Andy & Ari On3 - Has John Calipari coached his LAST game at Kentucky? | The Madness continues Friday

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

Need to sneak in those tournament games while at work or on the go? Prime Video has you covered. Watch every game live, on your phone, on your laptop, or relax and watch at home on Prime Video, with a subscription. Prime Video gives you choices to add on channels like Paramount Plus and Max, both featuring March Madness tournament games, all in one place. It’s March, it’s Madness, stream it all on Prime Video.Learn more now…https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/storefront/ref=atv_hm_spo_c_rEmqNT_6_2?contentType=tournament&contentId=amzn1.dv.icid.64a44c0e-3ac7-4b14-ad4d-c2a438001f2c&jic=8%7CEgNhbGw%3D0:00 Intro - Kansas vs Samford Recap4:30 Is Calipari done at Kentucky?21:58 Kentucky vs Oakland Recap26:23 Best of KSR Callers, Part 131:08 Best of KSR Callers, Part 233:46 Thursday Games Recap: Duquesne to Start43:06 Friday Preview52:46 Conclusion: Happy March MadnessThe Madness began in earnest Thursday with an upset that sent shockwaves throughout college basketball. The one thing Kentucky coach John Calipari couldn’t do was lose to Oakland and he… lost to Oakland. On3’s James Fletcher III joins to discuss the biggest story in the sport and the rest of Thursday’s action.Kentucky hasn’t made the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament since 2019, and seemingly the entire Kentucky fanbase has turned against Calipari. But his buyout is massive. The Jimbo Fisher parallels are strong, right down to the amount it will take to fire him.Meanwhile, Oakland coach Greg Kampe, who has coached the Golden Grizzlies for 40 YEARS, notched his biggest win as a head coach. Not to be outdone, soon-to-retire Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot notched another one for the longtime veteran coaches as the Dukes upset No. 6 seed BYU.Gonzaga dispatched mid-major darling McNeese with shocking ease, and Oregon showed again that its a different team when healthy by beating No. 6 seed South Carolina.What fun will Friday bring? Andy and James will help set you up for all the action.Want to watch the show and join the LIVE Chat instead? Join us live on YouTube here, M-F, 8 am et: https://youtube.com/live/vuWzrgGX23s

Welcome to Andy Staples on three, the happiest two days of the college sports here at the sports here in America in general. We're in between Thursday and Friday of the NCAA tournament. We are sleepy because we are up very late watching Kansas and Samford. Andrew in the chat justice for Samford. He got all ball. That's exactly right. Exactly right. So here's the situation if you were asleep. Jaden Campbell makes a three-pointer to cut Samford's deficit to one. Samford, which has just allowed Kansas to get behind his press once for a breakaway dunk, lets Nicholas Timberlake get behind the press again.

So Sanford is not completely blameless in this. Twice they let somebody get behind the press. Inexcusable. That said, Nicholas Timberlake gets behind the press. Looks like he's got a breakaway layup. Here comes A.J. Stanton-McCray from behind. Blocks the ball. Timberlake falls down.

Whistle. In real time, I think everybody in the arena expected a foul there because it's a breakaway. The ball didn't go in the basket. The guy with the ball fell down. Obvious to your mind, foul. You see the replay. A.J. St. McCray blocked it perfectly. He got nothing but ball. All ball. So yesterday we spent approximately four hours and 57 minutes watching refs huddle around a monitor to figure out who the ball went off of on an out-of-bounds play or whatever. They can't look at the video and say, whoops, we messed up. He got all ball.

It's ridiculous now i understand why because you you start doing that then every judgment call becomes something you can review on video and then you never actually play the game but if you're going to do that let's let's get rid of the other reviews too because they're wasting time and it's probably a wash with the mistakes or you could do it like they do in the nba where they have a challenge kind of like the n the NBA where they have the challenge. Kind of like the NFL too, where they have the challenge, where each coach gets one challenge. Because that's one you would challenge. Right there. Sanford got hosed on that one. If they could have watched the video,

JB says Kansas getting a massive break from the refs. Imagine that. If the refs could have watched the video, they would have pulled that foul off the board. Now, Sanford should have had the ball with a five on four the other way had the foul not been called. You can't recreate that.

But at least they would have had the ball down one. The refs couldn't watch the video, but you can. You want to sneak in those tournament games at work. You want to watch them at home. You want to watch them on the go because maybe somebody's got a honey-do list that you've got to deal with this weekend. Prime Video has you covered. Watch every game live on your phone, on your laptop, or at home with Prime Video with a subscription. Now, what you do is you add on through Prime Video the Max subscription and the Paramount Plus subscription. All of those would then be contained in your Prime Video app

under one password, easy to get to, easy to pop up wherever you are. And oh, by the way, yeah, you'd also get to watch the new Roadhouse. That's right. The Jake Gyllenhaal Roadhouse. No, I don't think it's sacrilege. I think we need to introduce a new generation to Dalton

and the fact that pain don't hurt. So yes, basketball games, Roadhouse. Prime Video has you covered. Click the link in the show description of this show, either on YouTube or on your favorite podcast platform. It'll take you where you need to go. You can get all signed up and then you can watch the replays even if the refs can't. Yeah, it's pretty terrible. All right, we have other big things to discuss based on what happened Thursday night.

Has John Calipari coached his last game at Kentucky? The fan base is out. They're done. This is, they're finished with him. The question is, what does Mitch Barnhart think? The AD at Kentucky, longest tenured AD in the SEC. What do the deep pocketed donors, the ones who actually have to write checks if this is going to happen, what do they think? We're going to find out. Ed Keeley in the chat, John Calipari might want to start traveling to practice with security. Well, that

would assume that he's going to coach another practice at Kentucky, and I'm not sure that's going to happen. We bring on James Fletcher III on three's resident bracketologist. James, Oakland beats Kentucky. Greg Campy, 40 years as the Golden Grizzlies coach, his first win in the NCAA tournament proper. They won a play-in game a few years ago, but this is a massive one because Kentucky fans were already pretty ambivalent on Cal. Had not made the second week in the NCAA tournament since 2019.

They're all the way done now. Yeah, I think it was even bigger than just the biggest loss of the day in the NCAA tournament. It was a referendum on what the John Calipari era has become at Kentucky. The last few years, they have not had NCAA tournament success. And a lot of pressure was put on this team. We talked about with this group of talent that he brought in, he needed to have at least a second weekend run probably to keep that fan base happy, to keep the boosters happy, to keep everyone happy there, including himself and all of his players.

Because there are expectations at Kentucky that have been set not only during his tenure, but over the course of almost 100 years of history with different coaches through different eras. And so for him to have this kind of failure again in the NCAA tournament, the fan base, of course, is ready for change. And they're going to make a lot of noise here. It's going to happen. And I think that more so than anything, what last night's loss showed, and you heard him talk about it in the postgame,

was this idea that John Calipari loves coaching a young team. He wants all of these future NBA stars. He wants the freshmen these future NBA stars. He wants the freshmen, the five stars, and he wants to help the kids, James. He's helped these kids. If he coaches 21 year olds, then he's not helping kids. Right. That's what he told us last night. That was the funniest one. And I get it. I get wanting to go get the five-star. It's fun. It's fun to coach the five-star kids, but if that doesn't win basketball games, then at what point do you have to change? And he's showing a hesitance to change, which is going to make this an even more interesting conversation as we talk about the future of John Calipari at Kentucky and the

future of John Calipari in college basketball, where the trend has gone to older players and to more transfer portal driven success than it is recruiting trail and one and done guys. Yeah. So John in the chat goes, just going for your title, $33 million buyout. I don't see how they fire Cal. John, you realize we live in a world where Jimbo Fisher is a person who exists. An SEC school just paid $77 million to fire a coach. And don't give me, oh, that's football. This is Kentucky.

When it's basketball, somewhere else, yeah, you don football. This is Kentucky. When it's basketball somewhere else, yeah, you don't compare it to football. When it's basketball at Kentucky, you compare it to football. And Kentucky has lots of money. They're about to get a bigger cash infusion for the new SEC TV deal. They're about to get a bigger cash infusion for the new college football playoff contract. They've got Mark Stoops locked up. Remember, he almost replaced Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M, but he didn't. He's probably not going anywhere at that salary. They've actually probably priced him out of getting another job. But I think that the people who do this, and John Rothstein, who's a great college basketball reporter he he said this last night

he's like they had to pay him almost 34 million dollars who would do that the NCC school would do that like let me explain the buyout math because everybody who watches this show is a college football fan so they understand buyout math a lot better than basketball people understand buyout math college football people understand when you're looking at a buyout math a lot better than basketball people understand buyout math. College football people understand when you're looking at a buyout, there are certain things you look at. Is there anything due up front or do you get to pay it evenly over the rest of the deal? Also, is there offset language? So if the person gets another job, does the salary from the new job get taken off the total? Jimbo Fisher, I know I keep using this example, but it's fresh in my mind. Jimbo Fisher had no offset. He gets to keep all of that

$77 million, whether he gets another job or not. John Calipari does not have that in his contract. John Calipari has an offset in his contract. I went and read through it last night. If John Calipari were to get another job and presumably he's going to get a competitive salary job. So let's say he gets a $3 million a year job that comes off the total. Here's the other piece of it. So I realized I keep using Texas A&M football coaches for this example, but these are the most egregious examples I can think of. Kevin Sumlin, when he got fired at Texas A&M, his entire buyout was due within 60 days. So when they fired him, it was 15 million bucks. They wrote him a $15 million check within 60 days. John Calipari's buyout, none of it is due up front. Jimbo Fisher had a big chunk of it due up front.

I believe it was $20 million right off the rip that was due up front. John Calipari does not have that at all. It is due in equal installments, paid monthly, through the life of the contract. So through 2029. That is incredibly doable. It's like $ million bucks a year. And if he gets another head coaching job, you can knock 3 million a year off of it. Like all the SEC and he's like, this is easy. Yeah. I think where it gets a little bit more tricky and I know I get what you're saying in the SEC, you can't rule anything out at all when it comes to these boosters and these administrations being willing to pay buyouts.

Like if they think that it is time and there is no coming back, then they will probably pull the trigger. Where I think it gets a little bit more interesting is, A, I don't think that the John Calipari era is going to just tank their revenue, tank their viewership. I think people are coming back to watch Kentucky basketball, whether they want to admit it right now, this morning or not. They're going to come back and watch this extremely talented young team that he's building for next season and get excited for everything that happens in the non-conference schedule

and convince themselves that next March is going to be different. They're not, though. The fan base is done with him. And that's the thing. With him. But can they convince themselves that next year's team is good enough? Well, let me ask you this, James, because this is another thing I get from talking to ADs

and from dealing with football coaches being fired, which is much higher dollar amounts usually with football coaches being fired, which is much higher dollar amounts usually than basketball coaches being fired. When the fan base is out, do you know what they stop doing? They stop donating. They stop now. Kentucky, they're still going to show up. They're always going to show up for basketball. Like Kentucky's not going to have a situation like Kentucky football had in the Joker Phillips era where the fans just stopped coming. Because that's easy math. Like when your stadium is empty, when your arena is empty, you can calculate how much you're losing for every ticket you don't sell.

The harder math is, are the donors going to say no more until he's gone? And that is usually what tips these things is some big donor or multiple big donors going, we will not give you any more money until you have somebody else on the line. And that's where Mitch Barnhart would say, okay, but I'm going to need you to give me money now to fire him and to hire a new coach. Cause it's, we're it's $33 million. Now, granted, they're going to have six years to pay all this. Yeah. But you fire him. You hire a presumably very marketable new coach, which will cost you money in a buyout for wherever school he's at.

And you've got to buy out all Cal's assistants, who also make a lot of money. So you're talking about a $50 million transaction here, all told, end of the day. Well, I think, I know that that number of 50 got floated around last night. As I kept thinking about it throughout the night, I think it's closer to 60 because I think the thing that we're not taking into consideration here is the fact that you're going to have to get a new roster. Some of those guys are going to decommit. Some of those guys are going to enter the transfer portal who you would expect back if Cal is here. And so you're going to have to hit the transfer portal even harder than what you probably need to with Cal there. Yeah, but your payroll is not changing. That money hasn't been paid out. So that $10 million you're adding on is getting paid one

way or the other. And I don't know if it's 10 million for basketball. I would just say, I think transfer portal kids are probably a little more expensive than the freshmen that you're bringing in. Probably, but it's not. Yeah, it's money that you're probably already going to pay. But yes, incrementally, there might a little little more pay out there but it's it's not obscene to think that they would do this i'm telling you right now in the sec most of the schools are prepared to fire a coach and have it cost them three to five million dollars a year for a few years to fire like florida right now is sitting there watching Billy Napier in football. And if he has a good year, then great.

Nothing has to happen. If he has a really bad year, they got to find $26 million. And then they got to buy out some other coach. And so it is not unusual in that league for these amounts of dollars. Now what's unusual is that Kentucky has not had to deal with this at all

because Mark Stoops has been good in football. And so the last buyout they had to pay was Joker Phillips at the end of the 2012 season. And so they don't have, they've not been in this, on this treadmill, like Tennessee, LSU, Florida, Texas A&M, they've all had to deal with this stuff. And Mitch Barnhart has gotten away

pretty clean on this so is if he's spent his money wisely they should be fine on this now let's let's talk uh because here's here's the deal if you do fire cow you got to have a plan you got to know who you want uh Ryan in the chat mentions we've got Nate Oates locked up he's an Alabama fan but remember Nate Oates just did a new contract at Alabama I will say state of Alabama and also well we'll just move to Spokane Washington which is the state of Alabama for NCAA tournament purposes right now Alabama and Auburn in Spokane right now. I got to say, Nate Oates or Bruce Pearl would be at the top of my list if I were Kentucky looking for a new coach. Yeah, I think Nate Oates certainly is in that conversation.

Bruce Pearl is somebody who gets thrown in when these blue blood type of jobs come open. People wonder, would he actually leave Auburn? To this point, he's always said no. He loves the culture that he's built there on the plains. He's really enjoyed being able to take that program from what it was to what he's built it into. Feels like he kind of accomplished something with that. Nate Oates, similar there at Alabama, he's very comfortable where he is, but this is the Kentucky job that we are talking about and it is a little bit different.

Now, both of them have very high buyouts. And so I think that the most likely situation in which Kentucky was able to land one of those two would probably be in some kind of offset situation where Calipari maybe looks to save some face. Maybe he walks away from that Kentucky job rather than them listing it as a firing or a parting of ways. Well, and I should point out, and somebody in the chat pointed it out too. Here we go. So he can leave on his own and still make a million dollars a year for life. Tell him to take the high road. So it isn't his contract that he could become kind of an ambassador for the program at, at 950 grand a year. Yes. And so that is a one way to do it. Now, if I'm Cal, I'm saying I want $33 million. Oh, I'm not taking the, I'm not taking the Bobby Bonilla deal. I'm

taking it all right now. Uh, Nate Oates, by the way, $12 million buyout. I don't think he's leaving Alabama. That's very similar to the Dan Lanning football situation in Oregon where he's got a $20 million buyout and every time a job comes open, he's like, not going anywhere. Yeah. I think Nate Oates is definitely, his buyout kind of puts him in a different conversation. It is, according to Greg Byrne, as that buyout was just now updated with his new contract, it is the highest buyout according to Greg Byrne in college basketball. So if you were going to go invest in that, it would already be an unprecedented amount to spend on a college basketball coach, regardless of the buyout that you're paying your own coach to

get out of that situation. So yeah, any kind of interest in Nate Oates would get extremely pricey really quick. But his name is going to come up because he is one of the best young coaches in college basketball. What he's been able to build that Alabama program into recruiting at a very high level. He has worked the transfer portal at a very high level. And this year, I think his stock rose more than it ever has being able to replace three assistant coaches in one off season. And they still land a really good portal class and are competing as a top 25 team in the country and a four seat in the NCAA tournament. Well, and the, the, so the $12 million you mentioned

the highest in college basketball, it'd be the second highest in college sports tied with Jed Fish's new contract at Washington. Kalen DeBoer, remember, had a $12 million buyout and Alabama paid it to get him. So, yeah, I guess if Nate Oates did get poached by somebody, it would cover the Kalen DeBoer buyout cost. But I don't think he's going anywhere. I kind of believe him when he says that. Now, you and I were texting last night and you brought up an interesting name whose name came up in years past for the Kentucky job, and that's Billy Donovan. He's coaching the Bulls right now. If he were to want to come back to college basketball, obviously, I covered Billy for a long time. I know a lot of people in his orbit have been told he's not really interested in a return to college basketball.

He likes the NBA a lot better. But if something were to go sideways with the Bulls or if he felt like the writing was on the wall and he wasn't going to be with the Bulls anymore, would he go back to the place where he started his career as an assistant? I mean, it's entirely possible. I do think that's a place that he always considered very special. So it's a great job. And that's the thing, James, the Alabama football job, the Michigan football job, and the Kentucky basketball job could open all in the same like three month span. That's wild. Yeah. And that's why I think that this

Kentucky job is going to get names mentioned that probably wouldn't take any other job in college basketball. You mentioned Billy Donovan, like probably would prefer to stay in the NBA. But if things with the Bulls don't look like they're heading in an upward situation, it's the Kentucky job. What are you going to do? You're not going to say no if that opportunity arises. I think it's similar with Brad Stevens. We know that he's kind of stepped into a front office role with the Boston Celtics. Say that Boston Celtics win a title and he's looking around and says, hey, now I can go do this at a really high level there. I don't know how easy it would be to say no to that opportunity either. So a lot of names are going

to get thrown around here in the coming days. And then we'll find out if we need to talk about even more names because everyone's going to put their, their hat in the race here. If this job does come open. Yeah. And that's the thing. We'll, we'll have to watch it over the next few days. We got to have our friend, Nick Roush from Kentucky sports radio on. I said, he's coming on win or lose. I did not expect them to lose to Oakland. I thought maybe they lose in the second round, but I did not expect this. I thought maybe you see Kentucky losing to Marquette or Florida in round two, but that's not how it went. And holy cow. Let's talk about the game. Let's talk about Oakland andy. Greg Campy has been the coach of that team for 40 years.

40 years. Yeah. Greg Campy, being Greg Campy who pulled this off, just makes the story even better. Because a coach who's been there for 40 years, who has adapted to so many different eras of college basketball. We even talked about it on the broadcast. Maybe he can't scream at the players the way he used to.

Maybe he can't recruit. Yes, he can. We saw him do it last night while they were winning. He's going to try. But maybe he has to adapt the way that he coaches college basketball. But he's been willing to do that because he loves it so much out there. He loves being part of this. And at a school like Oakland, we're not talking about somebody who loves being at one of the most premier jobs in college basketball and has been at the top

of the sport. No, he loves the grind of being at Oakland in Michigan as kind of an afterthought in the sports scene there for 40 years. he's just been able to get the job done and have the support of that administration. I mean, to avoid the hot seat for 40 years in any line of work is just almost unheard of. I can't believe he's been able to hold on this long, but he has, and here he is, he's kind of an icon there. And now he's got this big thing to put on his resume and to share with everybody like like they said on the market i

don't think that he's ever paying a bar tab again in that city i think he's he's set for life there and how about jack gulch jack gulch like you talk about Greg camp. He's never got to pay a bar tab in Rochester, Michigan, or well, no Vi or all, all of Oakland County. Like Jack. He had,

he made 10, three point. He made six threes. No. So seven threes in the first half. Yeah. And all he shot were three. Seems unconscious.

Yeah. He's taken eight, two pointers the entire season zero last night and I just kept watching and I'm like okay I've heard of this this kid he's coming off the bench for Oakland he had some stuff to say before the game all right let's see what he can do and he starts knocking down threes and I'm thinking okay well that's a great story right there and then he starts hitting these he's coming off of a screen and the bank was the one where i was like that it's his night he's barely looking at the goal he's turning he's shooting

off balance fadeaways whatever he can get access to he is firing it up right over the hand of the defender. And they're all going in, it feels like. And it's like, this is really going to happen. And we get to halftime and I'm sitting there and I'm 50-50 in my mind. I'm like, either he's going to stay hot and they're doing this, or he's going to miss his next five.

You know what, at halftime, I was thinking, remember the Louisville-Michigan national title game? Spike Albrecht goes off in the first half from behind the arc, could not miss. And then it just sort of died on the vine. It didn't stop for Oakland. No. And Jack Golke did not stop. It just kept going.

And every time he started to fire in that second half, you just believed it was going in and that there was nothing that Kentucky team could do to stop it. And that Kentucky team, let me just say in terms of the actual game, I do feel for coach Cal a little bit in that no one could have predicted that no one could have predicted not only what Oakland was able to do, but that his players, in large part, just would not be there for that moment. Reed Shepard, I have not seen him perform that well. I believe it's his job to get them ready for that moment.

I would agree. I would agree. And I do wonder sometimes where the line is drawn there between a coach's responsibility to get his players ready and the players kind of getting on the stage i'll tell you where you draw the line it's where if it's a one-off if it happens one year and then the next year you have a deep run yeah then it's probably those players if it happens every year it's probably you so you. So let us hear from our friends at Kentucky Sports Radio, an epic post-game show for Kentucky Sports Radio last night. We're going to listen to a couple calls. If you want to take the temperature of the Kentucky fan base, here it is. And I think because we love this team so much

and enjoy to watch them so much, I think that has kept the calls for him to go at bay because we love this team so much. I agree with that, actually. I agree with you. I think he's taken a lot less criticism this year because everyone loved those players so much. I agree with that.

There's no question about that. The other thing is the thing that has bothered me and it has really irked me this year more than any time in the past and even he's been doing it for a long time. But, you know, we're not fans if we criticize. Yeah, I hate that. I hate it. That is such a slap in the face to people.

You're talking to a guy. When I was in grade school 50 years ago, 45, 50 years ago, I would come in because all the games were on tape delayed for the most part. So I would come in. My mother would make me go to sleep at 8 o'clock. She'd wake me up at 1130 after the news went off i would watch the game and me as a kid i love this program and for him to say that i ain't got a right to criticize him as a coach and i never criticized player i coached 25 years so i don't criticize kids. But coaching, and I don't like to even do that,

but there are so many obvious things that you have to lay it at his feet. There's no other place to put it. Well, where else can you put it? I mean, it's Oakland and St. Peter's, man. You know what I mean? It's Oakland and St. Peter's. Yeah, it's Oakland and St. Peter's. man. You know what I mean? It's Oakland and St. Peter's. Yeah, it's Oakland and St. Peter's. It's also Kansas State. And as good as Marquise Noel was and as good as that Kansas State

team was that beat Kentucky, Kentucky has better players. When you have better players, you should not keep losing in the biggest games. No. And that does fall on his feet. It's a very delicate situation. It always has been, and it always will be with that Kentucky job. The fan base is very passionate, and therefore the fans are going to react. But at some point, the coach can't keep telling us that it's just the fans reacting. We have to realize that there is something happening that is causing the fans to react over and over again. The fans react once. Okay. Yeah. They're emotional.

They're upset that you didn't reach your expectations. They react twice. Okay. They want things going the right way. They keep reacting and there's something wrong with what you're doing compared to the expectations of the program. And so what then you have to look at is, are the fans looking at the wrong expectations? Do they have this delusional idea of where they are in the pecking order? You can make that argument with Texas A&M football at times. But you can't make that argument with Kentucky basketball. That's exactly where I'm going.

They land all the five stars. And the NBA draft confirms that they chose wisely. Yes. And the NBA, you can also point to, as a point where John Calipari has not lived up to potential. Look at the amount of guards, specifically the guards, other positions as well.

Shea Gilgis-Alexander. Not a star at Kentucky. Devin Booker came off the bench. Reed Shepard, if you want to go that route, and Rob Dillingham, projected top 10 draft picks off the bench. Emmanuel Quickly. Tyrese Maxey. Rob Dillingham projected top 10 draft picks off the bench. Emmanuel quickly, Tyrese Maxey. None of them were at Kentucky. What they ended up being in the NBA.

And that is an indictment. I'll spin that by saying, well, I helped develop it. Right? No, you didn't use your best players. Yes.

In the way that they should have been used. Yeah. And it, it's, it all comes together. And while you can point to one area and say, man, maybe that wasn't Cal's fault.

And I think that does get him off the hook. A lot of times is he's very good at pointing to that thing. The thing that should keep the fans from criticizing him. He's always got somewhere to point that finger. All right, let's hear one more call from Kentucky Sports Radio and Matt Jones, the lord and master of Kentucky Sports Radio, pointing out a special guest or two arriving in the hotel as they were taking this phone call.

We'll go to Johnny. All right, we still have five more.. We go to Johnny. All right. We still have five more. Johnny, go ahead. Hey, guys. I think I must be a prophet or something. It was right before the season started. Honestly, I didn't know much about the team.

I went on to like a message board. I don't usually do that. And I said, look, you know, I don't know the team, but the pattern is this. We have double-digit losses. We win some. We lose some. We lose all the big marquee games or most of them. We don't win the SEC regular season championship.

I hate to cut you off. I hate to cut you off. I'll let you finish. But the guy that hit all the threes just walked into the hotel. Oh, no. What are you going to do? The coach and the guy who just hit all the threes just walked in there chanting over there.

All right, I'm sorry. Go ahead, sir. It's all good. But, yeah, you know, we're not going to win the SEC regular season championship or the tournament. And, frankly, if we make it out of the first week in the NCAA, you know, the real tournament, according to Cal, we're lucky if we even win a game. And, man, people blasted me, called me all kinds of crap.

You know, I went to U.K., undergrad, grad. I'm from Owensboro. You know, I grew up watching Rex play ball. I mean, I bleed blue. And I live here in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I'm stuck between Tar Heels and Blue Devils. And now I've got to put up with this. But I've got to tell you, I mean, I love Cal.

He's done good things for us. He brought us out of the Gillespie era, but definitely his time has come, and I really think that, you know, maybe after a little soul searching, if he'll think about it and they can come to some type of buyout, if he really cares about Kentucky, he really cares about our fan base and everything like he says he does, he'll walk away. He'll do the honorable thing and walk away, but not without a big payout, and I don't know who does that.

Frankly, the Athletics Administration, if they were stupid enough to sign a lifetime contract with him or anybody else well then they're stupid enough to pay it out so somebody's got to listen i appreciate the call i appreciate the call it's not a lifetime contract it would be way more expensive to fire mark stoops right now don't worry and they don't want to fire mark stoops sorry don't i probably't worry. And they don't want to fire Mark Stoops. Sorry. I shouldn't scare people like that. But it's not a lifetime contract. It had a rollover.

That's why they keep talking about lifetime contract with Cal. Yeah. All you got to do is bring in some football writers to explain this. We know how buyouts work. All right. James, we got to talk about these other games. Yeah. We mentioned Greg Campy.

Keith Dambrot, Duquesne. He is retiring. He's going to the lake when this is over, but he's not going to the lake yet. Duquesne, one of three 11 seeds to win on Thursday. There's one more 11 seed. That's New Mexico left to play on Friday. They're trying to make it a clean sweep. And I think there's, I think they're actually favored by Vegas against

Clemson, but Keith Dambrot and Duquesne beat BYU. What a story. Like he's just, you know, it's all, it's all gravy from here on out. Yeah. And we talked about the 11 seed is the new 12 seed this year. Because of the way that the bubble shifted and those at-large spots got taken away, the 11 seeds were really those 12 seeds that we usually talk about. So we talk about five 12 upsets. This year, it's those six 11 upsets. And like you said, they're 3-0 so far. And New Mexico was the one everyone was picking to make the upset happen in their bracket.

So this Duquesne team, what a story. Like you said, coach on his way out, one last ride with his guys, and they played like it. They went out there and played like they were playing for something more than just an NCAA tournament win. They wanted to do this for their coach. We'll see how long they're able to run through March Madness. They've got Illinois next.

But it really was one of those feel-good stories that you get in March, kind of rallying around a coach there. Yeah, it was crazy. And for a while there, we thought that was going to be the biggest upset of the day, the biggest kind of storyline of the day. And then the night happened. You had the Kentucky loss. You had Kansas getting pushed by Sanford.

And I want to get your take on what happened at the end of the game there because obviously we know the rule says you can't go back and look at that on video. But how awful is that to really they lose the game on that call? Now, they might not have won had it been called correctly. They might not have taken it back and scored and taken the lead, or Kansas may have just made another basket and won. But at least they would have gotten a fair shot.

Yeah, I think what this is going to do, that was a clean block. There's no question about it. But it does look like a foul from the angle that the referee sees it so i understand why they blew the whistle i understand how it happens but when we're able to watch the replay eight times on the broadcast right after it happens it makes it very frustrating that we don't have some ability to challenge that call or review that call. And I think what makes me even more frustrated- If you're the ref who made that call, James, and they're showing the replay,

because they were showing the replay in the arena, you could hear the boos raining down as they showed the replay in the arena. If you're the ref who made that call, you're probably like, oh my God, I want to get out of here. I wish I could change this. I wish I could fix this. There has to be a way. Right. And that's something that sports kind of conditions us towards is this idea that the referee is going to call what he wants to call. No, he wants to make the right call. There are very few referees who are just going to stand on what they said and they're not backing down no matter what. If they see that they made the wrong call, usually they feel bad about it.

They want to get this right. That's their job. They want to perform well at their job. But what makes this even worse is that if you watch that game and then you flip on to whatever NBA game is still going on on the West Coast late at night, wrapping up, and that same play happens, you will see either if it's outside of two minutes, a little green light's going to come on and the coaches are going to be spinning their

fingers like this. They're going to go review it and they're going to overturn it. And we're going to keep playing basketball. Yeah. The coach's challenge would be the way to do this because you can't have a situation where every little judgment call gets reviewed on video. But if you have a coach challenge where there's only one a half or something like that, and it's particularly egregious, then exactly. And I think that makes perfect sense. Now, I don't think it was the least bit surprising that Kansas had a pretty decent lead and then faltered down the stretch. They are really thin. Kevin McCuller not playing makes them even more thin.

Now they've been playing without him, but the thought was he was going to be back for the tournament. Then before the tournament, they say, no, he's out. I don't know. So they've got to play Gonzaga next. Both of us, I think, had picked McNeese to beat Gonzaga. McNeese was the mid-major darling. Gonzaga annihilated Will Wade's team. And now Kansas has to play Gonzaga. Yeah, I texted a friend during that game because very quickly it became evident that Gonzaga was going to win that game. And I texted a friend, why did I back myself into this corner? I came on here and I said, I've already pinned in McNeese as my 12th seed over a five. And then they drew Gonzaga and I came on here and I hesitantly still

took them. Yes. And I knew, I knew I made the wrong decision that day, but I had to make it because I already told everyone that's what I was doing. But yeah, this Gonzaga team, I like them. I would have them pretty heavily favored over this Kansas team, just because, like you said, they are so, so thin. And it's going to be hard. Hunter Dickinson is going to have to play almost 40 minutes for them to get this done against Graham Ekay, not against a mid-major team that maybe doesn't have as much size.

Graham Ekay is strong. He's physical down low. And so it's going to be a different challenge for Dickinson and for that Kansas team against Gonzaga, who obviously, I mean, they were flying. They're in great form right now in the NCAA tournament. Well, and so we should congratulate Tennessee for being the only SEC team to win on Thursday. The SEC was one in three and Tennessee beating St. Peter's being the only SEC team to win on Thursday. The SEC was one in three, and Tennessee beating St. Peter's was the only win. Michigan State looked great against Mississippi State.

That's one of those, like, we said it, when Izzo's the lower seed, he wins 65% of the time. So he'll be the lower seed again against North Carolina, but I thought they played really well. And the Oregon- Oregon South Carolina game, which is another one of those 11-6 games, you said it the other day, like Oregon's a different team now that they're healthy. And I feel like, so like the New Mexico Clemson game, which is today, that's a case where we felt like maybe they're misseeded. I don't know that Oregon was necessarily

misseeded. It's just that this version of Oregon is probably better than 11 seed. No, over the body of work that they put together for a full season, they were not an NCAA tournament team. The thing was none of their players were healthy for most of the season. So they are a completely different basketball team today than they were even a few weeks ago with Invali Dante fully healthy. You saw what Jermaine Kuznar did against his former school. How about that? Going back to play against South Carolina and he puts up 40 points in the win. So yeah, this Oregon team is just a different basketball team altogether. You can barely even point to anything they did throughout the season when you want to analyze what this team is. You kind of have to just go off what we saw in the Pac-12 tournament

and last night if you want to get an understanding of what they're capable of. Yeah, it's going to be pretty interesting to see them as they go forward in the tournament because they're going to play Creighton. And Creighton's a team good enough to make the Final Four, good enough to make the National Championship game, good enough to win the whole thing. So do they run into, you know,

an 11 seed that they didn't expect to be as good as it is? Yeah, I think Oregon has every opportunity to pull off another upset here, but I'm still going to go with Creighton because I think Creighton has a couple things that go to their advantage matchup wise, regardless of how good Oregon is versus their seed. You've got Ryan Cockburner in the middle, three time big East defensive player of the year.

So in Folly Dante, really good athletic, a skilled big, but is he good enough to just physically dominate against Ryan Kalkbrenner? Not many centers have over the course of his college career. So I think that they've got the interior presence on defense to shut that down. They've also got a couple of guys. Tyshawn Alexander can defend on the wing. Baylor Shireman can defend on the wing.

They can pass off Jermaine Quiznard. I mean, the chances that he goes for 40 again, very low regardless. But this Creighton team, I think, has some of the pieces to defend and to slow down that Oregon team that maybe South Carolina just didn't have in the same way. So Ryan in the chat says, can we all admit nobody actually believes Purdue wins the national championship? I think there's some people who do.

Let's pivot to today's games. Purdue plays Grambling State today, 725 on TBS from Indianapolis. They're not losing to a 16 again, right? Right? I've learned my lesson. Grambling looked good the other night, though. I'm not going to speak in absolutes here, but I would not assume so.

I think, look, fans are going to sweat it out. Fans are going to crack jokes. Look, Grambling might go up eight to four early on in the first couple minutes, and everyone's going to have something to say on social media. But, no, I think this Purdue team, as long as they're able to keep their composure and avoid those demons of last year sneaking in and changing how they view this matchup, I think they should be able to take care of business and move on to the next round here. Yeah, I think they're all right.

Again, we keep mentioning 11-6. New Mexico, Clemson is the one everybody's got their eyes on. Vegas has New Mexico as a two and a half point favorite. I just checked FanDuel. It's still two and a half. This is one that everybody said when the bracket came out as a misseeding. So unfortunately for the schools of the state of South Carolina, they just may have wound up running into the wrong 11 seeds. What other games do you have your eye on today? Well, of course, I've got my eye on everything here in the Memphis region.

I'll be there. Baylor taking on Colgate. I think that's an interesting one. Colgate always gives these teams a run in this first round of the NCAA tournament. Matt Langell, really good coach. What is he able to do there? And then, of course, we've also got Texas A&M going up against Nebraska. I think that one's just such a fun matchup. Kese Tominaga against that Texas A&M team that just wants to grind.

They want to play hard-nosed basketball. It's kind of a clash of styles in a lot of ways. So who's able to come out on top there is really, really interesting to me. And then just to look across the landscape, I'm now interested in that lower half of the bracket where Kentucky has been knocked out. Florida against Colorado. That one could be big because you're talking about potentially, if you get past that game, you've got to play Marquette. And so it'll be Marquette against either Florida or Colorado. The winner of that game will then be favored to go on to play in the Elite Eight, regardless of who that opponent that comes out, whether it's NC State or Oakland is. So this could be a really big matchup for Florida and Colorado in their hopes to kind of pave a path towards the final four. By the way, I'm not, I'm not dismissing the idea of NC state running through this. Oh,

for sure. To the elite eight. I mean, they are think about what they've been able to beat over the last week and a half. Like they've beaten teams that can win the national title. They've beaten Duke. They've beaten North Carolina. They looked very, very good against Texas Tech down the stretch. So I'm not dismissing that idea. As far as today goes, James, three 8-9 games. You mentioned Texas A&M and Nebraska, which I think is a really fun 8-9 game

and one that could get really interesting when they play the, we think they'll wind up playing Houston. We don't think Houston's going to stumble in the first round against Longwood, but these other eight, nine games, Florida Atlantic, Northwestern,

Utah state TCU, both really interesting. Yeah. I think a lot, a lot of these eight, nine matchups that were made were really intriguing. Yeah, I think a lot of these 8-9 matchups that were made were really intriguing. Now, I don't know whether the merits of which teams were seeded where and all that. We've talked about that with the committee, but they did a really good job of creating these games

that make you really scratch your head and go, who is going to win these games? And that's what we want in this 8-9 game every year. So FAU against Northwestern, you've got the FAU team, excuse me, that has that history from last year following them. Can they do it again? Can they make a deep NCAA tournament run? Can they get a matchup with UConn here in the next round where they would be able to kind of see what would have happened if they had made it to the national championship last year, the storyline that follows them there. But you've got to get through a Northwestern team that has proven they can beat the big, the big teams. And so either way, we're going to get an interesting matchup for UConn in that next round.

So FAU, they've, they've taken losses to bad teams throughout the year. That's why they're at this point, Northwestern took maybe some more losses than they would have liked to take throughout the year. That's why they're here, but it's a really good matchup. And then you talk about Utah State underseeded just about no matter who you ask, they were underseeded. And now they come in, they have to play a TCU team. There's no slouch either. They went through the Big 12 schedule and had some success. So a lot of interesting matchups. And then, of course, we've talked about Nebraska and Texas A&M. You got your more classic 5-12 game in Wisconsin, James Madison.

So Wisconsin, the kind of up and down power conference team, they had a deep run in the Big 10 tournament, which is why they're seeded this high. James Madison's just simply one of the best teams in the country this year, had a 31-3 record, beat Michigan State in the non-conference. And you think, okay, if they play as consistently as they have all season, they can pull the upset here. Yeah, James Madison is fully capable of

pulling off this upset. I'm going with Wisconsin in this game, just because I think that they're riding a little bit of a hot street here. They played really well in that big 10 tournament. Chucky Hepburn had a really nice string of performances. And I think that they're just a little bit more complete when they are on. Now, could it flip the other way? Because we saw it flip the other way for this Wisconsin team at times during the season where they would go through a run of games where they just didn't have it. Whatever it was, they were not there at that same level that they had been. But James Madison has every chance to pull off this upset.

Mark Byington, what he's been able to do this season has been incredible. They're one of those teams that comes in only three losses on the year. But I think where I'm a little bit hesitant is what we watched happen to McNeese State yesterday. We watched that team that had all the regular season success, and they went up against a team with something to prove, some momentum behind them, and just better players. And I think that might be what they're walking into here, even though I think that this James Madison story would be a great one

to advance and move on to the Sunday slate. Meanwhile, in one of those just quirks of the NCAA tournament situations, I really hope they are serving smoked chicken with white sauce in Spokane because you have Alabama, Auburn, and UAB all there not playing one another. They're all playing different teams, but the state of Alabama has invaded Eastern Washington. Yeah, and that's going to be an interesting one to watch. I know I've seen quite a few people who made that trip just because you can see everybody at once. You can go do the full tour of Alabama basketball teams and check it all out. Take a nice trip up to Spokane, not somewhere that people from Alabama probably travel to very often.

Go see the birthplaces of Ryan Sandberg and John Stockton. Come on. Yeah, I mean, great, great place to visit, I'm sure. And so Alabama taking on Charleston. We've talked about that one in our preview. I like Alabama to get through that one. They play similar styles. They both want to get up and down and score. So you give the advantage to the team with more talent, usually in that situation. But if Alabama goes cold from three, we're having a different conversation. Auburn taking on Yale, I mean, I just think that this Auburn team is a little bit too complete to get upset in that manner against that Yale team. And then UAB taking on San Diego State. San Diego State, who had great NCAA tournament success last year,

they're looking to repeat that. But UAB, not going to go down easy. Yaxel Landeborg, I mean, he is a talented basketball player. He does a little bit of everything. He gets on the boards. He'll play defense. He's on the offensive end. Very good.

So they're not going to go down easy in Spokane today either. And you know that UAB more than the other two. The other two, you're probably going to draw some easy in Spokane today either and you know that UAB more than the other two the other two you probably are going to draw some fans who are rooting for the other side UAB might just get some support from those local Alabama people to just want the local the you know the the local storyline to move on to the next round so maybe they get a little bit of a boost whereas the other two have some more people rooting against them during their games. And you get more Andy Kennedy NCAA tournament press conferences, which are almost always entertaining. I believe it was Andy.

It wasn't Bruce or Nate, but I think it was Andy yesterday who said, I don't know if the committee has a map. We might need to invest in a map for the committee. The irony of the committee saying that they tried to minimize travel, huh? They didn't put them on the same plane. Did they like, well, that would be awesome.

Like a seven 47 team. Ah, but, but Andy Kennedy never shy about expressing his opinion, uh, going back to, to his days as the head coach at Ole Miss. So this is, it'll be an interesting day.

It's going to be great. I felt like, James, that we got, and this is, you can't plan this, but it just kind of worked out nicely on Thursday where, you know, during the day, there's still a lot of people who have to work. The games kind of broke us in Duquesne and BYU was sort of the, the storyline throughout the, the early part of the day. And then wham, we just get hammered with this stuff at night. Yeah. And who knows what it's going to be today? Like there may be a buzzer beater, like Florida Atlantic Northwestern, which starts at noon Eastern may end in a buzzer beater like florida atlantic northwestern which starts at noon eastern may end in a buzzer

beater but if if prime time on friday equals what it did on thursday we're all gonna be up late again yeah and i always enjoy this friday slate because on thursday we're all worried about our bracket we're we're sweating out the these endgame results, and every time that our bracket takes a hit, we're like, oh, man, what am I going to do now? But by Friday, pretty much everyone's bracket is broken at least a little bit, and you can kind of soak in the games just a little bit more and appreciate. Even if it's not what's on your bracket, you look at it and you go, man, all right, well, I guess I'm just watching 12 hours of basketball now and that's still fun. So you can enjoy it in a little bit different way. Once we get to Friday night. Yeah. It's not too late to get the sniffles and call into work. Just saying not too late. James, enjoy the games today. Hopefully they're as good as they were yesterday. I have no doubt they will be.

And guys, day two of the best two-day stretch in the sports calendar. Let's all enjoy it. We'll talk to you on Monday.