The Herd with Colin Cowherd - Colin Cowherd Podcast - INSTANT REACTION: UConn Wins National Championship, Best Candidates To Replace John Calipari

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

Colin reacts to UConn winning the national championship! He explains why UConn’s program, coaching and culture have separated them from the rest of the sport and why they are “inevitable” (3:00) He points to a night full of great looks and smart adjustments as to why they are so difficult to beat (6:00) He also names the two coaches he would most like to see take over the head coaching job at Kentucky to replace John Calipari, but also gives reasons why those coaches SHOULDN’T take the job (14:00). (Timestamps may vary based on advertisements.) Follow Colin and The Volume on Twitter for the latest content and updates! #Volume #Herd See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter.

Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque.

Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host, Kear Games.

This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor? It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to. Listen and learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. The volume. Making it look easy brought to you by Morgan and Morgan America's largest injury law firm. Tonight, Yukon made it look easy.

Yukon always makes it look easy. Second straight national championship, six and 25 years. Morgan and Morgan similarly makes it look so easy. Just submit a claim. They have over 100 offices nationwide, more than 800 lawyers, to get you a reasonable and fair settlement. $15 billion recovered with over 300,000 clients. Those are real numbers.

They've been fighting for the people for over 35 years. If you're injured, go to for the people.com slash colon or pound 529. check out America's largest injury law firm. That's Morgan and Morgan. Winning the NCAA tournament is hard. Working with Morgan and Morgan is easy. I had said I watched Yukon three times in the regular season. I said they're not only the best team I saw in college basketball. They are easily the best team I saw in college basketball. Listen, there's just not many teams in the last 20 years that look like this. In the last 25 years, Yukon has won six titles. They are, are now inevitable. The last team in college basketball that I remember feeling this way about,

and I think Yukon is better than this team, was that what, 2018, 2019 Villanova team, where you had Jalen Brunson, Eric Pascal, McAil Bridges. I don't think they had this team's size or this team's depth, but you had Jay Wright, three NBA players. They were really, really good, and it was Villanova. So like Yukon, they're tough, East Coast, physical. I like the refs letting them play. I mean, the first thing that jumped out to me in this game, and Jay Wright, who's an excellent broadcaster, pointed it out, is that with Klingin, they weren't double teaming Zach Edy. So Zach Edy was making tough shots, but they weren't allowing, and this is good coaching by Dan Hurley. They just didn't give Purdue any three-point looks. So their guards weren't doing anything. UConn's guards were getting theirs, lots of open looks. In fact, the only thing Yukon did not do well tonight was hit its open threes. They were okay. They hit some, not all of them. Other than that, Yukon does not lose when they lead at half. It was 3630 and they were 47 and 0. And like the Golden State Warriors, well-coached teams come out in that first five or six minutes of the second half.

And you can tell they've made changes, alterations. And Yukon came out. And I felt at halftime, I thought Purdue's going to go on one of these 80, 10-0 runs, which is virtually impossible against Yukon because they're so good defensively, A, and B, they get so many second chance offensive rebound points, even when they miss shots, and they get good looks. Yukon does not get bad looks. They're ball screening, their movement.

They come down and get great looks almost every time down the floor. And if they miss, they get second chance opportunities. So it's hard to go in a run with Yukon. And that's what Yukon does. Yukon's defense makes your even makes tough. Zach Eney made a lot of shots in the first half. But if you go back and look at the last four or five minutes of the first half, Zach Edy looked a little gassed.

He looked tired. He was having to work for his shots, and they weren't double teaming. But they're so physical. And I said this on FS1 today. I said, Zach Eadie's the big, but Klingin's a seven-footer, and everywhere else on the floor, Yukon has a size advantage. So it just kind of felt inevitable. And Yukon games all look the same.

It's like they're a heavyweight fighter. First couple of rounds, they feel you out. but I think over time it's really difficult to match their size, their depth, and their physicality. And Dan Hurley has said it. They just wear your ass out. UConn just wears you out. And at one point, their guards had a 29 to 12 advantage. So, you know, I think what you're looking at is the best college basketball program, men's or women's right now in the last 25 years. For a while, it was Yukon women, now it's South Carolina women. But for the last last 25 years, at least in the men's game, UConn has pulled away from Michigan State, Kansas, Duke,

Carolina, Villanova, and I don't see him slowing down with Hurley's got another 10 years minimum to coach. I think it's funny. He's intense, but unlike a John Calipari, and I'll get to that in about five minutes. He's got some self-awareness. He's got a sense of humor. You know, he can be a salesman, I'm sure, on the recruiting trail, but they just coach. Yukon's really well coach. I really feel They remind me of Villanova with Jay Wright. The difference is I think Yukon recruits at a higher level. Jay Wright made a living out of three-star guys playing and developing into NBA players. You know, Yukon will go out and get four-and-five-star guys.

What you're looking, they didn't, I didn't think Yukon shot the ball particularly well. They missed a lot of open threes. But there's, I mean, everything about Yukon, they're coaching, their size, their movement, their tenacity, their offensive rebounding. situationally. The other thing is, and I always feel this about teams, the great teams like make it look pretty effortless. Michael Jordan made it look like, you know, he's six, six. He's not the biggest guy on the floor, the best peer shooter. Why does he always get great looks? Yukon gets really good looks. They're guards, highly experienced, beat you off the dribble, break you down. Then they have like math advantages, going to the basket. They can lob to bigs

to finish. They go to the corner. They just come down and three out of four times, they get great looks. And again, when they miss, they get second chance opportunities. There's just nothing else like it. And the other thing is that the culture, when Dan Hurley was on my show, it was a couple of Mondays ago, he said something that was really poignant. He said, Yukon attracts serious people. And that was the New England Patriots dynasty.

Maybe it's the cold weather. You know, I don't know what it is in the Northeast, but not a lot of BS. Like Yukon stores Connecticut, you're going there for basketball. You're going there to be coached. You know, a lot of these programs out there, you know, like Kentucky basketball was a lot of sizzle and not a lot of steak under Calipari. You know what I mean? It was a lot of look at what our guys make in the NBA and look at the recruiting.

But in the end, it was just accumulating rankings. It wasn't about building great teams the last five or six years. Yukon is the opposite of Kentucky. It's not about the coach and the suits and the salary. It's self-awareness. It's building teams. It's tenacity. It's accountability.

I like everything about Yukon basketball. It's old school. And you don't have a ton of size in college basketball. So, Zach Edie is a handful. I mean, you know, the NBA, everybody's big. Lucas, six, seven. Guards are big or thick. You know, three's.

LeBron's six, eight and a half. He's a three. Everybody's got size and you don't in college basketball. So Zach Eadie just ran through this tournament. And Purdue was excellent. I think you ran into a buzzsaw. It was funny. A lot of people like Purdue and the points tonight,

and I thought about it with my guys at the volume in Draft Kings. I thought about it for about an hour this morning. I was going back and forth. And I'm like, what am I doing here? What's going to happen is Zach Eadie's going to get his 20-something points. but in the end, you're going to get so many offensive rebounds from Yukon. They're going to control the glass outside of Edie. I mean, if you really think about this game, Purdue did what they wanted to do.

They got both of Yukon's bigs into foul trouble, and Yukon couldn't hit open threes. I mean, it kind of went their way, and they still looked like they were absolutely outclassed. After Newton hit that three at the start of the second half, and it was 39.30, I just didn't feel at that point it was over. They weren't getting, Purdue wasn't getting enough good open. looks on threes. You can tell this in sporting events. It doesn't matter what sport it is, but you notice a lot in football where a team's getting first downs, albeit barely, they're just getting over the chain, they're barely moving the sticks, they're having to work for every first down. And over the course of time, you've got to get some easy stuff.

Yukon gets good looks, a lot of open looks, and they didn't hit all of them, and they still one going away. Way to go, Yukon. You know, I've said this before. There's so much movement in college basketball between the portal and transferring and guys leaving early for leagues. I really like what Yukon stands for. I was there for 10, 11 years, went to games. Everybody I knew was a Yukon fan. My daughter had a coach when she was playing basketball for a few years. And even the way they coached, you know, my daughter's like, you know, the sixth grade basketball, seven grade basketball.

Even the way that team coached, hard practices, all-out effort, physicality. I used to love going to my daughter's practices because just how hard they practice and how precise and detailed they were. And it's just, it's an accountability. They're principled. And I like in a world of transferring and getting mine, Yukon stands for all this stuff that I think is really important. There's a value set of standards for Hurley, his dad, his brother, and him. Just an incredibly, to me, an incredibly likable program. They play hard, they play clean.

And I give the officials, I'm going to give them some tip of the cap. We see this a lot in championship games or championship fights. Officials back off and let you play. That game was really, really physical in the first half, and the referees let him play. Now, eventually, EDI creates so much contact. You know, he gets a friendly whistle from time to time, but he creates so much contact that they're inevitably, invariably, they're foul. And, you know, UConns bigs got into foul trouble. But it could have been, they could have been in foul trouble much sooner.

But the refs let them play. You know, let the bigs play. Let them battle on the glass. Effort wins. Depth wins. Length wins. And that's where Yukon's at. I also want to, congratulations to the Huskies and Purdue.

Good to see a Big Ten team. I think it's going to get a monster number. Even though it wasn't a close game, you know, the Northeast is watching. I hate that it's a 920 Eastern tip-off. for college sports especially. You know, for years and years, Monday night football started really late. I never loved that.

But when I lived out east, one of the things I pined for was moving back west so I could watch games at a reasonable hour. So I don't mind doing this right now as I look at mine. So it's 8.43 where I'm at. But, you know, it's almost midnight

on the East Coast. People have to work tomorrow. Don't love that. The NBA season is in full swing, coming down the stretch. Then we move right. into the playoffs in April, May, and June, I can't wait. Spice things up with Draft King Sportsbook an official sports betting partner of the NBA right now. All you have to do is put down five bucks

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Let's shift gears. John Calapari has bailed on Kentucky. and he is taking the job at Arkansas. I want to concentrate on who Kentucky should hire. I would call two coaches, Jay Wright, and he won't take it. Billy Donovan of the Chicago Bulls, I don't think he'll take it, although I think Billy Donovan is a good recruiter. He's a sensational in-game coach, much better than Calipari.

Every college coach needs some sort of salesmanship, and Donovan, you know, good looking confident guy has it. But, I mean, he's coaching the Chicago Bulls. And they got a couple of first-round picks, I think, this year. It's not a very deep draft. Some good international players at the top. That's about it. But he makes $6 to $6.5 million in the NBA.

I would take that over $8.5 million over college basketball. Better travel, better hotels, better players, better coaching, more big league stuff. It's nothing against the SEC, but I don't want to be hanging out in Starksville. I don't want to be hanging out in Auburn. if I can hang out, you know, New York, Boston, bigger cities, live in Chicago. To me, it's a better life. It's better coaching. I don't have to deal with deans, the NCAA, school presidents, the AD, clingy, needy boosters, NIL transfer portal. I don't think college basketball, I think you can do it right or better, but I don't think it's as much fun.

That's why Jay Wright's got 10 years left and went to television. Jay Wright, to me, he'll be good at anything he does because of his commitment and his attention to detail. But Jay Wright would probably rather be coaching in college. But I don't think it's designed for quality of life. And the NBA is. You can have a life coaching in the NBA. And Chicago is not in the near future going to be a title threat. They've got a bunch of guys, good guys, not great guys. But I would hire Billy Donovan in a second. And I think he would win more than Calipari would. But I just don't think it's as good a job. I mean, I know that it sounds out of touch with college sports, but you ask people that have coached in the NBA, you ask people that have coached in college. You know, in college, it's a coach's sports.

You have a lot of power, but you got to deal with a lot of nonsense, stuff you didn't have to deal with even five years ago. NBA, it's about basketball. I mean, most NBA coaches I know have a good relationship with a front office. Sometimes you get a zany owner. Most of the time you don't. You know, it's not like the NFL that's so high profile. that owners, you know, all your friends love the NFL. Sometimes NFL owners, you know, they want to impose their power on a franchise.

There's occasionally a bad NBA owner. But, you know, the general managers, the executives in the league I talk to, they have space, they have some control, they don't feel they have a helicopter parent over them. And I think Billy Donovan in Chicago is respected, is liked. He's a great coach. I could never figure this out years ago when I would hear, and I would hear sort of random stuff about Billy Donovan and OKC because he couldn't make, you know, KD and Westbrook and Hardin. Well, we now know Hardin's a flake. Westbrook is talented, but never could really

shoot like you'd like a guard to shoot, sometimes tough to play with. And KD's a different cat. So, you know, it was for years and years, where are all the championships? Well, now you look 10 years later and it's like that's why it didn't get championships. You had LeBron and the heat, mini dynasty, you have the Warriors dynasty. That's why it didn't win championships. So as far as Calapari, I think he, a little bit of a victim of his early success, but he makes the mistake that a lot of people do in that is he is not able to shift to a second gear. You're not going to win championships. You're not going to beat Purdue.

You're not going to beat Yukon when you got a bunch of freshmen. It's not going to do it. I mean, Yukon's guards, how many games do those guys have combined? Mick Cronin, UCLA basketball coach on my show today. I forget the number. It was insane. It's like the two guards between the two of them had, you know, 300 games or something like that of experience. You're not beating that with a bunch of freshmen.

So Yukon does it right. I think other programs do it right. Carolina's got older teams. And I think they do a good job, you know, at Carolina, realizing you can get the occasional four and five star guy. But Villanova, Carolina, if you really want to win at this level, the sport has changed. One and done had its moment. It's over. Defense used to run the NFL.

It's over. All right. Instant reaction. UConn rules six titles in 25 years, they have officially pulled away from even the top programs in men's college basketball. The volume. Thanks so much for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, take a moment, rate and review. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite.

Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer. or street or sidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all. embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds.

I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having him with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing.

How many men carry a suit or armor. It signals to the world that you not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to, listen to learn the hard way on the IHard radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHart podcast. Guaranteed human.