The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - GOOD FOLLOW: Can South Carolina Beat UConn? Breaking Down the Final Four & More!

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

Today on Good Follow, Trysta Krick gets to the bottom of these Final Four matchups. Trysta shares her keys to the game between the UConn and South Carolina Final Four matchup. What will happen if South Carolina hits a scoring drought? Will the schedule impact UConn against South Carolina? What does it mean to have the same Final Four teams as last year? Then, Trysta sorts through the UCLA and Texas Final Four matchup. How can Madison Booker step up against Lauren Betts? How will the Bruins get Lauren Betts early? Also, shoutout to Fort Worth and the Horned Frogs! Lastly, Good Follow makes their DraftKings Pick of the week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Good Follow, presented by Draft Kings. I'm Trista Crick. We got a special guest. Ooh, it's me, producer, Jess. What's going on, Trista? What up, girl? We had to put juju in timeout. You filled in like a champ that you are.

It's March Madness. Things are getting mad here. And sad here, because the season's coming to a close. We're going to have to talk about this final four. Yeah, we're going to get right into it. The final four is set, and it's the battle. the one seeds yet again. Today, we're going to be picking up our coaching clipboards to break down what each team needs to do to be victorious in the weekend. So first up, Trista, what do you think

South Carolina needs to do to take down an undefeated Yukon? They just have to score every time down. That's pretty much what they need to do. Like, that's really the issue with Yukon is that you'll be in a game, you'll be competing with Yukon, and then you'll go through a three-minute scoring drought, which almost every team always does. The problem is, you're going to, you'll be in a game. You'll be competing with problem is Yukon doesn't do that. And so you're like, oh, this game's super competitive. It feels like Notre Dame is competing. It feels like North Carolina is competing. And you look up the score and it's a 17 point lead for Yukon. Definitely. And so that's that's really kind of the issue is that Yukon defensively is nasty, but offensively, they're very crisp. Sarah Strong doesn't miss a lot. AZ doesn't

miss a lot. And they've got a lot of depth. What do you think? I think the same. But do you You think that like even if they have a scoring drought just in the very, very beginning, you know, they're a little slow to get into the start of that game. You think that they can't come back? You think that'll be it? It depends on how early they have that drought and how much Yukon's able to capitalize on it. We saw what happened in the TCU game where South Carolina went down eight points to start the game.

They're down two at halftime. But the problem that's different is Olivia Miles went down with a calf cramp. You had Marta Suarez get a knee tweak. Olivia Miles was in foul trouble as well. And those were situations that I just don't see happening for Yukon because TCU was not nearly as deep. Right. Right.

So who is going to come in and take over for Olivia Miles when she's, and to be able to give you some of that same scoring punch, playmaking punch. Yukon has Kaylee Heckel. Yukon has Ashland Shade. Yukon has KK. Arnold. Blanca Cignones can play a little bit of point guard as well. depending on they're very deep so you you can't hope for yukon to stumble and you to dig out of a hole

when when you're as good as yukon is yeah so if you're as good as yukon is though what is yukon's key to the game to take down these gamecocks sleep they just need to get sleep and be themselves that's right like you saw what happened in the sweet 16 and elite eight they did look a little bit lethargic they still beat the hell out of everybody but a zy fud look tired. She looked like she wasn't really in the game for stretches. Sarah's strong in that elite eight game had 20 something points, 21 points I think she had. And she didn't even look like herself. She was missing layups for the first time I've ever really seen in her career. So they just need to get back to business and be the Yukon that went undefeated in the regular season and

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with ASE where it was like, oh, what's wrong with ASE? Yeah. And then all of a sudden, she came out in the final four and looked absolutely spectacular. Yeah. And I think that rest, I talked to a former Yukon player and they said, listen, the League 8 is the hardest game you'll play in the tournament. Everybody wants to go to the final four. You're exhausted. The turnaround time is crazy. You've already played all these games. There hasn't been rest. And you're dealing with these long days because you're starting at five, six in the morning for shoot around and media availability. And then you have to wait for everybody else to get their game done. And then after that game is when you can practice. Yeah. And we saw Gino call all that out too, which was great. He really took to the media and

told everyone he's like, these times are, they're not beneficial to these players. No, it's probably better for those who really are basketball junkies and want to go to one region and see eight teams and you get a sense of who all these teams are. But that's, you know, 100 people that are in the media that get to talk to everybody. That's 9,000 people maybe that are going to go to the game. And it's sad because there was four regions just four or five years ago. And it feels like maybe there's some momentum to get back to that again. Yeah. And what do you think about these final four being the same as they were last year. Identical.

The best four teams, right? At the end of the day, as much as we want to see upsets, what we don't want is a mollywap in the final four. That's true. And that's probably what would have happened if T.C. would have beaten South Carolina. Yukon would have given them hell. I mean, you're talking about a South Carolina team that's very competitive.

They've won titles before with this team, with Raven, and Medina coming over into transfer. Dawn, obviously, in her bag. This is a team that's been very well coached throughout time. They're very resilient and they're starting to find their swagger. Yeah, that's true. All right. We got to go to break.

But when we come back, we'll discuss the next Final Four game. Welcome back to Good Follow. Today's episode, as always, is presented by Draft Kings. We got to talk about the Draft Kings pick of the week presented, of course, by Chaboy, Draft Kings. We got to talk about this Yukon, South Carolina game in terms of giving our pick. Like I said, I don't think anyone's beating Yukon. The players, though, to watch for me, number one, Blanca Cignonez, who's the freshman, who can do a little bit of everything.

She was my most outstanding player vote when I was at Fort Worth. Sarah Strong won the award, but I thought Blanca was fantastic. She's starting to find herself as a freshman. And on the other side of the things, Joyce Edwards had her best game of the year against TCU, had 20-something points, had multiple, a double-digit rebounds, multiple blocks. So how is she going to look against this Yukon team? Can she be defensive monster? Who is she playing and defending?

Is it going to be Sarah Strong? Or is she going to be playing somebody who allows her on the other side of things to score the basketball? Fascinating matchup, lots of players to watch. But those are my top two. And of course, I've got, like I said, Yukon win in that game. This segment is presented by Draft Kings. Draft Kings. The crown is yours.

The crown is yours, Trista. All right. Let's take a second and break down this. matchup of Texas and UCLA a little bit more. It could really go either way. So what do we think Texas needs to do to beat down on UCLA? The thing that happened the last time out, and they basically they need to do this again. Now, Lauren Betts left the game in the third quarter, but you got to stop Lauren Betts. She's six foot seven when she's getting it rolling and getting you into foul trouble and they're able to kick out to shooters. That's the best version of UCLA. If you can keep

and bets under double digits, under 10, 12 points and play her physical and get her rattled like you saw Duke did in the first half of the elite eight. And you can have that sort of fingerprint. That's how you beat UCLA. And for Texas, that's something that they know well. They've got Kyla Oldacre, who's an absolute stud. She's been awesome. Their starting center as well has been elite and Electric, I like Kyla a lot more just based on her girth and her physicality and she's a fan favorite, but both are great. So this is just one of those matches that you need to focus on because when Lauren Betts is rolling, if she has like 25 and 15, that's a bad day for Texas.

That's dangerous. That's dangerous for sure. All right. So we know Lauren Betts has got to put up the points tonight if we're the Bruins. But for real, what is the Bruins key to taking down? the longhorns. Yeah, you got a key in on Madison Booker. Right. Madison Booker is their KD. Madison Booker against Michigan was walking wherever she wanted to go on the court and just pulling up. Yeah. Just making easy shots from the corner, making easy shots from the elbow. Literally nobody was

anywhere near her and I could not figure out what was going on. Madison is the key to everything that Texas wants to do. Make Rory Harmon put the ball in somebody else. else's hands. Make Jordan Lee shoot a bajillion threes. This is not a great three-point shooting team in Texas. If you can swarm Madison Booker and make somebody else beat you, then on the other hand, those chucks from Jordan Lee turn into easy transition buckets the other way. Kiki Rice gets going, Gabriella Hockes gets going. Gianna Neepkin starts shooting threes. You start finding your way down to Angela Dugaleach down low as well. She's doing the damn thing.

Ledger Walker. I mean, you start to anticipate how much depth. And that becomes the story. UCLA's experience, UCLA's depth should get them over the hump. But they need to limit Madison Booker and they need to limit those dead quarters that they had against Duke and that they had against Minnesota. You're putting Madison Booker and Lauren bats one-on-one who's winning. I think Lauren, just simply because she's going to back. or down over and over and over again.

Those tall people, they always like to use their size. Yeah, that's true. Six, seven, up, up, up. I think Madison Booker, it depends on whether it's winner's ball or losers' ball. If it's losers' ball, I think Madison Booker can get that very easily. But if it's winner's ball, you're just going to get Lauren Betts pulling the baraka, leg sweep, uppercut, leg sweep, uppercut, and getting that dub. Also, let's plug the city of Fort Worth.

Okay. And Texas Christian University, they showed out. They showed us a good time. We became horn frogs for the day for the Sweet 16 and the elite eight, which was in Sacramento. But we were there in Fort Worth. We went to Rex's dive bar, hung out in the hangar, learned this. This is the sound. Well, this is the hand signal of the horn frog.

This right here is red. Why is it red just? Because they put blood out of their eye. balls these horn frogs. Violence. I've added this. I know. That's what their defense mechanism is.

That is something that I have learned, but I've added the to this. Yeah. So we now have the, I've gotten the horn frogs into it. Okay. Shout out to Olivia Miles. She'll probably go top three in the draft. We got to see her ball out.

And TCU, as she said, is a very special place. Shout out to Joe T. Garcia's. probably the best Mexican restaurant in the Fort Worth area. 1600 seats line around the block three hour wait, not for your girl because I had the plug again. 1600 seats line around the block for a Mexican restaurant in Fort Worth. You heard it here. All cash. Cash only. Wow.

All right. That's going to do it for our episode of Goodfollow this week. Make sure to subscribe to Goodfollow's YouTube page and all the socials at Goodfollow show. You can catch new episodes of GoodFollow every Thursday on YouTube. course and wherever you get your podcast. Good follow is brought to you, of course. As always, by Draft Kings. We'll see you next week.