Speaker 1: Welcome Mack.
Speaker 2: This so marches right around the corner and the Cougars
are in the middle of it.
Speaker 3: It's time to talk some college basketball on Cougar Sports
with Ben Crittic. We welcome back to Goodports TWEO three
nine ninety eight point three ESPN the band. I've been
little broadcasting from our Vanderwealth Studios Vanterwealth dot Com. Get
on that free Q and A no obligation to invest
Q and A with our tax more wealth advisors, our
certified financial planners. Nobody does it better than Banterwealth Banterwealth
dot Com and they want to ag and support you
in that quest for financial stability and sustainability. It's gonna
uh gonna get into a college basketball segment, uh and
you're gonna love it. We're gonna welcome to Cougar Sports Insider,
College Basketball Insider, b YU Basketball Insider to discuss what's
going on in provo capital p ro O lowercase vo.
It's gonna be brought to you by Central Garage Door.
If you are in need of a new garage store
or just maintenance on your garage door, call Kelly over
at Central Garage Door. They've been ever sing the Wassatch
front for for thirty years. Now all they do is
a crew five star review. Central Garage Utah dots dot com.
That Central Garage Utah dot com. Set up an appointment
today and let them know I sent you VP products,
VPP service, VP discounts when you mentioned myself for ESPN
the Fan eight to one two way two three six
six seven. That's eight one two way two three six
six seven. That Central Garage door. Uh, that Central Garage
Utah dot com. Let's get out to the hotline.
Speaker 4: Welcome in.
Speaker 3: Mark Durant, the best color commentator, the best Twitter x
follow on social media.
Speaker 4: How the heck are you? Mark?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 1: Thank you, Ben. I'm doing great.
Speaker 2: I may or may not have just played nine holes
of golf in this beautiful, crazy weather, So I'm a
happy man. I don't know what I've ever played golf
this late in the winter in my life.
Speaker 4: It is pretty crazy. What's happening in Utah right now?
With the weather.
Speaker 3: Typically we're we're in the thick of the snow right
making snow angels, and it's it's freezing cold.
Speaker 4: What's happening in the Utah? You've been here for a
long time?
Speaker 2: Well, listen I know we need moisture and snow and
all that, but uh, if we're not going to have it,
I'm gonna enjoy it. And if Salt Lake becomes the
new Saint George, then that's probably okay with me because
I want to move to Saint George. Anyway, I will
save me moving.
Speaker 4: Oh man, where'd you go?
Speaker 1: By the way?
Speaker 2: Uh, I went out to Glenmore. We love it out
at Glenmore. Darcy Olsen is the.
Speaker 1: Pro out there. It's a great place.
Speaker 2: They got a great youth program. As you know, my
daughter plays. So my daughter whoopded me today. But I'm
getting used to that.
Speaker 4: Hey it's okay.
Speaker 3: Hey, that means you've you've trained her, well, you've mentored her.
Speaker 4: Well, that's what you want. That's what every mom and
dad want. They want their kids to be better than
they are. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the best I ever did. Ben, you're a young father,
so listen carefully. I am is have your kids play golf.
I tried to get my boys to play basketball, but
I finally learned and my last one, I said, We're
doing golf because I'm gonna have fun. If I'm gonna
watch you, I'm gonna at least have fun myself, and
it's been the greatest thing. We get to spend so
much time together and she's excellent and it's just fun. Man?
Speaker 3: Is that like, just because you have to sit next
to each other for I mean typically anywhere from two
to four sometimes five hours, you actually get to talk
to your kids.
Speaker 4: They're not trying to avoid you, right.
Speaker 2: Exactly what other dad of a seventeen year old daughter
gets to spend five hours without any distractions, you know,
with your child?
Speaker 1: It's beautiful.
Speaker 4: Actually the worst she likes me.
Speaker 1: She still likes me. Ben, I don't know about your kids.
If your kids like you, if they don't like it, it
might be bad. But my daughter likes me, so No.
Speaker 3: Probably the worst decision I ever made. And it was
hard because it was it was before COVID, right, and
like I had purchased an Alpine country club membership in
two thousand and ten, you know it was it was
it was dirt cheap at the time, right, And I
can't remember what the dudes were monthly, et cetera. But
I had that thing till like twenty and eighteen. But
at that time I was getting free golf.
Speaker 4: I remember I used to do the show.
Speaker 3: At Thanksgiving point, I did advertising for Fox Hollow.
Speaker 4: I mean I was everywhere, you know.
Speaker 3: I was like, well, you know, do I really need
this Alpine country Club membership?
Speaker 4: You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: And I sold it, kicking myself, stupid decision. The spirit
was not with me, It was not guiding me at
that time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they for a while, that long time ago, they
were giving those away. Man, and now now there's a
it's a hot commodity, very.
Speaker 3: Very hot commodity. I'm kicking myself, unfortunately. But we all
make good decisions. We all make bad decisions. K Y
made some good des this offseason, not only retaining talent,
but acquired talent. How special has it been for you
to watch arguably the most talented team in BAU basketball
history ball out at the Marriott Center.
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, you mentioned k Why. I love
that guy. I mean, he is He's been so great
to work with. He's super kind to me and Greg,
and he's just a super down to earth guy. Love
talking to him. I think he's actually a brilliant basketball mind.
As I've watched him and the adjustments and things that
he makes and his game plans, and I just I
just think, how lucky are we to have him? So
it's I think it starts with him, and then because
of who he is and his connections and his ability
to communicate with kids, he's able to bring in you know,
great great young men and super talented basketball players. And
it used to be where, you know, b why you
wouldn't even get a sniff from some of these this
level of recruit and now it seems like they're in
on almost all the best recruits and legitimately have a chance.
And so that that goes to a lot of people,
k Y and the school and the resources and the
boosters and all that to to make BYU an attractive
spot for some of the best players.
Speaker 1: And the fact that we've got aj.
Speaker 2: Is unheard of obviously. And then even Rob Wright, you know,
coming from Baylor to BYU. I mean, who would have
ever seen that happening? And he he is one of
my favorites man. He is so good, so consistent, so tough,
and of course Richie, who's just the unicorn nowadays with
his loyalty to the university and all the things he
does and how hard he plays. I mean that Utah game, Ben,
I've never seen a bigger heart on display. He will,
he willed the team to victory. He kind of put
the team on his back and got those big rebounds
and made big shots, and so yeah, I mean it's
it's I've been doing a long time, you know, Jim
or years were fine. Every year's fine. But the level
of play and how the team plays is about as
ton of time as I've had in those thirty years.
Speaker 4: You mentioned Richie the Todd King.
Speaker 3: I was having a discussion with Jay Drew earlier in
the show and we're like, how pivotal was that retention?
Speaker 4: You know what I mean? Like, what if he would
have ended up at at Kentucky.
Speaker 3: Maybe that Kentucky team goes to an Elite eight last
year and they get through the Sweet sixteen.
Speaker 4: If Richie's on.
Speaker 3: That squad this year, they're probably doing a whole lot
better because they have a glue guy, a leader, a
guy that sets the tone, that creates continuity and executes
and gets everyone bought in to what Mark Pope is building.
Speaker 4: The fact that b Yu was able to retain Richie.
Speaker 3: Is probably not heralded enough as one of the greatest
recruiting efforts that this staff has been able to execute.
Speaker 1: That really really is.
Speaker 2: And you know, I can't speak to specifics, but I
want people to understand that Richie left a lot on
the tape to stay at b YU as good as
by us resources are. Uh, he stayed because he wanted
to and he loves the university and so yeah, as
a fan, I'm grateful to him for that. But I
think the obviously AJ is is even a I think
a seasoned professional level player right now, and he could
play in the NBA and be an All Star right now.
But so he's he gets a lot of attention rightly,
so top draft pick guy. But the best thing I
think that ever happened to AJ is Richie to have
that kind of leadership and maturity and how to play
the game and to learn from Richie and to take
a lot of the pressure off of AJ to have
to do it all himself. You know, obviously there's other guys.
Rob's great, but I mean, you know, when you have
three really good players, you know, it's just not all
about you, It's not all on your shoulders, so you
can kind of, uh you know, do your thing and
have some pressure taken off of you, both off just
the mental pressure that AJ must go through, but just
the pressure to play and deliver at all times. And AJ,
like the other night against TCU, he kind of took
over that game. But for the most part, you know,
he can kind of do his thing. And because Richie
particularly is a leader of that team. And when you
know Ben, like like when you were a senior at BYU,
I mean you, nobody played harder than you, Nobody practiced
harder than you. And when you've got a guy that's
that good and sets that tone, like you have no excuses.
If Richie's playing this hard, I need to play that
this hard. If he's doing getting rebound, I need to
do this. And so when you have a guy like
that and that senior leadership who's you know, all American
caliber player and he doing all the little things that
make people great, then you learn from that and you
have no excuses. And I think it's gonna be the
best thing that ever happened to AJ was to have
Richie on this team.
Speaker 3: No excuses, played like a champion. It was a great victory,
a gritty one, an ugly one, a beautifully ugly one.
But when does the win is win over TCU, what
were your takeaways from that matchup late last night. That's
the That's one of the latest games you've probably had
to call recently.
Speaker 2: I guess there's reasons for it. If I'm the horn Frogs,
I'm pretty upset that I had to do that because
it was even later for them their bodyclock. But I mean,
I just don't get it. I mean, maybe West Coast,
but even West Coast it's eight o'clock Star. I'm like,
what is the point of that. It seems silly, but
I you know, I get there's TV and all that
kind of stuff. But anyway, it was late, but it's nice,
you know. I just had a nice meal before and
got all that out of the way before the game,
so it didn't bother me too much. But yeah, the game,
you know, Ben, I'm I been kind of waiting for
that game because everybody, every team has a game where
it's just not their night. It's you know, you come
off of a pretty intense rivalry game. It's certainly right
for a letdown, a trap game, whatever you want to
call it. And I just felt like, eventually these guys
are gonna have an off night and they're gonna lose one,
and it's just gonna be one of those things, and
I was almost resigned myself to that. The great thing
about last night was they had that game. They had
their worst shooting night both from three and from two
of the year, and yet they won. So you can
have your your bad game, the off game that inevitably
you're going to have, and still win. That's pretty good
and it shows you how good they are. And AJ
was under the weather, looked as bad as I've seen
him play in the first half, but man, he found
something in about eight to ten minutes of that second
half where he was great, and he The thing I'm
impressed about AJ is whether it's Yukon or Clemson or
whenever Byu needs him to be great, he has been
great and he've found something deep inside and he was
kind of his game where he will BYU the victory
there to get them back in the lead. And so yeah,
I mean it was it was not a good game.
It was their letdown game, and yet somehow they managed
to win it, and so that's pretty cool. I mean,
you usually don't escape those kind of games with a win,
and so hopefully you learn some lessons, but you still
have a w in the in the win column, and
so that's that's good for this team. I expect them
to play much better, even though they're going into a tough,
tough place this weekend against Texas Tech and Lewock. But
I think they'll actually play a lot better and we'll
have a chance in that game.
Speaker 3: Mark, we've discussed this Big three. Some people call it
the brig Three, the First Presidency. I mean, there's a
ton of different nicknames for this crew. But you know,
you have to wonder, is this the Is this the
best trio in Bou basketball history? Is this better than
the Danny Ainge, you know eighty one team, the Great
Kite friend Roberts, I know, I know, I know your
your brother pretty good. You know, they they had some
good sad Mike, We've had. I think the mckelly Wesley
crew was good. The Hafa Travis Hanson crew was pretty good.
Is this the best trio in Bou basketball history?
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you if you drill down on it, there's
actually been some really good Yeah, really good players, Like
you mentioned a lot of them.
Speaker 1: But I think, as far as you know, recency bias
is a thing.
Speaker 2: But you know, I just I can't imagine three better
players for b y U at the same time. I mean,
aj is going to be possibly a number one pick,
and so we've never had that. And Rob Wright, Holy cow,
I mean that guy is so good and he's such
as he's a guy that's so consistent too, and he's
steady and make when byus struggling, he's the guy that
makes a shot and just lightning quick. Impossible to stop
him on the dribble penetration. And then we've talked about Ritchie.
I mean, you've got three NBA guys, probably two of
the guys first round NBA guys. One guy is maybe
a first pick, first round guy. So as far as talent,
pure talent, I think it's the best three. I mean,
they had a chance last night to have the third
consecutive game where they had three guys over twenty points.
Now they fell short of that, but that was like
would be the first time in thirty or forty years
in the entire NCAA that any three players have got
twenty a piece for three consecutive games close to doing that,
which says a lot of itself. And the great thing
about it is, you know they're they're all you know,
they're all right around the same scoring, you know, right
around twenty points a game. They all shoot a right
around the same number of field goals, they shoot similar percentages.
It's amazing kind of the the balance that they've achieved,
because sometimes when you have three excellent players like that,
it's hard to get that chemistry and balance and guys
are thinking, I got to get mine, and you know,
but it's just organically, they've found a beautiful balance where
they're all contributing, all shooting about the same amount, all
getting about the same amount of points, and it's just
it's really cool to see how those three have become
like a single super super player in one in one
guy and anyway, it's it's fun. I mean, I'm waxing
trying to wax poetic about it failing, but they're as
good as I've ever seen, and I've seen, you know,
back to the Danny h days. And that's no slide
on anybody. I mean, the fact they're just that good,
and the fact that Dyus in this possession excuse me,
positioned in the big twelve, in the top ten team
and have those kind of caliber guys, it's like, what
universe are we living in? And whatever it is, I'm
glad I'm living in it.
Speaker 4: Mark.
Speaker 3: We were discussing earlier today who we need to step
up on the bench or from the bench. We have
one of the best starting fives, if not the best
starting five in college basketball, you can make that argument,
but we need bench players, We need more depth, We need.
Speaker 4: Some consistency there.
Speaker 3: Who's the guy that you're looking forward to in the
next six weeks to maybe step up and take that
baton or multiple guys to take that baton.
Speaker 4: Who's most likely to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the things i'mcerned about, and it was
evident last night. As good as the Big three is
and Kiba is tremendous, it's.
Speaker 1: You know, you get a.
Speaker 2: Guy in foul trouble or aj was wasn't feeling well,
it doesn't take.
Speaker 1: A lot to really hurt you.
Speaker 2: And so they're walking a fine line, playing so few
guys and relying so much on the Big three. So
you just kind of hope and pray nobody gets hurt,
or you stay out of foul trouble, or or you're
going to have some problems. But in answer your question,
I think they need to go all in on Hilo.
I think he's a good player. He makes big plays,
He plays without fear. He made a big three, had
a huge block last night. He brings size, he stretches
the floor. I think you're all in on him, and
I think it really hurt.
Speaker 1: BYU that Abdu Ahmed did not play.
Speaker 2: I hope he can be healthy because I think when
CABA's out of the game, BYU is a much different team.
But with Beido he comes in and they're not that different.
He's He's just a big human and a great shot blocker.
I'm so pleased with him. So I'm all in on
Beido and Mahi Loo and uh, you know, other than that,
you're gonna have to kind of hope, and you know,
hopefully Tyler Moruss makes a player too, or orkost It
or or or whoever. But you know, I think seven,
if you have seven guys that you can count on,
I think what he does, then they should be all right.
But you know, it's it's a little makes you a
little bit nervous when anybody you know twists an ankle
or is not feeling well or gets in foul trouble,
because it can really turn on you quickly if if
you don't have those guys ready to go.
Speaker 3: I always feel like when we're about to make a run,
like we get it, we get in or something like
something crazy happens, you know, Like I hate to be
that guy. I'm knocking on wood right now, all the
wood here in my that's in my surrounding area. But
it's like, man, I just hope we can stay healthy,
you know, stay healthy and strong, nourish and strengthened and
built for a run in the NCAA tournament.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the things you worry about is because
you're not as deep. You know, you're playing those the
Big Tree a lot of minutes, I mean in thirty
thirty five more, and so you worry about getting worn
down a little bit. And just in that TCU game,
you know, Aj was on the floor for a long
time and I was worried that he was injured. And
Rob Wright was knocked and he was limping for a while.
I ate and Richie in the post game had a
big ice bag on his caffe and he was in
kind of twisted his ankle late. And so yeah, you
find all the wood you can and knock on it
because this team is a potential title contender.
Speaker 1: Uh A Final.
Speaker 2: Four National championship contender with everybody ready to play and healthy.
But if anything goes wrong then it might spoil the
apple cart and turn the apple cart upside down because
there's just not a lot of room for error. Uh,
there is. They're they're awesome. They could win it all.
I totally believe that, but it's if one little thing happens,
it could change that equation overnight.
Speaker 1: So you just hope it doesn't and knock on the
wood and uh and O.
Speaker 2: B YU fans have had some rough uh rough what
ifs in their in their fandom history, but hopefully this
year won't be one of them.
Speaker 3: Mark Durant Ladies and Gentlemen, partner at Dorsey and Whitney LLPH.
His specialty is obviously on the radio waves as the
color commentates alongside Great Rebel on the b YU Sports
Network talking Who's but he's also pretty good at real
estate law, So shout out to Dorsey and Whitney LLP.
If you need any real estate lawyering, then you got
to hit up my guy, Mark Durant. Mark, we always
appreciate our time together, appreciate you hopping on to give
us nuggets and truth and knowledge and all manner of
Bau Basketball commentary.
Speaker 2: Well, you know I love you and I'm happy to
come on anytime, and I'm excited about this weekend at
Texas Tech.
Speaker 1: And give give Ron a big kiss for me, will you.
Speaker 3: I shall give him a big hug, big kiss, big
smooch for you, Mark Durant, Ladies and Genteral, thanks so much, brother.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks Ben Tuck.
Speaker 4: All right, guys, that's our show.
Speaker 3: We're sticking to a download the podcast iTunes, Spreaker, Google
Play Music, iHeartRadio, Spotify.
Speaker 4: Give us a rat and give us a review. We
appreciate it when you do.
Speaker 3: Make sure you give our sponsors an opportunity to earn
your business. Like our good friends at Central Garage Door
Central Garage Utah dot com. Kelly, we'll give you VIP
products of the IP service vppy discus. You need a
new garage door or you need get your current corrodgintor
fixed up. Eight on one two eight two thirty six
sixty seven. That's eight to one two eight two thirty
six sixty seven. Let them know Ben Crinel and ESPN
Senscha for VP products, VP service, VP discounts. But please
support all of our other sponsors. Guys, we can't do
our show without our sponsors. So get them, give them
an opportunity to earn your business. And always ask for
that that discount. You know, I'm always trying to create
value for our listeners and so ask for that VP
product VP servis VP discount all day, every day. Shout
out to our good friend Mark Durant, Garrett and Preston Handy,
Jay Drew, Brian Keel, Brandon Day, Richie Saunders, Kevin Young.
We had a fantastic show. Shout out to Brett Hammer,
Vic Kram, Ronald the Three Man Weaver star studed cast,
no if, sands or butts about it, and.
Speaker 4: We'll be back Manyana, celebrating all.
Speaker 3: The news and notes, all of the minutia, all of
the getting into all the Knox and Crannies here in
Cougar Country, from all of us here at ESPN the
and we wish you a very very good night, have
a safe night.
Speaker 4: You've been listening