The Triple Option - UConn Beats the Buzzer, Head Coach Dan Hurley and Analyst Jay Bilas Join, Plus Hoosiers Spring Ball

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

The Madness continues and we have not one but two of the top minds in all of college basketball stopping by. Coach Urban Meyer, Mark Ingram II, and Rob Stone are joined by two-time National Champion and head coach of the UConn Huskies, Dan Hurley. He takes us inside Braylon Mullins' historic game winner over the Duke Blue Devils, their approach to the Final Four, his interaction with a zebra, and...what happened to his pants? We then head to Bloomington to check in on the College Football Playoff National Champion Indiana Hoosiers, who are starting their title defense in Spring ball. Nick Marsh is one of the high profile transfers they added to their roster and his shoe selection didn't make Coach Cignetti all too happy. We finish with some more NCAA Tournament talk with Jay Bilas, breaking down Michigan, Illinois, UConn, and Arizona, the future of the sport, as well as some good Bill Raftery stories. #Onions  01:15 Dan Hurley, UConn Head Coach 29:25 Indiana Hoosiers Spring Update 36:55 Jay Bilas, ESPN New episodes of The Triple Option drop every Wednesday. Make sure you’re subscribed on YouTube and following on all podcast platforms. Also make sure you’re locked in on social @3XOptionShow on all platforms for highlight moments, bonus content, and to engage with the guys and the TO community. (⁠⁠https://tripleoptionshow.com⁠⁠)   The Triple Option is presented by Wendy’s. Get yourself a $4 Biggie® Bites, $6 Biggie Bag®, or a $8 Biggie® Bundle. Now at Wendy’s. ⁠⁠https://m-wendys.app.link/468biggiedeals⁠⁠   #CollegeFootball #CollegeFootballPlayoff #CFP #NCAA #MarchMadness #NCAATournament #ConnecticutHuskies #UConn #DanHurley #IndianaHoosiers #Cignetti #Hurley #WillWade #LSUTigers #DukeBlueDevils Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You can ask me about why I was wearing a towel? What the hell is going on with the towel, coach? Got let the thing breathe sometimes, not a coach. Oh, geez. I got my lucky underwear, which I knew I had to wear into the press room. So I wanted to preserve the pants and my underwear. I didn't want them soaking wet. Then I was sitting on the seat.

My ass is wet. I didn't want to do that. We're getting a lot of information here. Nighting. The Triple Option is presented by Wendy's. Get yourself a $4 biggie bite. biggie bag or an $8 biggie bundle now at Wendy's. Welcome to the triple option.

Urban Meyer, Mark Ingram the second. Rob Stone here with you. Spring ball is underway and Coach Signetti is not a fan of certain footwear in Bloomington. We're going to talk college basketball as well with one of the great minds, one of the great voices and all of it, Jay Billis. And two-time NCAA champion head coach, Dan Hurley from Yukon, is going to join us in just a moment. As always, we love it when you can chime in with your thoughts, your request, your likes, your shares, all that goes with it.

But, man, let's get right to ball and let's go to beautiful Glastonbury, Connecticut. We bring in the head coach of the University of Connecticut Huskies, Dan Hurley, kind enough to join us right now. Man, there are so many things we want to get to with you, Coach. So I'm so curious about what your phone looked like after that win. Yesterday we're recording this Monday night. So there's the video of your mom. her mouthing certain words when the bucket went in, right?

We got the dude who blew out his Achilles jumping up, cheering for you guys. Take me some of the shares that have come your way the last couple hours. Yeah, so I guess I'll start with my mom. You know, that probably explains a lot of things about me, you know? Behaviors and language, you know, impulsiveness at times. You know, I would just say, you know, probably not another game like that. You know, it's just even the two championship teams. I mean, we played so great in the tournament.

We didn't play any close games. You know, we just kind of dominated. And so in the run of success, we've had the last, you know, three, four years, we haven't really had a game like that where, you know, we had to kind of fight back and then make a defensive play and an offensive play to win a game. and beat a program like Duke in an Elite 8 game. You know, like that's a big spot. That's a big game.

You're in B.C., Yukon, Duke, and that was as good to win. So the phone is odd and bad with the phone to begin with. I hate it. I get, I lead voice memos mostly, and I try to talk to people. So the phone, it's not that busy. I sent a text to coach before the game, and I said, swing effing hard. And he made it clear that the team was going to swing hard.

So take us, they make the shot, they go up by two, the free throw, and I think you were probably going to try to foul to get hands-on people. And then I know as a coach, you just try to practice every possible scenario, but at some point you've got to make plays. Take us through the final, you know, final five, six seconds there. Or actually final 10 seconds, what happened? And how you coached that? Yeah, so, I mean, we ended.

up even using too much time on the offensive possession. Like it took us, you know, we executed badly versus they changed their defense to last possession, you know, when we had the ball. So we ended up using 20 seconds of that shot clock down three before Demery got fouled and then he made one of two. But that was like a, we handled that offensive possession badly, but at least Demery drove it, got to the foul line, and, you know, made one of two, you know, for us there, they had two free-door shooters on the court that it would have made sense to foul that, you know, Saar and Big Pat, and they were both on the court. You know, so we wanted to try to rotate up as aggressively as possible, and if we had a chance, you know, to foul Saar or foul Big Pat when they

got the ball, it's foul them. Otherwise, the other guys, let's like try to get a trap or two because the best way you're going to win right there is a deflection. You know, you've got to hope that they just start spraying the ball around and you get your hand on it. You know, because it was going to be pretty tough. You know, you let that ball enter there and maybe it gets down to seven seconds and Boozer keeps it. And now he's at the foul line.

You know, you're in big trouble. So you've got to create a turnover. And, yeah, we actually, we weren't. So when Saw threw it in, we actually wanted to foul him on the pass back to him, but we made a mistake like we were hugging and we didn't get there in time to foul him. And then he threw the ball to the other boozer and he panicked a little bit. We made a play on the ball. Do you finish like in football we finished during training camp?

I think most teams probably do it. You just finish different scenarios. Is that a big thing in college basketball before you go out? to court you try to hit a situation with the group and yeah i mean a lot of us it's probably more um not as much pressure like that you know more like execution to get a two execution to get a three point shot you know i don't think a lot of us probably practice against pressure as much because there's so few teams that actually press today because there's so much so much more skill on the court so um but yeah i mean in terms of who you want to foul and, you know, like where you want to keep the ball out of or certain

players' hands. And you definitely do it all like winning time for us. It's like 12 minutes of every shoot-around day of the game. Situational plays, offense defense. Before I turned over to Mark, one last thing is I've been following a Hurley family for a long time. Your mom is my favorite Hurley by far, dude. That's it. She's made it. She's the, she's it. How? When you look at Bob and me and my dad or how she's done it. Group cavemen, man, just like three, just total cavemen. Alpha female. Alpha female.

No, but coach, man, I want to talk about your boy, Brayland Mullins, for a second, man. He himself said that he was rattled against UCLA in round two. Even in the game versus Duke, I mean, he was 0 for four from behind the arc. Your sharps shirt, he 0 for 4, but he hits the one, you know, when it counts, hits the one when y'all need it to the most. as a great coach like yourself, been a coach of year, been a two-time national championship head coach, how did you keep the confidence of Braylin Mullins going where he's able to capitalize when the moment mattered the most? Foof, man, I'm telling you, he comes from great stock, you know, just being an Indiana boy on Midwest values or whatever.

But he's got blue-collar parents, he's a blue-collar high school coach that wasn't afraid to coach him in high school. his dad coached him in high school. So he had multiple men that were, you know, set a pretty high standard for him every single day. So he came into the program just with a lot of good habits, a lot of maturity, a lot of humility. You know, he's not a social media guy. So like he's not reacting to, you know,

all that external, nor is he in this for likes and followers. You know, the guy's just like an Indiana ball player. You know, it was just like shoot hoops and hang out with his girlfriend, you know, like simple, simple guy. So he's easy to coach and he's got incredible talent, you know, like we ask him to do, like to be a winning player. You know, like we didn't develop the offense around him and just let him, you know, like rip shots and play for drafts for a draft spot. Like this guy has been a two-way player to a whole year, like good defense. player, you know, he's shooting slump late in a year, but, you know, he was at one point in a year shooting over 40 from three, you know, and the guy, you know, defends and rebounds, and he don't say

boo. So this time of year, you're just trying to, you know, convince these guys brainwash them that they're about to go on a run, you know, it's all, you know, we practice hard as, as as hard as anyone could possibly practice, you know, like our preparation and the practice standards prepares these guys well for the game. So, you know, a guy like that, you're just, you're telling him he's about to go on a big run in March and that you're the best shooter I've ever coached. Hey, what was the halftime messaging and tone? You know, you guys, I think it was one of 11 from three and down double digits. And I'm curious how you handle that, how the players, were handling themselves

as they were walking in there in D.C. How did I handle it in front of the players? I thought I handled it well. When I got around the assistants, I probably didn't handle it that good. All right, then, but what was the messaging to Murray and the rest of the assistants?

I mean, like, if, you know, we got to get some guys playing well and, you know, and we're not guarding, you know, like, we're playing, we're guarding them with, like, a little bit too much reverence and respect. I mean, I know it's Duke. I know, I know these guys are NBA players and elite level, but, you know,

Yukon gets after people, you know, so I thought we just did more things defensively, just getting in there as a staff. Like, you know, let's be more aggressive, you know, defensively. And we were able to create a lot of, a lot of good turnovers. And that led to some easy baskets. I think we were at one point, you know, we were one for 17 from three and we're down seven. So like, you know, you're

And that's because we were plus eight The turnover margin We have 13 offensive rebounds And then usually we're one of the worst teams in the country At free throw line disparity You know, second half we won the free throw line So, you know, once we finally started making some shots You know, we were able to walk them down

They look tired You know, I think St. John's, you know, like the seating helped us St. John's, that game was a war Not that we didn't have a war with Michigan State, but, you know, St. Johns is a unique team to play against playing two days later after deal with those guys. That's a bear. So it felt like down the stretch, they look tired. I mean, Boozer's eye was all mangled. They looked tired. So I would say at halftime calm, but, you know, if we don't wake up, you know, these dudes are going to smoke us and this is over. So when you say that's really intriguing to me, when you say it was a war, you know, when you In the college football, you face a line of scrimmage team, your team just gets beat to hell. When you say that in basketball, what do you mean? Like St. John, what are they, just a physical? Yeah, all the battle points, like all those battle points, like screenings, you know, like screening.

Is that coaching in college? Is that like a style of play in basketball? Or is it just a person? Yeah, no, it is. It's a style. I think it's what, you know, certain coaches are known for the way that their teams play, like Coach Izzo. coach patino like when you when you play those teams yeah i mean they run good things on

offense but you're not going into it saying all these guys are super clever and tricky you know they're going to they're going to pressure you they're going to blow up screens you know they're going to move you on screens uh you know if you're if you're the team setting it and they're trying to get through it they're moving the screen your shoulder like they're not getting moved ever you know, at the point of blockouts, post-ups, like finishing at the rim, you know, like when you play, you know, those teams that play with that level of physicality, relentlessness.

But it's, yeah, so I think we're in a heck of a region, man. That was like four teams that were like final four were the all playing in a suite 16 and elite eight. Coach, man, I'm not trying to rain on nobody parade on the show, man. But at all three of us, I'm the only one. Oh, stop. You con in the final foe. I'm just going to tell you the truth.

I'm the only one to have you con in the final four, man. So big love to my boy. You know what I mean? He's real, recognized real. You know what I mean? But, no. Man, just a great coach, man. Two-time national champions.

What did you learn on your last two previous title runs that you have applied to your approach this season? Fush. That's a good question. No, I haven't been asked that. See? What do I know? I mean, I would say, yeah, I would say for me, just there's a certain level of confidence

that you have going into final four week where you know what the week's going to look like. You know, you know the media responsibilities, the amount of attention that gets kind of taken away. It's really easy for your team at the final four to get. separated because there's so much media and there's so much family around and there's all these interlopers that are now coming into into your tribe and it's like you know so you're just trying to keep all these people out and um you know keep the team as as focused and together as much as possible because they the weak tries to separate you uh and for me you know it just helps knowing that you know we've won this tournament twice i mean like getting to the final four is

great but winning and after that's you got to win four games as hard as hell but to win a natty you got to win six yeah like it's hard to win six uh to win six in a row uh versus the best teams in the country but at yukon we know we could do it because we've got it final four week when you head to indy we go out wednesday and um i think they moved up uh i think maybe my ops guy is lying to me because i always try to get the last flight out i like to get one as much time in my house is possible for it, the road. But last year, or the last time we were in this, we got to Phoenix at like 3.30 in the morning because I waited to the last second and we had mechanical problems.

And then I told the players that the NCAA was against us. And I used that. You'll. Any fuel you can, any way to fuel that team, Coach. And you've, you've had experience now. So is it about getting them fresh or is it that fine line between let's get ready? And then do you have someone else working on the other, two teams like you're some younger coaches getting ready for in case you win the Saturday.

So yeah, so it definitely with the practices now, coach, I learned this, you know, the diminishing returns of over-practicing. And I did that when I was younger and dumber than I am now. So I think you find that sweet spot having coached in the tournament of exactly, you know, what we want to do practice-wise. and 24, what we liked. And then this actually, these matchups benefit us in a sense that we played Illinois earlier in the year. Obviously, it was a long time ago, but we got a pretty good familiarity.

We shared the court with them. And then we played Arizona earlier in the year. You know, we played them at home in a war that we came up a little short in. But, you know, we didn't have, you know, we didn't have Reader Mullins in that game. So two of the teams we've played. So we got a head start on that. And then obviously Michigan's a month. stuff. And I've watched them throughout the year just because I love boots. And I mean, they're a problem, too.

Coach, coming off the high of the moment, right, a moment that we're going to be talking about for generations in March Madness Law. And then you travel home and you have your first practice today on Monday. What did you put into how you wanted to message that practice and how quickly you wanted to move on or keep leaning into that magical moment you had? Yeah, so we let the boys, you know, enjoy it today. You know, we played the max amount of games. You know, we got to the conference championship. That didn't go the way we wanted.

But, you know, we maxed out the games. We did play all the way through our conference tournament. These guys are four games into this one. So, you know, today we let them enjoy it, you know, get some rest. I know the massage therapists were busy and they were doing all the recovery. and we just talked about the week, but just, you know, we got in around 3 a.m. I feel like the boys needed a mental break.

Just a quick meeting to talk about the travel in the week. And then, you know, we'll start with film in the morning tomorrow on Illinois. And start to practice the week off probably a little bit lighter, live rep-wise. You know, Thursday will go probably pretty hard with some live reps. and then, you know, Fridays, like, you know, you just get the engine, you're just warming up the engine. Coach, man. Go ahead, Mark.

No, go ahead, Stone. I want to go back to the postgame locker room again. I remember a couple years ago, Biggie's. What's that? You can ask me about why I was wearing a towel? So I remember the Biggie's tournament a couple years ago. Ed Cooley had a towel wrapped around him because he split his pants. And then I see this towel on you.

and I'm like, what, like, I'm saying at the same time, what in the hell is happening? And also, this makes complete sense. So what, yeah, what the hell is going on with the towel, coach? I'm just, uh, I'm quirky. Got let the thing breathe sometimes, huh, coach? Oh, geez. So, um, yeah, man, you know what? I'm like quirky, man.

I got, you know, I got some of the things with like, just wearing the same thing, you know, when you're wearing a sport coat, right? all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, so I got the suit, I got that whole thing. So the suit, the dress shirt, belt, shoes, socks, and my drawers, my underwear, you know, with the dragons on them, they're 18 and 1 in NCAA tournament games, right? So my only loss was the Florida lost last year, which, you know, we played pretty well. And so I just, so there were a couple things. You know, you're going to get soap. I didn't want, I wanted to preserve the suit because it's starting to fall apart. You know, I got this suit back where I was coaching at Rhode Island.

Providence and a tailor and the suit is falling apart, it's turning the total, you know, I don't want to curse, I can trouble for that too. So, and the shoes, the shoes are old. They're really, really old. So that stuff is fragile that I'm wearing. So I don't want to get wet. Plus then I got my lucky underwear, which I knew I had to wear into the press room. So I wanted to preserve the pants and my underwear. I didn't want them soaking wet. Then I go sit on the seat. My ass is wet. I didn't want to. want to do that. So I just said, let me just go do this. But then the underwear, they were wet from the game anyway because you're sweating. Right. We're getting a lot of information here.

You have no idea how much you sweat, how much of basketball coach sweats during a game. After a game, people come up to you pat you on the back. It's like, oh, man, should have did that. So are the clothes in good shape? Are they in good hands? Is they going to be? they're going to make it to Indy, right? Yeah, yeah, there's a good dry cleaner in Glastonbury. He's got to turn it around, though, you know, quicker than the last time. My last question, coach, is, you know, you're an intense cat. And have you had to alter your, you know, this, you keep hearing about the new wave of, you know, guys can leave and quit and move on and transfer?

Have you had to adjust your style of coaching? You know, it's funny. It's not with the, you know, coach, it's not with the players. the team or the staff, it's more of the public. You know, it's more how the public reacts to whatever they see for me in a moment, whatever context they have for it. So, yeah, I mean, but not the players. I mean, you know, we still get guys here that want me to coach, come to Yukon,

because they're going to get coached hard, they're going to get pushed to the max. They're going to be in a locker room with other like-minded. men that want to win and become NBA players or whatever the best they could be. We get good families that, you know, for the most part, do not helicoptering around and, you know, kind of not letting us do our job.

So, no, I mean, for me, it's more of how the public reacts. Like, you know, like they're, to, I don't know, the fight, the desperation, how hard I coach. I don't know. When I was growing up,

it was just coaches coached hard. You know, like, and it just, in basketball, I guess there's not as many coaches that coached the game is hard to win the game. You know, they're more seated.

May, coach, man, I just want to talk to you, man, because you got juice, man. If I was hooping, I'd like to come play for you because any coach that's going to run up and head, butt the ref, and just get in his face like that,

like, hey, Tell me what happened there, coach. Like, what you told them? What you told them when you was up there like that? Yeah. So Roger and all the officials are very different. I mean, their personalities are different. The way they work with the way that you work together in a game.

And just my, I've got a great compatibility with Roger. Roger is one of the best reps, you know, ever in college. And, you know, he's got this way about him where like if you're going too far, you know, he'll, he'll flash you that look like I'm close to seeing you. But then he doesn't hold on to that the rest of the game. Like he'll then start talking to you again. And he just has got just such a kind of a calming personality. I know that sounds crazy, you know,

but it doesn't ever feel adversarial with him. So really at that point in the game, we had it won. And he's such an easy guy to work with during the game that I thought he was coming over to chest bump me to sell. celebrate the shot. You know, because it's not like that for me with him, you know, like my experience with him has been, you know, we haven't won every game. I haven't agreed on every call, but his, like, so that was in no way was that like me

and a ref that I had been at their throat the whole game. Like other points in the game where I had my arm around them walking, like out of the time out. You know, we were cracking jokes and laughing. with that situation, now, I wanted Marquette, you know, when I was on my man's neck, you know, screaming it to his neck.

Like, yeah, I mean, that was, that was a guy that's like coming right up to the line and losing his mind. But that was more like the emotion of the shot. And this is a cool-ass rap guy. You know, I just, like, was... Were you guys sharing the moment together? No, he was just coming up to tell me that was point three.

Oh. I think there's going to be point three or point four on the clock is what he's saying to me. Okay. And I was still so hyped from the shot going in that I was like, you know, like anyone would have walked up on me right there. I was just, you know, because he came over so fast and I was just like so, like, how hard we had to fight in that game, you know, just because we were shooting so bad. And, you know, just, but how hard we fought just to give ourselves a chance to be able to them make a mistake or us make a play, you know, there was a lot, you know. Yeah. Yeah, it was a lot, man.

It's awesome. I saw, and I felt real joy, like genuine human joy from you when that shot went in. Yeah. Me and my wife erupted in the house. We said, oh. Yeah. Yeah. Everywhere.

Everywhere. Everywhere. I mean, everywhere. Everyone knows, I mean, how much we put into this. I mean, we start June. We start June. We go 11 months a year. You know, you're going six or seven days a week, you know, 11 months a year. And then when you're not doing it, you're thinking about it. You know, like when you're not actually recruiting or coaching or you're in the shower thinking about it, you're thinking about it before you go to bed. I mean, this is our obsession, like everyone involved with it. So you get, and then when you go back to back, you win, it, then you have a down year, you're out and around the 32, and you know, you don't go to the

final four and you know what the final four feels like. You're like, you know, and now you know you're about to experience the final four again and give yourself a chance to maybe win another national championship. You talk about your quirkiness, right? You admit it. You talk about your superstitions. Are there any Indianapolis superstitions? You have something that's unique to this trip that you're about to, about to take? Yes, because, because, uh, because we play Butler. You know, we play Butler. So, uh, same restaurants.

And we, and we've won those games. So we're just going to end up in those kind of those same restaurants. St. Elmo's? Mm-hmm. Okay. So how do we feel about, how do we feel about the horseradish sauce at San Diego? It's nice. I mean, especially in the winter, it's nice, you know, when you got a little,

you got a little cold or something. It hits you up. Yeah, it's really, really good stuff. And it knows running. So, yeah, you know, we'll stick, like... The biggest things, the ones that drive me nuts are, like, what uniforms are we wearing? You know, like, that's the stuff that makes me crazy, because I only want to wear the uniform that we wore in the last game that we won. You know what I mean?

So, and these guys, they got light gray. They got... Nike probably has sent us 10 different uniforms. We only wear, like, two or three of them. because I'm not the title of coach that's to pull out some red camouflage uniform and then you get your ass kicked and then you look at the bozo.

You know what I mean? So I don't want to do that. So I think we're wearing no, I think because we're at a higher seed in the first game, I think we get to wear the Connecticut whites, which I think we've won like 13 or 14 in a row in the Connecticut whites. Connecticut, the classics.

Yeah, yeah. Not Yukon, Connecticut. Yeah, the old school. I get it. Coach Shirley, what a pleasure. Thanks for joining us, brother. Blessing. You've, yeah.

Boy, I tell you what, the three of us got a lot of floor burns for you, right? We would be happy to play for a coach like you. So, Dan, congratulations on everything. Best of luck on your trip to Indianapolis. UCON, UCon, Yukon, Yukon, Yukon. Oh, those fans are so beautifully arrogant. You see it. Oh, yeah, you got it.

You see it. That's right. That's right. They're your people. Dan Hurley, head coach. University, Connecticut. Thanks so much for joining us. Coming up next on the triple option, presented by Wendy's. Coach Signetti is doing Coach Signetti things already this spring at Indiana. Lady. Welcome back to the triple option presented by Wendy's. Urban Mark Rob back here with you.

It is now time to sound off the defending national champion Indiana Hoosiers. They absolutely crushed it in the transfer portal again, and that includes adding Michigan State wide receiver Nick Marsh, who made quite the impression in his first spring practice in Bloomington. I had a lot of those gold shoes he came out in today. He learned about getting your ass with what it's all about. I don't know if that happened in very often. Michigan State. That was before practice started.

That was a wake-up call. No, he's really worked hard. He's done a great job for us. So the beef was that he came rolling in, Mark, in gold shoes. and Coach Sig was not having the gold shoes on his new wide out from East Lansing. Gold cleats?

Gold cleats. I mean, whatever. I mean, you got to go out there and ball. Like, you know. Look good, feel good, play good. Hey, man, come on. Ain't that wrong with the gold cleats. That's a little drag.

That's a little swag you got to have. You feel me? That's old school, Mark, right there. Yeah, it is. Everybody looks alike. Yeah, Coach Saben wouldn't love it either. No, Coach Sabin wouldn't have loved it either, but that's just a type of cloth

that Kurt's cut from, you know what I mean? He don't want nobody standing out too much. But, like I said, I'm a big fan. I'm a big advocate of Kurt Signetti, man. And whatever he's doing there, it's working. So you got to go in, you got to buy in. Do you think that might turn off some young kids, some recruits like, hey, man, I want to wear my gold cleats.

This is going to be a problem for you. Then maybe this isn't my home. Maybe. Maybe. But that's probably the kids, you know, one in this program. You know, I think to get, you know, if some cleats, If some gold cleats is going to deter you from the main mission of being the best football player, you could be on the best football team that you want to be a part of with the best coaching stats

who's going to develop you. If you don't want to be that, then you would worry about gold cleats and all the other details. You know what I mean? Then maybe this ain't the place for you. Coach, how do you think Sig handled it? Yeah, I mean, that is so old school. And I was the same way. Everybody looks like, and it's the way it is.

I had all kinds of rules. And then I worked for a guy named Sonny Lubick. And he's like, you know, fight to fight, make sure they go to class, make sure they live right, and makes sure they play hard. You know, there's only so many things you can do. So I remember I had the, what was it? Everybody wanted to wear those damn visors and then jersey numbers and I'm a on your shoes.

I'm a visor guy and I wore gold cleats too stone. Alabama you did? No, heck no. No, not in Alabama. So I think, you know, I love it. I love it because I think it teaches discipline. It teaches you no one person's bigger than the team. however, pick your fights.

You know, I agree with that one. Now, are they allowed to wear, you know, because you can go on forever with all the rules. I got away from that. Had very few rules. And then, but there was something, you know, gold cleats would have been a problem. Sabin didn't even want the dreds covering the numbers,

so the boys with the dreds had to, like, tie their dreds up. And, like, it was, he had, he ran a strip program, and that's basically what signet he's from that same club. Henry, right? He had the laundress. Yeah, he had the dreads. Yeah, he had the dreads. dreads, but they were, like, tied up in, like, one bun, like, in the back.

Like, did you ever have dreads? Were you a dreads guy? Hell, no, man. I grew my, I grew my hair out one time. A little Afro, man, and my stuff just stopped growing, man. So I said, bro, I wasn't, I wasn't ready to go through that ugly phase, that phase where it's like, you don't know what you're doing with your hair yet? Like, you're like, what they kid doing with his hair? You know, it's not long enough to braid yet, but it's You called it the ugly phase? Yeah, the ugly phase. I guess I've seen it a little bit of that. You've seen the ugly phase. You've had a lot of kids with them little twisties.

That's the ugly phase. The little twisties. They ain't long yet, you know what I mean? It ain't got no hang time. So, yeah. I ain't never did the trades. And coach, back to spring ball real quick. And I know every team is different, you know, different programs,

different needs, different players coming in and out. But what were kind of some of the typical things that you had to pull out of spring ball? Oh, you had to pull out depth. And not for the, you know, as I'm more insured as a coach, there's certain guys that need it and certain guys that don't. And I didn't waste time by the guys that don't.

After Mark Ingram, you know, Mark's freshman year, he needed a spring ball. He needed to get used to the speed of the game. After that, yeah, he's got to play a little bit, but you're not going to put these guys in harm's way. And so I got much better at the efficiency of, I used to have reps. Why would this guy, why would, you know, Nick Bosa not,

or Percy Harvey, not. And after so many competitive reps, yeah, you don't, you know, there's certain parts of practice. I'm not putting that cat in harm's way, which is not going to do it. But the other ones, at places like Alabama and Ohio State,

spring ball is so big, you get to put those guys, and that's why I love spring games, Mark, because not for Mark Ingram, but for the new freshman, I want to see all that guy plays in front of 90,000 people, because you can say it's not that big a deal.

The hell it's not. It is. I see guys shine in those situations, and I see other guys not. Fold. And I want to find out, and that's the beauty of, you know, Bowling Green in Utah, we didn't have that because even though giant crowds. So those are the biggest things. Guys that haven't played, fundamentals, depth, and then how do they perform in front of a crowd?

Mark, what was your first spring ball like? My first spring ball, man, I just remember the fourth quarter program. It was miserable, man. We'd go through that conditioning. It was right before spring ball. So it's like spring training and conditioning, and we'd go in and we'd run curves, and we'd be in the middle doing all these type of dynamic drills,

and then we'd run gassers. It was basically the mat drills that coach had at Florida. We called them fourth quarter drills, and it was just, that's my first recollection. I don't know what the curves are. You said you ran the curves. It's like, it's like, so if you know track, it's like 300 meters. And they set us up on like,

the corner goal line, this pylon on this side, and they'd have a lot, it'd go up the 100 yards, it would curve the end zone, and we'd run the next 100 yards. It was like a little 300 meter thing, and it was painful. Coach, what do you cackling about over there on the curves? Oh, I love it.

I just, I wonder if you see a lot of that still anymore, Mark. I don't know. And the quality, like we said, the quality of football on the field is spectacular right now. For some teams, for some teams, it's awful. We used to run the track, stone, get to the bleachers, up the bleacher, down the bleacher, up the bleacher, down the bleacher, up the bleacher, down the bleacher, down the bleacher, down the bleacher. Until they said enough was enough. And like, that's my first reclamation of spring ball was the fourth quarter program.

We got a lot of old school. A lot of old school of this show. Old school. Not the actual spring practice. It was that fourth quarter program. If you got through that, you was good. You was good. You was good.

As long as the hair wasn't blocking the numbers. That was the fresh take of the week presented by Wendy's. Get yourself a $4 biggie bite, $6 biggie bag, or an $8 biggie bundle right now at Wendy's. And coming up next, we talk to one of the strongest voices and minds in all of college basketball. The great Jay Billis joins us next on the Triple Option. Light it. When WestJet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out

of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. Welcome back to the Triple Option presented by Wendy's, Rob Mark, Coach. we are joined now by one of the great voices, one of the great brains around college basketball, Jay Billis. So, Jay, we're recording this roughly 24 hours or so after that Yukon game winner over.

Rob, you're going right there. Well, no, I'm not going, I'm not going there, but I'm not going there. Just welcome the man and let him. He's been doing this all day. He knows what's coming his way. So you've had time to digest that play. You know, where does that moment fall in the future talking points? about college basketball and March Madness?

Oh, it's right at the top. And look, I was an assistant coach at Duke when Christian Leitner hit that shot against Kentucky and the Elite 8 in 1992 in 1992 in Philadelphia. And honestly, the feeling I had watching that shot go in by Braylin Mullins was very much the same when Leitner hit that shot, the idea that, you know, holy cow, that was impossible. Who thought that would happen? You know, the funny part about the Leitner shot was we had ran that same place. earlier in the season against Wake Forest.

And Grant Hill threw some banana ball that took later to the sideline. He wound up stepping out of bounds and we lost. And when Coach Kay called that same play again, I was like, I don't know if this is a good idea. You know, last time we ran this didn't go so well. And but the Mullins thing, I don't know what the win probability was late in the game for Yukon, but it was really low.

And it required, you know, good execution. by Yukon, but I don't think they executed their defense the way they wanted to. They made it, they fixed it and made it work. They wanted to foul. They wanted to foul either Dami Tsar or Patrick Gungba. And they were too far away from SAR when, uh, when the, the first pass was made after the inbound. Um, but, you know, Duke didn't execute very well and, and gave him a chance.

And one of the things that I thought was really interesting was, you know, John Shire had said that, you know, it wasn't just one play. and that's true. There were a whole bunch of plays in the second half where Duke lost that 15 point half-time lead. They had eight turnovers, and a number of those turnovers were live ball turnovers that Yukon could take the other way.

But when it's only the last play, when you get down to the last play, then that's the only one that matters. And it just shows like Duke does a drill. We did it when I was a player almost every day. It's called four-coach passing drill. And it's a pass-and-catch drill against full-court pressure. And the way Duke teaches it, whether it's Coach Kay or John Shire now,

is, you know, you have to come back to the ball to meet the pass to cut the distance down. And when you catch it, you're two feet on the floor. And then the coaches say catch and face, which means catch the ball and face the defense and then make a play. so you can assess where you are and what the defense is doing. And Caden Booser caught it and caught it while he was turning, then dribbled it, and then left the floor and tried to make a pass in the air, and it got deflected. And, you know, it's just those kind of those fundamental things that,

you know, especially at freshmen under that sort of pressure, you know, can make a mistake. And that was a, you know, a mistake that was made that Yukon took advantage of. You know, it's amazing, Jay, is in the college football world, that would be on my desk by the time I got to the office the next day. And I promise you, every coach in America is practicing that situation over and over and over again for years now, as I saw that unfold last night. Yeah. And, Coach, you know, I mean, one of the things I thought about when afterwards you're thinking about all these things in your head about late game situations. and I thought about, I think they called the Kick Six, right?

The Auburn, Alabama thing. Sure. You're bringing up old stuff, man. And then- Bringing up old stuff, Jay? Yeah, well, you know, everybody came with me, Mark. So, I wasn't me. No, that's all good.

But it's, you know, it's the kind of thing where I'm sure Sabin and Alabama worked on that kind of thing. But in that sort of environment, if you don't execute exactly right, and stuff you work on. And I played the National Championship game in 1986. We must have done a thousand blockout drills that year. And we lost the game on a missed blockout.

And, you know, when you think these fundamental things that you do every day don't matter, and they're just roat and you've got to get through the drill, the reason you got, you coaches make us do all there, made us do all that stuff. It matters. Hey, Jay, I want to, years ago, I can't remember where, you were at and you were one of the first voices for their players. And you were actually way ahead of this game. And then I remember we beat Alabama in the first playoff on our way to go play Oregon

for the national title. And I made the comment about our players got zero money for their families to go watch them play and made a big push for that. Here we are, 2026. And I've been invited to be on some of these committees. and I've been listening and learning a lot. I want to ask, is the current model sustainable, not just for the sport,

but for all the other sports that this impacts? A couple of questions, because I've got to feel we can have a little dialogue here. Is a current situation sustainable without an enforcement arm that has guard veils for this? Well, I mean, I think the answer is yes, because when the NCAA-Sexambley has been claiming unsustainable for 100 years now.

And it keeps getting bigger and bigger. And the media rights deals keep getting bigger and bigger. Salaries keep shooting through the roof. And one of the things I found really interesting coaches is, and look, I don't begrudge anybody anything. I just, I've always felt there should be fairness. And I didn't feel like it was ever fair to the athlete. I don't think it's fair now.

They're still being restricted and not able to bargain for their fair market value. But I find it contradictory that there are so many administrators up on Capitol Hill that are using that word. They're saying unsustainable with regard to player compensation. And yet LSU is paying close to $100 million in coach buyouts over the last few years. And nobody's saying unsustainable with regard to that. And my thing is like let each school do what they want to do, let the players contract with the schools at arm's length, whether it's by collective bargaining or whatever mechanism they want to do and let the players bargain for their fair market value. That way, if they sign multi-year contracts with a school, we don't have to worry about the transfer portal.

You can put buyouts in them. You know, you can bargain for whatever you want for each side, the players and or the schools. But look, we've had a system for a long time, and it's changed now, but it's still in a transition mode, is what I would call it. where we're dealing with the House settlement. We're under those. And I understand that coaches, administrators, presidents, you know, they would like to have a more, a better functioning system like you would have in the NFL or the NBA. But as you guys know, the NFL and the NBA have, they collectively bargain.

So the players agree to salary caps. And they agree to certain work conditions. The college players don't get that. And until we have that sort of mechanism, and that's where if Congress really wants to help, that's where they can help. Instead of giving the NCAA an antitrust exemption, which they're asking for, which is essentially going back to the old system where everything's unilaterally imposed on the players, what I would say is create a federal pathway for collective bargaining or exempt athletes from the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Act where they can actually sign independent contract. agreements with the schools without being employees if that's what the schools want. And that way, that way a player staying at a school for a period of time, whether it's sign a three-year contract or four-year contract, whatever, then that's the player's choice,

just like it would be a choice for a coach to sign a multi-year deal with a significant buyout in it. Those are arm-flank negotiations. But, you know, even those contracts are constantly violated. Like, I found it really interesting. and I'm not blaming Will Wade or saying coaches shouldn't be able to do this. Like, this is the system. But, you know, coach signs a contract and says, stay away from my players, then they're gone after a year.

And nobody calls that tampering. You know, does anybody think that Will Wade just got a phone call after his season ended from LSU? That's not what happened. But nobody says tampering or poaching with regard to that. And once LSU takes NC State's coach, now NC State has to go. out and take somebody else's code. And then whomever they take, they're taking somebody else's and talk about disruption throughout the whole system. So, you know, that's contradictory to the point of being hypocritical. And until we, until we change that, we're going to have,

we're going to have these issues. Yeah, Jay, man, I've been following you, man. It's got to be like 15 years, man, on Twitter and X, man. And, man, I used to make my mourners, bro. We used to drop them bars and you follow it. Got to go to work. Real recognize real. You real recognize real, man. Where you get the bars from? And when will we go get some of that flavor back, man? I feel like the world missing it, man.

I used to open up my app in the morning. It would be some cheesy bar, some rap bar, some bangering, and I got to go to work. When we're getting that juice back, man? Yeah, Mark, it was all cheesy lyrics. And I started doing it almost by accident where we had been talking. I think it was Huber Davis when he was working with us before he went to North Carolina as an assistant. We were at Michigan

State and Draymond Green was wearing some headphones and we asked him what he was listening to and he said Young Jeezie and Hubert asked if that was on my playlist and I told him actually it is and people did you know, I had TM 101 and people didn't believe me. Tm. 101. Yeah, so I was going back and forth on Twitter

with people and if I remember right and it's been 12, 14 years, whatever but I finally couldn't go back and forth with people on Twitter anymore because I actually had to go into my office So I said I got to go to work on there. And it kind of caught on.

So it's just one of these bizarre things. That was a vibe, man, for sure. But then we saw college football, man. We saw Indiana win at all, man, which we never thought that that would happen in college football. I mean, losing his program in college football history just two years ago. Could we see the same for college basketball in the future? I think we can and I think we will. Like this year is the first time and I don't know how long that we didn't have, you know,

Kentucky, UCLA, Indiana, some of these Blue Blood programs that none of them made the Sweet 16. Kansas was the other one. So what I see happening, and I'm not sure there's enough data yet, or at least I don't have the data to make a conclusion on this. But what I see is talent is being spread around more at the highest level. That doesn't mean that mid-major schools, like while Northwestern in Vanderbilt are getting better, players than ever, in large measure because of NIL, it doesn't mean that Western Michigan is getting better players than ever. And I'm sensitive to the mid-majors that are saying, wait a minute, we find a gem, an under-recruited gem. We develop this player and the player

turns out to be really good. And after a sophomore year, he goes to Michigan State and plays on the big stage and all that. But my thing with that, and believe me, I am sensitive to that. I mean, I have empathy for those coaches and programs, but you guys will probably remember a guy from Tennessee a couple years ago named Dalton Connect. Dalton Connect, he went to Northern Colorado, played three years there. Nobody really ever heard of him. And I saw him play by accident. I was scouting an NBA prospect that Northern Colorado was playing against.

Otherwise, I would have no idea who he was. And he transfers to Tennessee. He was SEC player of the year, first team All-American, got to. taken number 10 by the Lakers in the NBA draft. Does he not deserve the right to better himself? Because if Northern Colorado gone to the tournament and won a game or two, his coach would have left. And that's okay.

I mean, you know, so I kind of understand where everybody's coming from, but I'm like, how much, you know, how much should the athletes carry on their shoulders that's their burden? Because when people say, and again, I'm empathetic to this too, but when people say, hey, football and basketball are paying for all these other sports, you're going, why do the athletes have to shoulder that? Like, I don't see any of the coaches and administrators saying, hey, we need to take a discount in our salaries because we need to help pay for these other sports. That doesn't happen. And I'm not sure it should necessarily happen with athletes. I think they deserve to bargain for their worth just like everyone else because they're adults.

They call it men's college basketball and women's college basketball and all that. they're adults. Well, here's what we can agree on. There is no greater character in the world of college basketball than somebody that you and I both have had the privilege to work with Bill Raftery. We've all been seeing the clip with Bill Grant when the bucket goes in, right? And so give me quick story time with Bill Raftery because those who've spent time with him live in a better world. A legend, one of a kind. Yeah, actually, that video of Bill and Grant Hill reacting to the Brayland Mullins Yukon shot to beat Duke.

I put out a tweet with that video saying this is the exact same reaction when Raftery hears last call at a bar. He was legendary, man. He was legendary. He could put him down now. He can put him down. Oh, yeah. I was, I probably worked with him for about 12 years, I'd say, give or take with

doing Big Monday and with Sean McDonough in a three-man booth. And it was one of the true joys of my life honestly. And I told my wife, I said, look, when I get home on Tuesday, I won't be a zombie because Raftery is going to want to go out after the game. And I'm not saying no. Like, I'm going.

I don't care how much pain it causes me, because it doesn't cause him any pain. I don't know how he can't say no to I don't know how he does it. You cannot say no. You cannot say no. But we had a thing one year. It was actually before the CFP. So I guess it was a BCS championship game was on a Monday night. And so

we were doing a game in in milwaukee is a marquette game big east game back back then and so we we got a group together to go to a steakhouse in milwaukee called moz to um to watch the game after our game and i got there first with dave pasch who was filling in for sean mcdona who was doing the doing the game the football game and it was just about the time my eyes were going and i i needed readers but i didn't have any with me. So the waiter says, hey, would you guys like to order any wine for the table, all that? And I said, yeah, how about a good cab? And he points

something out to me because I couldn't see the menu. And so he recommends this bottle, and I said, perfect. So Pash says to me, he goes, Jay, that was, that's $300 a bottle. And I was like, oh, geez, you know, I couldn't

go grab the guy and say, hey, let's have something cheaper. So I told Dave, okay, we'll have that one and then we'll order some else later. Well, Raftree got there with four or five friends and we sat down, we started eating and watching the game and laughing. And I had forgotten about the wine thing. And so what Raft and I used to do we would try to sneak our credit card to the waiter so we didn't have to haggle over the bill. And he'd beat me to it. And I didn't know. Uh-oh. So the waiter brought the little leather billful thing. Bill in it. So Raftery grabs it, opens it up.

and then goes, holy shit. And then almost crying, he says, would you mind ordering from the Irish side of the menu just once? And I was like, come on, Bill, give it to me. No, no, I got it. And he's been killing me about that ever since. That's awesome. That's awesome.

I want to appreciate that story. He's still fast at the credit card. He's still sneaky. He got me in New York during the Big East tournament. I'm like, old man still has it. Oh, he's so good. All right. So you're going to pack your bags, head to Indy any day now. Final four, what's your thoughts on who survives the two games and makes it to Monday's championship? You know, I thought that Arizona was the best team and had the best path when I looked at the bracket.

Why they, you know, why people think that we know who's going to win, I'll never, if I knew who's going to win, I'd live in Vegas and sit by the pool and have a drink in my hand all the time. but but Arizona's legit there and so is Michigan like those are in my view the two best teams and then they're playing each other in the the national the second national semi-final on Saturday and a lot of people are going to look at that as the de facto national chain whoever comes out of that game's a national champion and you know experience shows me it doesn't work that way because I've seen a number of times where people thought that and the team out of the other game winds up winning it. But Arizona is kind of old school and they're an inside out team.

They don't shoot a ton of threes. What they do is they get to the foul line. They're going to beat you up physically and get to the rim. And if you're going to be physical with them, you're going to wind up fouling them. And they're going to spend the majority of the game at the foul line. They make more free throws on the season and throughout the tournament than their opponents even attempt.

And in basketball analytics, the most efficient place to score on a basketball floor free throw line. So Michigan's going to have to play good defense without fouling. Because if they put Arizona at the foul line, that's going to be advantage, Arizona. And the other one, Yukon, Illinois? You got any leaning in that one? Yeah, I like Yukon in the game. They played Illinois early in the season. I think Illinois is better now and they were then. But Illinois is really good offensively. They've got a, they've recruited very well internationally. So they've got a bunch of Eastern European guys that are very skilled and they can shoot it.

They can all dribble pass and shoot so they can spread the floor on yet. And they are a low turnover, low foul team. So they do not put their opponents at the free throw line very often at all. And they don't cough the ball up. So they're not giving up. You know, they're not letting their opponent play ahead of their defense very often. And their defense is improved over the last month, month and a half. And they've got a point guard as a freshman who, honestly,

When he was in high school, like, I see a lot of high school players. I'd never heard of him. He was ranked outside the top 175, and if he comes out of the draft, he'll be taken to the top 10. His name's Keaton-Wogberg. And I think if you were to do an NBA comp on him, it would be Tyrese Halliburton. He reminds me a lot of Halliburton when he was at Iowa State. Shoot it.

Can't speed the guy up. He plays at his own pace. Excellent passer. Size can rebound. He's the real deal. But they're kind of, they're young in spots, but I tend to favor, even though Illinois is favored in the game in Vegas. But I would favor Yukon in that game. They, the Yukon, what Yukon's done over the last several years, I mean, since 1999, Yukon's won six national championships out of the three different coaches.

And Danny Hurley won two in a row. And in those two years in 2023 and 2024, they won 12. straight NCAA tournament games by double digits. No team in college basketball history has ever done that. Not John Wooden's teams, nobody. They're not as good this year. Yukon's not as good as those two championship teams, but they're good enough to win this thing. They just need to shoot it a little better than they did against Duke. That's another statement. For quality programs, and this has been an elite level of play in college basketball I felt this year. We've seen it the last couple years in college basketball where teams are allowed to be more mature. I think you're

seeing that in college basketball. Across the whole spectrum of college basketball this year, I thought the play has been at an elite level. And Jay, you've been at the forefront on all angles of it. I think we covered everything, right? We had Raff, we talked politics. We got Wade. We got everything. Talks easy. We got cheesy in there. We got some expensive wine on the menu. Yes, exactly. Anytime. We know how busy you are. Take my glasses away. Yes. Thank you so much for your time. Safe travels to Indy. Enjoy the final four and that does it for the triple option. Remember, follow, subscribe, rate us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast as well as across social media. We are at 3X option show. Jay, thank you. Coach Shirley, thank you. And thank you as always to our sponsor. Wendy's. We'll see you next time on the triple option.