1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - Which Major Event is On Your Husker Wish List?: March 19th

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Which Major Event is On Your Husker Wish List?Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Back to one-on-one with DP, sponsored by Mary Ellen's Food for the Soul on 93-7 the Ticket and the Ticketfm.com. Welcome back live from Philly one-on-one, DP. Bach Manning the board. Bob, do you know this song? I do not know this song, but I'm grooving to it. And I was thinking, man, I had to do this replay, this song more often when we bring it back in. It is the Ohio players. That's where that comes from.

That whole the thing comes from the one and only Don Cornelius, and he would have the Ohio players come on in the Soul Trade. Fire. Fire. Follow it up with some love roller coaster. You got some. Oh, man. Bach, it is, again, it's pretty cool.

And we warn people when Bach and I have time where we can just spin the wheel and go around. We go around and around circles pretty, pretty easily. And you're right in the conversation of what thing, what thing moves Nebraska sports fans. And in degrees and in increments, I know that football is the straw that stirs the drink. As a matter of fact, it is the drink. It is the drink. Let's not play with it. But the degree of relevancy certainly matters,

mainly because it takes fewer resources to elevate the other programs than it does football. It takes all in, all inclusive, all of that money, all amounts of money to get Nebraska football. back to its rightful place. As Husker fans will tell you, it's rightful place in the college football hierarchy. But I think being relevant, getting onto the island of relevant kids,

getting into that room of relevant kids, is, and I'm not sure that first things first doesn't apply, that getting them into that conversation of playoffs before we, you know, we'll walk. before we we try to run again. But getting to the college playoff would be vital.

But I think it would that thing's been done. Winning in the in March Madness hasn't been done. Yeah. It, I mean, think about, I mean, when you really want to spin your head that it's, it's been a long time since football was relevant, a really good. Basketball's never won a March Madness game. And that, like, in my head, I would go deep, I would do a deep dive, and I would invest everything. Because I think that if you got basketball right, you could then more easily get football right.

How you, how you make that happen would follow. It would work. And I'm not sure which direction it needs to go in. I don't know which one's the cart or the horse. I don't know which ones that chicken or the egg. But Bach, maybe one day we can have that discussion and figure out exactly. If they can figure out how to manage and make their 12 basketball players top 10, top 20, top 10, then it much more easily,

it becomes much more easily done for the 105 football players. Yeah, I wonder too, like just, and I love, obviously, love Nebraska basketball, but I just wonder how much of it's even on the radar outside. Because, you know, sometimes you'll hear fans be like, oh, I didn't even know this team had a program.

And, you know, I think at times Nebraska could probably fall into that category. After all, as we all know, after Northwestern got to win a couple years ago in the tournament, the only power four, you know, formerly Power 5 team not to win one in the tournament. So, you know, it's kind of funny because just going through the conversation, I remember Kerker a couple weeks ago is asking, okay, what do you think happens first?

Nebraska wins a March Madness game or Nebraska makes it to the playoffs. And I said, well, and again, you want to feel like you want to say, well, it could happen in next year. It could happen in the next couple months. I said, you could have asked me whether Nebraska was going to win a football conference championship or win a March Madness game in the year 2000, which would happen first. and we still wouldn't know. So, I mean, sometimes these things take some time.

But do we dare try to answer that which one is more likely? That the easier thing, the easier thing has been the impossible thing. The easier thing would be actually winning an NCAA tournament basketball game. Yeah. By literally any metric, not the matrix. In any vacuum other than the Matrix, Nebraska wins a March Madness tournament game. It shouldn't take a lot, but I think it's more likely that Nebraska wins a tournament game next year in basketball than it is for Nebraska football to be in college football playoffs. Is that fair?

I'm really, I hope so. I mean, I don't know. I want to say I hope so. I want to see what next year's raw. I mean, we've got to go through this transfer portal thing. I mean, the college basketball crown is going to be fun and kind of a send off to some of our favorite favorite Huskers over the past couple of years. But you look at next year's returning roster and they just need some, you know, needs some patchwork like every roster does across the country. But obviously, just losing Bryce and Juan, it's hard.

It's hard. Like you said, it's kind of the matrix. So it's hard having, being, living in the matrix of the Nebraska. basketball reality, it just doesn't look like, I guess, the perfect time to strike as far as winning a tournament game. But you are right in the fact that it's not that hard. Like, as much as it's never happened in Nebraska, all these other programs can do it. You don't have to be the favorite going in. You can win as an 11 or 12 seed. Alabama State won. There you go.

state won last night. And I don't care if they win in a play-in game. I don't care for you to get on that stage in that environment and deliver. And here's the thing. To tell me that you can't find two players in the transfer portal who can help you win a tournament game is wrong. If you told me you needed five players, five new players, the transfer portal allows that. Yeah. And a critical mass item in the transfer portal, especially in basketball, especially in basketball, is if I'm going to make the change of program, that I have to be the number one guy at that position at the new school, which is exactly what Nebraska wants, right?

If you want five guys, you want to bring in five dudes who are better than the five dudes you have, right? You know what the market is. you know that they exist and that somewhere there's two guys from Alabama State we can look at and went wait a minute they can play for Nebraska sure could like you can look around look at St. Francis.

So those folks are out there right and they just had to be remember Juan Gary was what number seven or eight player at Alabama? Yeah right? So this tournament is going to showcase sorry Matt Rule but it's a showcase and people are watching,

if you see some dudes coming off benches or some dudes who are not satisfied where they are in this tournament, you now get to grocery shopping. First of all, you're shopping at the other 200 right now. Right now. The 64 that are playing in that tournament, you get the grocery shop for the next three weeks. Three weeks.

Make your grocery list, check your budget, move some money around, and get to it. It's good for Nebraska. And I'm glad that you brought that up because it does feel just, you know, from Nebraska basketball fan the way the season ended. Hopefully they can kind of change the narrative here with the college basketball crown.

But it feels like you're kind of in a dark place, right? Like, you know, it didn't finish well. But you are right. It's not, even if they do have to add a bunch in the transfer portal, teams are doing it every year in making it in making it to the tournament. But it's also something kind of interesting to note this year. We always fall in love with these, these, these, these, these, these, these, um, Cinderella teams. And it's so, it's such a cool story. And then you usually have, you know,

their, their, uh, attendance at their school skyrocket and all that. But now, as we've seen over the last couple of years, those players don't stay at that school. That coach has never really stayed at that school, right? Very rarely. So that's kind of the old, old thing is that's always kind of been here and gone. But now it's crazy that when you're watching the magic of the Cinderella team, you kind of can kind of take it in as this is, this is going to be their last run. because they've already hit a level to where their NIL demand is going to be higher than probably what that Cinderella school can pay. And there is revenue coming from these televised games. There's additional revenue.

So the people who are still playing, they're making more money. They're actually fundraising now. And that's the importance of Crown for Nebraska and Fred Hoyberg is to use it as a recruiting tool, not only for players, but for, for alumni with money to include them in and to give them some bang for the buck. And listen, a few days in Las Vegas goes a really long way when it comes to getting boosters to write checks, to write bigger checks. So that's all in play, and that is a real thing. But that's kind of what we're dealing with.

The opportunity is there. I just think we need to pay attention to it. I do want to, I'll dip my toe into the wrestling because I want to get through that matchup. The first round of matchups start tomorrow here at 12 noon. There in Lincoln at 11 a.m. And they, you know, again, eight matches at a time. Some interesting things of the nine Nebraska wrestlers who qualified for this tournament. Seven of them, eight of them actually would be considered.

Seven of them are the higher rank in their first round matchups. Eight of them are considered favorites in the first round. So if you're talking about Caleb Smith, who was number two in the Big Ten at the Big Ten tournament, was ranked number nine because the 125 pound weight class is an absolute meat grinder. I think in the four lower weight class, five lower weight classes, it is insanity at how good and how deep the weight classes are. We will speed through those when we come back. Bach. I'm telling you that the matchups are insane. There's some great opportunities, but this is, this is glad either time. There are no easy wins. Everybody here is qualified and a winner. It's going to be a great tournament here in Philly. Nebraska wrestling has its work cut out for it,

but that's okay. That's why we're here. D.P. Bach, one-on-one.