has a really good draw this year. But you just don't know, yeh,
because you've experienced the bad. You already know the bad. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, no doubt, it's just I don't know. I mean
we uh An, Lisa and I were sitting here kind of going through the
brackets a little bit in the in the first segment, and I don't even
know where to start. Steve as you should we start because we have the
contest. I'm sure you've talked about that, right, So do win like
today? No, anytime we want mine or done anytime you want. I
told our friend Jacob bar zoom And who ate the left side of the menu
at media in our first contest, that he wasn't allowed to join this year.
Okay all the time. Hey, so okay, so before Thursday's game,
I guess right, yeah, yeah, the deadline is before the first
just before the first game. You know, everybody will get to see all
the brackets once once the deadline passes and all that. But you can go
to our go to our Facebook page. It's pinned at the top of our
of our Facebook profile, same thing on our Twitter profile. A bracket fanatics
dot com is the is the website that's hosting our bracket. Fill out a
bracket that doesn't cost you anything. You're not playing for a lot. You're
playing to have dinner with Steve and I somewhere at a great Mexican restaurant.
Dinner for two at a great Mexican restaurant here in town. Don't know if
it'll be mini eto or something else. And if you if you're joining from
out of town and you win the pool, we'll send you a fifty dollars
gift card to whatever restaurant you want, your favorite restaurant that you go to.
But it's more it's for fun. Because we're gamblers, we throw a
little juice on it. We can't help ourselves word degenerates and so we're doing
that. So our Facebook page and our Twitter page you can find our bracket.
How many people join up is great? If it did you pick any
teams with great momentum and least well, I do have. Actually most of
my teams like lost in their tournament. Yeah, all the lost. So
most of my teams don't have any momentum right now. But maybe that's good.
Maybe they'll pick it up and be taking off at the right time.
Okay, we're not giving away any secrets here for you? If I ask
you this, who not Arizona? Are you picking for the Who not Arizona,
not Yukon? Would you pick for the national championship? We lost?
Him dropped the call. All right. You didn't want to answer. He
didn't want to answer. Okay, you who not? Not? Well?
You already got North Carolina in one? Right? Who else? Illinois?
Illinois? Okay, not Arizona. Yeah, there are a three seed Okay,
I told you Houston. Oh wait, Houston does that? Houston?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, they're one. I told you Kentucky and Tennessee.
There are two, right, Yeah, to win to win the championship,
yeah, Houston, Tennessee. Yeah, what I just said? Kentucky
in North Carolina? No Carolin. Oh, I thought you had North Carolina
when you we'll have them in the final. But I can't say they're gonna
win. You can't do that. Okay, taking it to are Oh you
have Kentucky in the championship? Where you have Okay? Okay, I missed
misremembered. So yeah, all right, you know, I don't know.
I know I'm gonna pick Yukon once or twice. Yeah, you have I'm
gonna pick Arizona probably once, and they have them in the final four once.
I'm not sure I'm going Houston. I really offensively, I know they
played great defense, but you've got to have some offense, uh, you
know, to win this thing. And if you're not going to score points,
I think, my how good your defense is, You're gonna have a
tough time. Purdue. I'm just I just don't trust Purdue. I never
trust Purdue. I'll never trust those guys. You can't trustment. Yeah,
yeah, trust you need to prove it. You have not proved it not.
You know, Marquette does not float me very much. Maybe Tennessee,
you know, coming out of the coming out of the Midwest where Purdue is,
I know, I'm not going Kansas. I have Kansas and the Allienate
in one of mine, you know, I mean, you know, I
mean, if Ukon's complaining about brackets, complaining about the bracket that Purdue got
where they're their top four season, that in that bracket are Purdue, Tennessee,
Creighton, and Kansas. I mean you know that, you know,
when I look at the when I look at what what Yukon's got over there
with Iowa State, Illinois and Auburn. Yeah, I see why Yukon fans
might be upset at the at the draw they got in the East. But
you have to pick some upsets though, Like in my other bracket, I
have Washington State in the Alitate. You know, I don't know, yeah,
I have them upsetting Now that I look at that, I might have
to change that, you know, I I I you know, at the
packed toof tournament, I took I bet the over in the Colorado Washington State
game because I thought Colorado was playing better. But I thought Washington State is
good. They're really good, a good team. They are a solid team,
you know, the guard right really and I'm like, they're really good.
As much as you don't want to say Washington State is really good,
they're really good. They are good this year. Yeah they've proven that.
But that's again that's a good record too. Yeah. So you know,
man, I'm washing the state is a seventh seed. Sure, why not?
Why not get them to the lead eight? You know that, you
know they got Drake then either Iowa State or South Dakota State. You know,
yeah, Iowa State, you know, crushed Houston. But again you
catch them on a catch them on a day, every team out there can
be Arizona and lose to somebody that they're not supposed to lose to. Exactly.
Sure, for sure, long the longest shot, Okay, is Washington
your longest shot? For say, let's take a team to get probably my
longest shot that I would pick. But you know, I've heard that apparently
this McNeice can win it all. Well, that's you know, people are
picking that. There's there are people picking that. There absolutely are people picking
that. You know, I think there's a I was listening that. I
think one of the one of the online online uh online betting apps has in
their game against Gonzaga. In McNee State's game against Gonzaga, eighty percent of
the money is on McNee state in that matchup right there. Yeah, that's
what they're saying. Man, So who knows. Gosh, I love this
time of year. I love some single elimination basketball. This is fun and
it's always fun, you know. I mean, I'm gonna go home and
I want I'm gonna watch the first four games. The fact I should have
the one on right now to see what's going on in that. But no,
it's a you know, I'm like I just I get up in the
morning, I turn it on, park myself on the couch. Now we
are going to have a show Thursday and Friday and tomorrow. George Modes,
the owner of Showtime Sports Cards, big fan, a great fan of the
show and a sponsor, great guy to talk sports with. He'll be in
as my as the guest host tomorrow and Thursday, and then on Friday.
Haven't decided what we're doing there, but we know a lot of you will
be watching games, but maybe you want to listen to us. The Arizona
game will have been played on Thursday by the time our show comes on,
so we'll get Steve on the phone and break down that game, you know,
almost like a postgame show. Yeah, because that that game will end
around one o'clock our time on Friday on Thursday. On Thursday, we go
on the air at three and so we'll get Steve in here and we'll kind
of, you know, do our own little postgame show with that and break
it on. We never have an opportunity to do that, so that's why
we're going to go ahead and do the show, and Friday will preview.
Either we'll be drowning sorrows or previewing the Saturday game. Hopefully we're not drowning
sorrow. I'm over this whole, like I'm not. I don't want to
jinx it. I'm not taking Arizona far. Like I think they should make
it to the lad eight, so I put them in my Elite eight.
Yeah. Absolutely, I'm over this because last time I had them losing early
because I was like, maybe they'll make it, but no more because the
Jink's it, like it doesn't matter. Yeah, exactly. All right,
let's we're here at the top of the hour. Let's take our break and
at least we'll be back with breaking new stick around.