March Madness Mega Preview, Mark Titus Breaking Down The Bracket, USA Loses To Venezuela + Hot Seat/Cool Throne

16:16Big Cat:And then once the, once the games actually start, then it's my homes.

16:20PFT Commenter:Yeah. By the way, this Texas-NC State game has been such a painful watch. It's just they can't put the ball in the hoop. We also had – I love that Dickie V's got to call this game. Very cool moment. I love Dickie V. I think he's one of those guys, kind of similar to Al Michaels, where it's like they've given me so much as a sports fan that as long as they want to keep going, I'm cool with it, even if it's not the same. There was like a 15-minute stretch, I don't know if you guys had sound on, where Dickie V and Chuck just didn't even talk about the game. They just decided to talk about NIL, transfer portal, all that stuff for 15 straight minutes.

16:59PFT Commenter:And yeah, I get it. Is there one time doing it? I just think if you were an NC State or a Texas fan, you would be bullshit because it wasn't even – they weren't even trying to discuss the game. It was just a straight-up podcast they were doing about how ruined college basketball has become.

17:17Big Cat:so it was it was a podcast but it was also like a very bad podcast not that i don't like listening to dickie v and and charles barkley just shoot the shit about things but it was like every kind of stone conversation that you've ever had with somebody where you even remotely talk about college basketball where you're like in il i mean we got to do something think things are out of control i'm all in favor of players getting paid but something's got to change and then the other of guys like you know i i like to see guys get paid but i mean we can't we can't root for the same guy two years in a row so we got to do something and no one ever actually like throws out a solution for it it was just like two older guys complaining about the current state of college basketball yeah i was happy i was happy with the um the points in the first game that was nice

18:06PFT Commenter:ton of points and howard and uh umbc yeah shout out howard uh first win in program history in the in the NCAA tournament, Kenny Blakeney, really cool story. He played at Duke, went immediately into coaching, has been coaching for, I think, like 25 years or so, took over the Howard job. I think they won four games his first year, been to the tournament three out of the last four years, finally wins a game. This is where I, you know, sometimes people will debate and say, if you're, it's bullshit the 16 seeds don't get in the actual tournament to get in the plan. I think this is why it's cool. Like he just got a tournament win.

18:43PFT Commenter:I know it's against another 16 seed, but that's the first tournament win in Howard history. So and it was a very cool story. He got very emotional at the podium. It's like why we love March.

18:54Big Cat:I liked it. There was a ton of sportsmanship from that guy. He was oozing sportsmanship. He was just like, they're such a good team. I'm so happy that we were able to play them. They played a great game. Actually, like Howard, Howard almost choked that away at the end. Yeah, they did. He's got a stretch. But yeah, if you back to your point about like if you're a Texas fan watching this, I don't really think that you have that much room to complain. Like you're Texas. You should not be in the playing game if you're Texas. So like let this be a lesson to you Longhorns that if you're in the playing game, we're liable to throw Charles Barkley at you.

19:25PFT Commenter:Yeah, that's fair. That's a fair point. I feel like they just overinflated the balls for the second game. The balls just aren't going the same way. And I might just be done with totals for the entire tournament because the balls are driving me nuts. They just won't go in the hoop.

19:39Big Cat:Ball in the hoop. I mean, one and one on overs for me. Not a bad start. Yeah, I just really need the rollover. All right, so let's kick it to ourselves.

19:50PFT Commenter:We've got our entire bracket, fun fact preview, some really good facts. Make you sound smart if you're at a bar, if you're hanging out with friends this weekend, and you want to be like, hey, I knew this thing about this team. Maybe even get some facts about Big Lloyd. That's a little teaser. shout out Zach with his facts and then we have Mark Titus to break down the entire bracket and give you some tips on filling out your bracket and let's do it. Hey Illinois Stellablu Coffee's new canned lattes are here and in a store near you. Crafted with 100 % Colombian coffee, each can is a good source of protein and comes in two smooth flavors, espresso cafe mocha and espresso sweet cream whether you're braving your morning commute or chasing your pup Stella Blue cans are for those always on the go and for those who care.

20:40PFT Commenter:Stella Blue is more than just great coffee. It's about giving back. I named the brand after my rescue dog, Stella, who inspired our mission to help more dogs find their forever homes. Every purchase supports animal rescue organizations. So when you drink Stella Blue, you're not just fueling your day, you're saving a dog's life. Try the new cans today. Head to our store locator on StellaBlueCoffee.com and sign up to redeem a buy one, get one free offer. Okay, time, boys. This is actually one of my favorite things we did. We started it last year. We're going to go through the bracket. We've all taken a region.

21:16PFT Commenter:We're going to go through the bracket. We're going to give you fun facts. This is basically the primer for, one, people who have not watched college basketball until right now. Two, people who are going to be at the bars or parties or wherever you may be this weekend, and you want to just drop a little fact, A little factoid about a school, a team, a player, and you got it in your back pocket. So we're giving you that. And we also have this year Zach Facts. So Zach, we're going to go through each region. Then Zach will come over the top if anything we missed or anything he wants to add on the teams.

21:49PFT Commenter:PFT, you are up first. We're going in the east.

21:52Big Cat:We're going in the east. You're up first. Top left. One thing I've noticed this year, it's really just been recently that America's got their shit together when it comes to uniform brackets. This is a disaster.

22:03PFT Commenter:Oh, Hank didn't do the right.

22:05Big Cat:I did the East. Oh, we got double East? Great. Okay. So Zach can pick up the leftovers.

22:12PFT Commenter:We can also do just rapid facts. What part of, for Wednesday's show, PFT East, Big Cat South, Max Midwest, Hank West was confusing.

22:21Big Cat:I just misread it and started. That's on me. We can just do top of the head West Coast facts. Okay. For the West. But you know what I'm saying? It feels like this is the first year that we've seen complete uniformity when it comes to the brackets. What regions are in what spot on the brackets they can print it out. Yeah. I haven't seen any strays. There's no outlying websites that have the brackets in the wrong spot. So great job, America. We finally did it. You okay, Hank? Zach, we're going to need you on the Midwest. Got to step up. No, no. I'm Midwest. Sorry, the West. No, the West.

22:52PFT Commenter:Yeah. All right. What's going through your head right now, Hank?

22:57Big Cat:I just spent a lot of time doing the East and I'm an idiot.

23:00PFT Commenter:Did you go back and read the text I sent to everyone?

23:03Big Cat:I just read it. I just initially read it as East and then just went. I just didn't go back and reread it, obviously. We can do double East. Okay. Well, technically we got triple East. Zach. Why don't we do? Can someone do Middle East? We're heavy on the East. All right, PFT, you're up. The Strait of Hormuz. Okay. First off, we have Duke against Sienna. Okay. 1-16. You might be asking yourself, I've seen Duke play in the tournament a lot. I'm very familiar with Duke. Why are they called the Blue Devils? Do you guys know what a Blue Devil is?

23:40PFT Commenter:I just assumed it was Coach K's nefarious person. He's a devil. He looks like it. And they're like, hey, we'll just make it blue.

23:49Big Cat:And the mascot kind of looks a little bit like Coach K. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. No, a blue devil is actually a French Arctic, not Arctic, a French Alpine soldier known as Diable Bleu. And these guys are the most French dudes that you've ever heard of in your life. They hang out in the French mountains. They are not allowed to say the word red because their rivalry against England. Got it. The only time they're allowed to say the word red is when you're referring to the lips of a lover.

24:16PFT Commenter:So you're telling me the Duke is French. Very French.

24:20Big Cat:Ugh. the lips of a lover. Eight out of 10.

24:23PFT Commenter:Or - Can't expect perfect from them. Or you can say the word red if you're referring to wine.

24:29Big Cat:Okay. So it's the most French thing ever. It really speaks highly of the lofty expectations you have for yourself if you're naming your school after the French military, famous for their many, many victories. Yeah. But then I actually went down a little bit of a rabbit hole when it came to Cameron Boozer and the Boozer twins. Yeah. And it's something I actually didn't know about him. I missed this when it came out on ESPN. Did you know that Cameron Boozer was born to save his older brother's life? I did. Yeah. So this is kind of crazy. So his older brother, Kamari Boozer, was born with sickle cell anemia, which interestingly enough, sickle cell evolved as a trait to I think it was to protect against malaria.

25:13Big Cat:So if you had sickle cell and you got the malaria in your body, it wouldn't bind onto the sickle cells. So it would kind of save you from that. But now modern day, it's not good to have sickle cell and it can be deadly, especially for a kid. So his parents decided that they were going to have kids and they were going to have the kids to give the stem cells from the umbilical cord to their already born son to help save his life. Save the life. So they did like a bunch of IVF and they found two of the embryos that had that same donor type that could give. And so they carried those twins immediately after birth.

25:52Big Cat:Cameron Boozer, they take the stem cells out and save his brother's life, which is pretty cool. That is very cool. It's a pretty cool story that I did not know. Zach, I'm my brother's keeper.

26:03PFT Commenter:Your tattoo, you want to show it? Yeah. No, no. He literally is brother's keeper. Great brother. All-time brother move. All-time brother.

26:13Big Cat:Not an elite brother move. I have not given my umbilical cord to anybody. It could be anywhere for all I know. Bros before life. Yeah, exactly. So the first thing that he did when he was born was save a dude's life. Yeah, that's sick. Kind of rocks. Okay. Hot seat Tim Tebow for that. Now, Siena is now Siena University. It used to be Siena College. Nice. Congrats to them. But that was a$60 ,000 move to change all the signs on the university. from Siena College to Siena University. Their mascot is Bernie, the St. Bernard. So to my knowledge, this is the very first time that two teams named after Alpine Rescue helpers have played each other in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

26:56PFT Commenter:I'm going to say guaranteed first time.

26:58Big Cat:We will have to double check that, but I'm pretty sure. Also, Siena's coach is Jerry McNamara. Yeah. Who you might remember from Syracuse University and the crazy runs that he would go on in March. great player and Clem and Clem you might know him from Clem yeah so yeah that's about all I got for the one verse 16 love that all right next up we're gonna do Ohio State TCU so the Ohio State University they're a pretty slow team they don't get a lot of rebounds they don't get a lot of steals so I looked into their their current roster right now and Bruce Thornton is a player you might remember you might recognize that name he just became Ohio State's all-time leading scorer along the way surpassing players like Mark Titus.

27:44Big Cat:And I did also see that Jeffrey Epstein drafted an email referring to Les Wexner and all the gang stuff that they've done together over the years. Okay. With no explanation. Les Wexner, you might know his name from being all over buildings in Columbus, Ohio. Yes. As one of the most prominent donors to The Ohio State University. TCU is obviously they're the horned frogs. Not actually a frog. They're lizards. They squirt blood out of their eyes. they're led by David Punch, and their head coach, Jamie Dixon, quit basketball after injuring his pancreas. Oh, Hank. So just something, a guy, representation matters, Hank.

28:24Big Cat:Have you guys, has anyone here been to TCU? I have, yeah, Fort Worth. Have you been to the campus? I've been in and around the campus. I haven't spent too much time.

28:33PFT Commenter:I've been in the campus, all inside the campus. it is one of those colleges that is straight out of a magazine complete fake life and i mean fake life in the best possible sense you walk on that campus and you feel like you're on a movie set

28:48Big Cat:yeah it's gorgeous it's nuts how nice it is it's gorgeous uh pretty expensive to go to school there their coach jamie dixon um he was in commercials for bud light rice krispies and volvo and mattel when he was a kid i guess his dad was a uh a director and put him in a bunch of commercials i looked everywhere on the internet to try to find the jamie dixon bud light tv

29:09PFT Commenter:commercial where apparently he gets dunked on by a woman yeah and i can't find it i think he's had

29:15Big Cat:it scrubbed from the internet i think he's afraid of people finding it so somebody maybe who's better

29:19PFT Commenter:than me at internet research look that up jamie dixon also is an all-time i wish he still wore a suit guy yeah yeah very much so he was a great suit wearer when he was at pit at pit yeah and so

29:29Big Cat:So he's been coaching at Pitt and TCU for 23 years, made the tournament 16 out of those 23 years. Pretty impressive for those two schools. So Jamie Dixon, awesome head coach.

29:41PFT Commenter:And Pitt, I don't think has made it since he left.

29:43Big Cat:They might not have. I think they haven't been in a long time. Did they have, what's his name, DeJuan Blair? Was he there with Jamie Dixon?

29:51PFT Commenter:Yeah, my favorite pump fake of all time, Sam Young. Elite. He would get all the way on his tippy toes.

29:58Big Cat:Krauser he had all those guys yeah uh so yeah Jamie great coach but please somebody find me please find me the the Bud Light commercial I agree uh so then we got St. John's St. John's going up against UNI University of Northern Iowa uh obviously we got Rick Pitino Coach Pitino at St. John's friend of the program amazing coach amazing coach uh and if you look at what he's done this yearst john's i believe has the second best record against the spread out of all power conference teams behind only arkansas whoa so uh they are covering they are covering at a love that very high clip this year um they don't really shoot the ball that well but it doesn't really matter um unless they run into a situation where uh they go up against like that that yukon game when it looked as ugly as basketball can look.

30:51PFT Commenter:Fact check myself, Pitt went in 2023. That was the only time they've gone without Jamie Dixon. Jamie Dixon hasn't been there for 10 years. One time.

30:58Big Cat:But Jamie Dixon, awesome coach. Also, Rick Pitino, if you had to guess, would you say he is or is not a Kentucky Colonel?

31:09PFT Commenter:I would say he is. Well, I would have said he is, but based on this question, I'm going to say he's not.

31:15Big Cat:Yeah, yeah. No, you read that correctly. I thought that he was, so the stat was going to be he is a fellow. He's the same rank as us in the Kentucky military, but actually, no. Part of my take outranks Rick Pitino in the Kentucky military. You and I, they will suck the life out of you. They've got the second best defense in the entire tournament. They are just kind of a pain in the ass to watch. This game feels like it's going to be ugly as shit. Correct. This would be your ugliest shit first round matchup, which in a way you would think that that would favor the 12 seed. But I think that since St.

31:56Big Cat:John's is so used to playing this type of grinding out game. Yeah, brawl. It's not like you're dragging them into your ocean. They also live in the ocean. Right. All right, so next up we got Kansas, Kansas and Cal Baptist. Kansas, I've talked about this guy before, Flory Badunga. He's one of my favorite players in the country. he was a high school soccer player in the democratic republic of the congo and a family friend noticed that he was fucking enormous it was like hey i noticed that your son is huge would he like to play basketball and they're like sure i guess i guess he'd like to play basketball so then he moved to indiana which is every congolese child's dream and uh he was like this is awesome i get to live in indiana at kokomo high school play soccer there i watched some of soccer clips by the way he was pretty good yeah he was pretty nasty he was like a forward uh so then he committed to kansas which probably you gotta you gotta ask like what are we doing at indiana university oh yeah like the kid moves from africa to indiana to play basketball and you can't keep that guy in state that's not great uh so he he obviously committed to uh kansas and bill self and now we've got Kansas who is playing in the tournament for 36 consecutive years.

33:15Big Cat:Asterix. Not really. Oh. They don't have the longest streak. The streak technically stopped in 2017 because that appearance was retroactively taken away for recruiting violations. But they have played games in the NCAA tournament for 36 consecutive years, which is pretty crazy. Darren Peterson is back to playing almost nearly full minutes of every game. And saw that Stathol put this in his blog, that he has the third best plus minus in college basketball. So him playing 37 minutes a game when he has that huge plus minus. He's good. He's very, very good. Probably means good things for the Jayhawks.

33:57Big Cat:And they're going up against Cal Baptist. Unders are 64 % in Cal Baptist games.

34:02PFT Commenter:Yeah.

34:03Big Cat:So they will also grind it out. It's their first time in the tournament. So congratulations to them. I did look on their website and found out some interesting facts from their handbook, the Cal Baptist handbook. They don't let girls wear leggings at Cal Baptist. Oh, no. Yeah, it's no legging school. No. You are allowed to wear them, I guess, but they have to be under address. But no leggings at Cal Baptist. And then I was reading like the school newspaper and it, there was an article that said the next time you're brutally honest with a friend who's wearing an unflattering outfit, let them know that you're simply being honest and truthful.

34:43Big Cat:And they would probably rather hear it from you anyway. When they're talking about leggings. Okay. So I don't, yeah, I guess that's a good friend move to be like, hey, you look fat in those leggings. Yeah. Because they'd rather hear it from you. Seems like a lot of time spent on leggings. Yeah. Well, it was just. Not you, them. They think about leggings a lot, but I don't get that logic where it's like, you'd rather hear it from me because I'm the protagonist. Right. So I'm telling you because I love you. Anyways, that's leggings at Cal Baptist. Hank, do you have anything else about Cal Baptist?

35:18Big Cat:Let's see. He's got something. It is their first time in the NCAA tournament, which is good for them. There are no Greek organizations at Cal Baptist. big focus on community life uh they have clubs there this is on their website their workshops are offered through career center with topics such as business dinner etiquette which parentheses which fork do you use so if you're if you're you know a high school awl you're thinking about schools you're not interested in in you know greek life frat life but you want to maybe take some

35:50PFT Commenter:like workshops on on which fork to use strong thoughts on leggings at dinner for for dinner

35:56Big Cat:etiquette like you don't know what dinner etiquette is at a business dinner cal baptist might be this is like high point high point remember last year we talked about how high

36:04PFT Commenter:point has the steakhouse you gotta eat at once a month yeah yeah this is good though it's like

36:08Big Cat:yeah if you want to if you want to go to a college that has dinner as a course that's it's a good spot to go how many credits do you get for dinner i don't know dinner wonder that's probably a 400 level course we're talking etiquette yeah uh louisville we can talk about louisville south florida for a little bit um fun fact about louisville it's the first time this year that louisville has ever played on the road at duke in the regular season and also made the ncaa tournament oh at the end of the year okay just a weird quirky stat with the uh the way that the schedule has worked out uh since they joined the acc uh back at when was that like two early 2010s i believe So, yeah, Louisville, they're going to have a tough task on their hand because South Florida plays with the second highest pace in the nation.

36:59They're also number one in terms of shots per game,

37:02Big Cat:and they make a lot of shots too. So this is going to be an up-and-down, back-and-forth matchup with Louisville and South Florida. I like that over. Yeah, this is a big time over. They've got a big man, seven-footer, Sonata Fru. it's not a fruit he shoots uh 783 for effective shooting percentage so big man going to be yamming and louisville also makes threes so this is going to be a great game to bet the over on i think love that next up we got uh michigan state who does have the longest tournament streak in the country okay which is 28 years um it's a great story seeing izzo just still doing it still coaching as hard as he ever has.

37:46Big Cat:They do have a guy who I love, Jeremy Fears, one of the best point guards in the nation. He has a penis-kicking addiction. Big time. He is addicted to kicking people. What's that face, Max? Penis-kicking? Yes, he's a crazy addiction. He is addicted to kicking dudes in the dick.

38:04PFT Commenter:And he does it in all different directions, forwards, backwards, sideways.

38:07Big Cat:Which is why I kind of respect his game. He's like a switch kicker.

38:11PFT Commenter:He's like a heat-seeking missile. the bottom of his foot to penises.

38:16Big Cat:Yeah, the most recent clip, I think, was against Michigan, right? Yeah, backwards. He went backwards. So there was a guy that was like, it was almost like he was posting up on the guy from the three-point line, and Fierce just kicked like a mule up into his dick. Yeah, he likes to do it. And then I did love Izzo's reaction. He was just like, I'm going to eat his lunch. But you know what? I'm looking at some of the guys on Michigan. They do dirty stuff, too. I'm not sure their lunch is getting eaten, but I just want Dusty May to know that I'm about to eat his lunch.

38:43PFT Commenter:It actually is kind of an intimidating thing to have to go up against, being like this guy is liable to kick us in the nuts at any moment.

38:51Big Cat:Yes. But really, you can make a highlight mixtape of all the dicks that he's kicked.

38:57PFT Commenter:Yeah, he's been doing it all season.

38:59Big Cat:So Michigan State, they've been pretty good defensively all season except for the last four games. So since the calendar flipped to Izzo, January, February, Izzo, So Michigan State is 192nd in college hoops. Not good. So it's only four games, but they haven't been all against great teams. So we'll see if they can get that straightened out in the tournament. Big Cat, you probably know the answer to this. So I'll just ask the rest of the guys.

39:25PFT Commenter:Yeah.

39:25Big Cat:Do you guys know the last time that a Big Ten school won a national championship in basketball, men's basketball?

39:34PFT Commenter:Do you know the answer to this?

39:42Hank? Anyone?

39:45PFT Commenter:Anyone?

39:45Big Cat:I mean, this is an appropriate reaction.

39:47PFT Commenter:Yeah. Okay.

39:49Big Cat:Michigan State? Yeah. Yeah. Michigan State in 2000.

39:53PFT Commenter:Yeah.

39:54Big Cat:Pretty crazy. That's a very, very long streak for the Big Ten.

39:58PFT Commenter:You could count. Technically, Louisville did vacate theirs against Michigan. Okay. Okay. If we wanted to technically do it.

40:07Big Cat:I respect. My official record book is the back of Rick Pitino's shoulder, which has the Louisville National Championship tattoo on it.

40:15PFT Commenter:Yeah. Been to a lot of Final Fours in championship games and just haven't gotten over the hump.

40:20Big Cat:Yeah.

40:20PFT Commenter:Yeah.

40:21Big Cat:So North Dakota State, they are number nine in the country in terms of steals. They've got 283 steals and per stat hole. They also rarely commit fouls. So kind of a weird combination. They fell at the eighth lowest clip in the entire country, but they get a lot of steals. Okay. Okay. Great job. Good job. They've got active hands. So look for a lot of steals from North Dakota State. I do think that Michigan State, this feels like it's – this might be a blowout for Izzo and the boys because North Dakota State has played a terrible, terrible schedule this year, and Michigan State is maybe the most battle-tested team in the entire country in terms of their schedule.

41:02Big Cat:Also, Carson Wentz went to North Dakota State, so fuck that guy. Next up, we got UCLA and UCF. Bracket busters, UCF. Let's go. All right. So UCLA, prior to a reporter raising his voice at McCronin, the Bruins were 1-5 against top 25 ranked teams. Afterwards, they're 3-1. That reporter just woke up a sleeping giant. Wow. UCF, Blake Bortles went to UCF. He's a left-handed golfer. I thought that's interesting.

41:32PFT Commenter:That is.

41:33Big Cat:And also, they've got a guy named Carmelo Pacheco, who is kind of this Chase Johnston type. He's taken 114 shots, 106 are three-point shots this year. He's also from Harrisonburg, Virginia. I don't know how he got away from JMU, but this kid loves to shoot threes. So, yeah, that's what I got at UCF. Do you have anything on UCF or UCLA, Hank? I had Blake Bortles birdie the No. 2 hole at Ponte Verde, Country Club Lagoon course, March 13, 2026. That's true.

42:03PFT Commenter:You do a lot of research.

42:06Big Cat:Nick Cronin's brother is a horse racing gambler and has her Twitter account for it called Fat Bald Guy Racing. Love that. And UCLA has a network of tunnels connecting most buildings, though accessing them is highly restricted. What are they doing in the tunnel? I also have a tunnel fact for one of my schools. Oh, wow. A little foreshadowing.

42:26PFT Commenter:Competing tunnel facts.

42:27Big Cat:What's going on with that? Also, from the school website, so I feel like this is kind of like when the sign outside says like world's best coffee. It's UCLA gets the most college applications of any school in the country. I believe it. I actually believe.

42:38PFT Commenter:Yeah, there's a lot of people in California. There's a lot of people. California is prestigious. Good weather. Good colors.

42:45Big Cat:Do you think that's very good? So you don't think any other school claims that? I feel like a lot of state schools could.

42:50PFT Commenter:Yeah, a lot of state schools could. But I feel like UCLA just because of how big California is and how like a lot of California kids just stay in California.

43:00Big Cat:Right. I'm thinking maybe a really bad school that maybe a lot of people... Well, no, I guess it would be a good school that people don't get into. Yeah. What's a good school in an area filled with dumb people? U.S. News does confirm that UCLA gets the most applicants. Okay. And second is... They're all California schools. California, San Diego?

43:20PFT Commenter:Yeah, so it's just all the kids in California probably just spray and spray every school.

43:24Big Cat:Mm-hmm. I bet UCLA probably has a pretty high clip of kids that get in, and then their parents are like, we're not paying for out-of-state tuition at UCLA. You're going to community college. You're going to like it. Next up, we got UConn against Furman. UConn, did you know in UConn basketball history, so I'm talking about both the men's and the women's in this stat, do you know the last time, not counting the COVID year, because there was no tournament, the last time not counting the COVID year where there was no UConn team in the Final Four? Men's and women's.

44:02PFT Commenter:It's got to be like in the 90s.

44:03Big Cat:It was 2007. Oh, shit. Yeah, before that, it went back pretty long. So there's always a UConn team in the Final Four. They're also 18-1 as a program in championship games.

44:16PFT Commenter:Well, I was going to say my favorite UConn stat, or one of them, is that every time they go to the Final Four, they win it all. They don't go for empty trips.

44:24Big Cat:Yeah, 18-1 overall in national championship games, and the men's side, they've never lost national championship. I saw one thing that was like the math on, I think it's if you're 55 years old and you went to UConn, then you had like a national championship run during your college career there at some point. If you went four years.

44:51PFT Commenter:But they had a gap 2014 to Hurley. with Kevin Olley to Hurley.

44:57Big Cat:Men's and women's.

44:58PFT Commenter:Oh, men's and women's. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

45:00Big Cat:So if you're 55 or younger, you went to UConn, you enjoyed yourself. Yeah. You had a great time. On the Furman side, they've got one really interesting player. He's a big man, Cooper Bowser. He shoots 77%, averages 14 from the field. He just yams it. So they're just going to try to work UConn inside. Furman, they've been in the tournament a few times the last few years. you might recognize their name the fun fact about firman in terms of notable alumni was mark stan sanford who went there and then uh he was banging that chick olivia nuzzy that everyone was like oh she's about to write this article about banging rfk turns out it was mark sanford that she was banging in addition to rfk got it pretty much at the same time double bang muck bang yep also mark sanford quit being governor of south carolina and said he was going on a hike on the appalachian Trail, but it turns out he was really in South America the entire time banging his girlfriend.

45:56Big Cat:Oh, yeah, that's good.

45:58PFT Commenter:That's better than an Appalachian Trail. Yeah.

46:00Big Cat:Pretty horny guy. Yeah. Pretty horny state. So, yeah, we all know. We all know UConn. Yeah. Dan Hurley. He drinks piss before every game. Great head coach.

46:09PFT Commenter:So, Zach and Hank, do you have any good? You don't have to do every team, but just any interesting facts that you want to throw in there.

46:15Big Cat:I have a good Ohio State one. Yeah. Zach has a good UConn one.

46:18PFT Commenter:Okay, great.

46:18Big Cat:In 1926, the school elected a cow named Maudeen to be the homecoming queen. She was an award-winning dairy cow, once produced over 343 pounds of milk and over 28 pounds of butter in a single week. That's a good woman. And the school initially voted for a girl to win, but after the votes were counted, there were more votes cast than students at the school. So since there was fraud, they gave it to Maudeen, and the cow is still listed as homecoming queen with all the other girls who have been elected in school history.

46:46PFT Commenter:Oh, wow. Wow.

46:47Big Cat:So they once elected a cow, homecoming queen. Okay. Okay. I think Zach has to just do his whole thing. Zach has really... Rip him, Zach. He keeps saying, like, I don't have a good one, and then Max is reading it being like... All right, go. I've got a good UConn one, I guess. It's zero United States presidents graduating from UConn.

47:03PFT Commenter:Love that. Yeah. Why don't you just go rip it down? Rapid fire down the line. Okay.

47:07Big Cat:Furman, you know, upon first glance, you think Furman University has a lighthouse, but it's actually an 88-foot tall bell tower on the lakeside. You also can't fish in that lake. Really highly restricted.

47:16PFT Commenter:Okay.

47:17Big Cat:UCF, you know, Knights Pub, great bar at UCF. Unfortunately, it did close down. I was curious if we could just take a quick moment of silence for the Knights Pub. Yes. Thank you so much, guys. UCLA. You know what? If UCF wins, open bar at the Knights Pub on me. On Rothstein. Yeah. That's big of you. Yeah. Rothstein's going to match. Yeah. Actually, he'll double. That's huge. Yeah. UCLA. UCLA is 2 ,198 miles away from Magic City. They may be anti-chicken wing and anti-women. wait wait wait because they're so far away because they're not close to Atlanta they're so far away from Maddox City they couldn't get further away they go any further Pacific Ocean North Dakota State their school mascot is the bison but this is incredibly misleading because North Dakota's bison population pales in comparison to its neighbor South Dakota by tens of thousands of bison North Dakota roughly 12k South Dakota roughly 40 ,000 bison wow okay Michigan State Tom Izzo was born the same Same year, Albert Einstein died.

48:16Big Cat:It's 1955. Whoa.

48:18PFT Commenter:That's a good one.

48:20Big Cat:USF. Most of my boxed wine consumption was a USF.

48:24PFT Commenter:Oh, most of your boxed wine consumption?

48:25Big Cat:Yeah, it was a USF.

48:26PFT Commenter:You're a Franzia guy?

48:29Big Cat:Probably Barefoot.

48:31PFT Commenter:Barefoot box? Oh, man. You're going to be just fine filling in for the Midwest, I can already tell.

48:36Big Cat:Also, Tom is a -

48:37PFT Commenter:Or the West, sorry. Tom is a -

48:38Big Cat:No, I think we're getting caught up. Tom Nizzo's town is famous for bat viewing. Oh. He grew up in a mountain in the mountains.

48:46PFT Commenter:Okay. All right. Keep going, Zach.

48:48Big Cat:Louisville's coach, Pat Kelsey, in his head shot, he's got Mike McDaniel fit on. Big glasses. They're also both 5 '9".

48:54PFT Commenter:Okay. Good. Titans.

48:57Big Cat:Cal Baptist, the majority of their campus lies under clay tile roofs, which have a fantastic longevity of life. Roughly 40 to 50 years. Really some great curb appeal there. And you just don't see that at scale much with the clay tile roofs. Yeah. Great roofing. It's like a Spain. Mission-style housing. Yeah. For Kansas, you know, despite the recent narrative that Joel Embiid doesn't play, this Kansas alum only missed seven games his entire college career, playing 80 % of total games.

49:20PFT Commenter:Wow. Wait. He played at Kansas. When he was at Kansas, he played a lot.

49:26Big Cat:80%. So he's very healthy. Decently healthy. He did hurt his back towards the end, though. Yeah, he was out for the... Yeah. But he got better after that. No.

49:37PFT Commenter:Keep going, Zach.

49:38Big Cat:I can do that. TCU, their first matchup was against Ohio State. They've never won against Ohio State in the men's basketball. They played four times all in the 1960s, though, so TCU due for a win.

49:47PFT Commenter:Yep.

49:49Big Cat:Ohio State, we all know the Buckeye is Ohio State's mascot. The Ohio State Buckeye tree habitat, though, is currently being forced out of Ohio, driven northern towards Michigan. Their mascot is actively fleeing the state, which is bad energy for the tournament. It really is. That is tough. That's a good fact. Do Ohio State players, do they get Buckeye stickers? and if so where do they put them I don't know I'm going to text Titus and see I need to know that

50:15PFT Commenter:okay keep going Zach

50:16Big Cat:CNN starting forward Francis seems to be incredibly locked in on basketball and not any off court distractions because he's only got one post on Instagram the last several years and it's all about basketball

50:28PFT Commenter:all about basketball

50:29Big Cat:and Duke John Shire the current coach of Duke basketball won Glenbrook North High School a state championship in 2005 averaging 33.5 points per game. If a team associate with Shire needs a player averaging that many points to win, Duke stands no chance because their current leading scorer only averages 22.5 in Cameron Boozer.

50:45PFT Commenter:Okay. Yeah, Bucket, white mic. White mic. All right. Good job, Zach. Way to go. All right, I'm going to rip the South. Here we go. Florida, first up, the one seed, Florida. They have the tallest player in the history of college basketball when he got into a game earlier this year, Oliver Ryu. He's from Montreal. French guy Olivier Roux. Olivier Roux. Tallest player. He also said that he can put his leg behind his head, which is pretty crazy, and he can draw. That was his fun facts on the... I got deep on the Florida fun facts on the roster page. Florida has a player named AJ Brown, Max, and guess what his favorite non-basketball player is?

51:29PFT Commenter:AJ Brown. Christian McCaffrey. Smart guy. No, actually, it is AJ Brown. He listed it as A.J. Brown. Also, Isaiah Brown on the team said that one of the questions was if you had a superpower. A lot of teleportation from the Florida basketball team. Isaiah Brown said Iron Man. Isn't Iron Man just a rich guy? Iron Man's a rich guy with a cool suit. So that's not even a superpower. That's just being a rich guy. He just wants a cool suit. Smart guy, too. So Isaiah Brown, maybe think of something different like being invisible or something. All right. They're going up against Lehigh. I can't believe Olivier Roux can put his leg behind his head.

52:02PFT Commenter:Isn't that crazy? That should not happen. He didn't have to add, and I can draw.

52:08Big Cat:No. That was his two facts. Like, this dude with his leg. If I saw this dude putting his leg behind his head, it would just be an alien. I would leave that room.

52:18PFT Commenter:He's two full inches taller than the second tallest guy to ever play in college basketball, Kenny George. I just wish that they'd play him more. I love it when that guy gets out there. Lehigh. Lehigh. they have a wrestling a legendary wrestling stadium called the Snake Pit just thought that was cool my brother-in-law went to Lehigh also Jesse Reno invented the escalator in 1891 he went to Lehigh not that cool because I think he's just like he kind of like accidentally invented it the cool thing about Jesse Reno his dad was also by the same name Jesse Reno his dad was a general in the civil war and he was known as a soldier soldier badass that's nice died in combat was a general

53:02Big Cat:fought with the boys that's a good dude would always go and fight with the boys even though

53:05PFT Commenter:he's a general that's a good dude uh they're playing prairie view so we already know what's

53:09Big Cat:gonna happen wait what'd you mean by lehigh the guy accidentally invented the escalator i think i

53:14PFT Commenter:i was reading about it and it's like he kind of invented it but it's like it wasn't really perfected so maybe he's so he's just like an all-time lazy guy yeah he was like this fucking sucks taking the stairs there actually was a moment where i had a interesting dual dual stats on lehigh because they're on online it claims that lehigh created invented the turkey trot so that would be like the duality of man forcing you to run and the escalator but turns out the turkey trot was invented like 50 years earlier in buffalo um prairie view so this game's happening night prairie view uh the only thing i have on prairie view they own the longest against the spread winning streak currently at 11 games dating back to valentine's day okay so maybe you should

53:54Big Cat:have bet on him maybe not we don't know what happened if you would bet one dollar on prairie

53:58PFT Commenter:view university on valentine's day yeah as is custom yeah all right clemson iowa clemson has uh one of the best names in the entire tournament budda johnson his his his birth name is ephraim but he goes by budda he's listed as budda b-u-t-t-a love it they also have probably the whitest white guys possible in terms of names they have a chase blake jake carter and trent that's a lacrosse team i was just going down i was like how the fuck you can't have a chase blake and carter chase blake carter trent and jake yeah that's it that's an awl team yeah they also have a nick as well but still chase blake jake carter trent iowa uh slowest team in the second slowest team in the tournament.

54:47PFT Commenter:Northern Iowa is the slowest. It's nuts too because this is actually an important thing for people to listen to because if you are tuning in for the first time since last year or the year before, Iowa's 357th in pace. Under Fran McCaffrey, they were one of the fastest teams. He was 16th in pace. So just be ready. Iowa goes so, so slow. They used to go fast. They are so, so slow. Also, Ben McCollum, their coach, very good coach. He's from Iowa City, and his claim to fame before he became a really good basketball coach was that he learned all the names of the 99 counties in Iowa in alphabetical order when he was in high school.

55:27Big Cat:That's like some shit that a guy that finishes fifth in the presidential primary would say.

55:32PFT Commenter:Yeah. So that's Ben McCollum. Yeah. By the way, credit to me, I didn't do any Clemson is a cult facts. We did that last year. Yeah. But they are a cult. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt. Turns out, Vanderbilt. So the name, I was like, why are they the Commodores? Cornelius Vanderbilt was nicknamed the Commodore. Pretty badass nickname. Shipping family. People don't talk enough about the Vanderbilts just squandering all their wealth. The Rockefellers are still rich. The Vanderbilts just fucking, they're broke boys. Yeah, what happened to that? They just fucked it up. What do they invest in?

56:08PFT Commenter:I don't know, but they fucked it up. the Vanderbilts are not wealthy anymore.

56:11Big Cat:How do you get wealthy and then become like a major property owner in Nashville and then not make money?

56:18PFT Commenter:I don't know. Vanderbilt, like Rockefellers keep doing it. Vanderbilt's not so much. They're going up against McNeese. McNeese, Amir Khan, you might remember him, the viral boombox trainer from last year. He has made$3.7 million in NIL. No.

56:35Big Cat:No.

56:36PFT Commenter:Yeah, no, I made that up. But it sounded cool, right? That sounded like a cool fun fact. It's like almost believable. Also, for this game, you might want to take the over because Vandy is 10th in the tourney in total free throw attempts, and McNeese is 19th, and Vandy also has the fifth most personal fouls of any tourney team, and McNeese ranks 13th. So we might get a lot of clock stoppage free throws of the line. Good. I like that. Okay. Troy, Nebraska. Big one here. are you guys ready for uh a father's respect on the line so we actually had on wake up barstool today we had scott cross the the coach of troy and i was doing some research on him so we're about to talk with titus about the whole tournament fred hoiberg's son sam plays a very important part on nebraska turns out scott cross's son austin plays for him austin cross so i think this has to be like loser is a bad dad and i actually proposed this to scott cross he giggled a little bit but i don't think he loved it i was like are you willing to put your reputation as a father on the line in this game because we got two coaches sons going up against each other and on top of that we an assistant coach on troy scott campbell yeah he's got ginger twins on the team that's crazy that's a lot of that's a lot of blood so he's got kobe and cooper uh campbell so there's three there's three sons from the coaching staff of troy i think that it should it may be not like

58:08Big Cat:who's the worst that who is the worst coach's son's dad yeah just like cloak it a little bit

58:14PFT Commenter:yeah i mean we'll give you that award sam hoiberg is a senior and and austin cross is a freshman so it's not a little it's not fair but i'm i told scott cross when i brought this up i was like i'm willing to have it be scott campbell's twins because they're they actually played meaningful minutes also just a weird one because i was looking i was like there's no way nebraska also has twins uh they have cooper and jacob coke same exact last name no relation whatsoever that there's two cokes yeah it's crazy that is wild two white guys from iowa named coke no relation whatsoever both play basketball on the iowa or on the uh sorry nebraska uh team because I think their last name in Iowa would be Pop.

58:54PFT Commenter:Yeah. No, it's Coke. It's spelled the K-O-C-H. Got it. Yeah. Okay. UNC VCU. UNC. Caleb Wilson was six best plus minus in nation. He's not going to be playing. Sucks a lot. UNC feels like they are just limping into this. VCU. I just got famous alums. Jay Farrow. Didn't know that. And also Susan Higginbottom. Author and attorney. Sounds hot. Yeah, it's a cool last name. What do you got there, Max? That was just thumbs up. Thumbs up fact. Yeah, thumbs up fact. Also, just a fun fact about UNC that I like to share because it shows how cool of a guy Dean Smith was, the legendary coach. When Dean Smith passed away, he had his estate send a letter to every single player and$200 saying, enjoy a dinner on me.

59:42PFT Commenter:Yeah. $36 ,000 total in money. No chance Coach K does that.

59:47Big Cat:I think that's an awesome thing.

59:48PFT Commenter:Yeah, very awesome. Also, VCU has a guy named Lazar Djokovic, but it's spelled A-L-A-Z-A-R. I'm just going to say he's Lazer. And that's a common Serbian name. Serbians are doing names better than us. Yeah, Lazer Joker. Yeah. Okay, Illinois. Illinois. Tom Fernelli has complained multiple times that we don't talk about Illinois enough. And that was my fact for Illinois. No, I actually have one fact for Illinois. They're the most ethical team in the tournament. And I mean that by they were actually number one in offensive efficiency. They're number two now because Purdue beat Michigan on Sunday.

1:00:26PFT Commenter:But Illinois is dead last in steals and second to last in personal fouls. Okay. They play you straight up. They play it the right way. They're not trying to steal the ball from you. I like it. Yeah.

1:00:38Big Cat:Let the best team win. They're not trying to foul. They're not trying to steal the ball. They're just like, hey, we're just going to play this game. ball and hoop. We're all out here trying to make shots. We're not going to do anything to you that we wouldn't want you to do to us. Penn. They got a lot of Eastern Europeans on Illinois. So much so that I mistook it and I believe I said Momsilovich was on Illinois. But they do have so many itches.

1:01:02PFT Commenter:Yes. They got a lot of itches. Penn, Fran McCaffrey, fifth team he's taken to the tournament, which is pretty nuts. Lehigh, UNC Greensboro, Siena, Iowa and now Penn. And they have the combo of TJ Power and Cam Thrower both shooting over 42 % from three. Pretty cool.

1:01:17Big Cat:Also respect to the Quaker religion.

1:01:19PFT Commenter:Yeah.

1:01:19Big Cat:That we don't get enough shine. Representation matters.

1:01:21PFT Commenter:Penn's gonna get killed. St. Mary's. Randy Bennett, coach of St. Mary's. Third longest tenured coach in the tournament. Only beat out by Mark Few and Tom Izzo. He's only been to one Sweet 16, so maybe this year they can get back there. That'd be a nice story. Also, I just always forget that St. Mary's is 10 miles from Oakland. Yeah. I don't know why. I always just kind of, in my head, the map in my head, St. Mary's is Southern California.

1:01:48Big Cat:Oh, no, the map in my head, they are just outside of Perth. Okay. They're actually in Australia. Yes.

1:01:54PFT Commenter:Texas A &M, Bucky Ball. Just say Bucky Ball if you're watching the Texas A &M game at a bar. Bucky McMillan, their coach, they play in awesome style, high tempo, press, shoot a ton of threes. He calls it systematic chaos. You can call it Bucky Ball. It's fun.

1:02:13Big Cat:And also credit to you for not saying that Texas A &M is a cult.

1:02:16PFT Commenter:Thank you. I got the cult region. I got the cult region. And then Houston, Idaho, I had nothing other than Houston's going to kill them. I'm going to take Houston first half and full game. Idaho is named the Vandals because they had a team in 1917 that was so good defensively, they vandalized the ball. What? Yeah, they vandalized the other team, so they took away the ball. Like spray painted it? Yeah. Graffiti? That's right. All right, Zach. Clean me up.

1:02:43Big Cat:Iowa first official women's basketball coach appointed in 1902. Shout out to women.

1:02:49PFT Commenter:Oh, okay.

1:02:51Big Cat:Vanderbilt's located just one and a half miles from the heart of Nashville, making it the closest in proximity to the most bachelorette parties ever.

1:02:57PFT Commenter:Yep. Yep. Yep.

1:02:59Big Cat:McNeese is 15-0 this year at home. Thankfully for the other teams in the tournament, McNeese does not have any more home games on the schedule.

1:03:05PFT Commenter:Yep.

1:03:06Big Cat:VCU took roughly 30 million bricks to build the VCU campus. It is incredibly clay and sand heavy. masonry master class for nebraska he has nebraska on the left for the school and then the fact is nebraska yeah i couldn't let you skip that one yeah uh troy ways rerouted me my dad a few times uh and as a result on our road trip to chicago we did get to pass by and see troy

1:03:35PFT Commenter:Oh, cool. Yeah, that was pretty awesome. Alabama.

1:03:39Big Cat:We got really rerouted. Our drive was 23 hours. My dad has disavowed ways since. Oh, man. Deleted it off his phone. Great. One of the funnest times I've ever had in a car, though. What a ride. Yeah.

1:03:55PFT Commenter:Great.

1:03:57Big Cat:Texas A &M. A guy used to sell cars with his name is Jared. Went to Texas A &M. Shout out to Jared. Yeah, respect. Was he good? yeah he's yeah like six seven he's probably a hooper okay oh i mean it's selling cars oh also good at selling cars yes nice he's a finance office guy oh yeah that's where they get you that's where you get banked gap insurance St. Mary's, 46 different outdoor benches on campus. Phenomenal amount of seating. That's awesome. So many benches. And then lastly, North Carolina, the hex code for North Carolina's powder blue is Pantone is hashtag 7BAFD4. It's a great one. Love that.

1:04:32Big Cat:It's an all-time one. Hall of Fame Pantone.

1:04:33PFT Commenter:Great work. Okay, before we get to the rest of the brackets and fun facts, DraftKings, every March tournament delivers the unexpected bracket breaks. Upsets happen. Nothing goes exactly as planned this year. DraftKings Sportsbook is leaning into the chaos with a mystery reward you'll never see coming. All customers guaranteed rewards every single round. Opt in and boom, a single use mystery promotion drops straight into your account. What is it? That's the fun part. You won't know until it's yours. And whatever it is, it can flip your entire tournament strategy. So one thing we can tell you each round, there'll be a new mystery offer valid for the men's and women's tournament.

1:05:09PFT Commenter:Tournament is unexpected, but round by round, you're guaranteed an offer. Opt in today at DraftKings Sportsbook. Your mystery reward is waiting. Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app now. Use code TAKE. That's code TAKE to get opt-in and claim your mystery reward at DraftKings Sportsbook in partnership with DraftKings Sportsbook. The crown is yours. We're going to do a quick parlay that you can bet with us on the DraftKings Sportsbook app. I will go with – I'm going to go Houston first half minus 13.5. Okay.

1:05:36Big Cat:I'm going to go Arkansas team total under 87.5.

1:05:40PFT Commenter:I like that.

1:05:40Big Cat:I'm going to go Michigan State minus 16.5.

1:05:45PFT Commenter:Okay, so go bet with us on DraftKings Sportsbook. Zach, do you want to do the West? Hank, do you have a couple? I got the West.

1:05:53Big Cat:We got most of the West. Okay. Arizona, Bryce James looking to become the first NCAA champion in the family.

1:06:00PFT Commenter:Yep.

1:06:00Big Cat:See the clip of him after they won their conference championship?

1:06:05PFT Commenter:No.

1:06:06Big Cat:He was in his sweats. Obviously, he wasn't playing, but before they took the picture, he ripped off his sweats. Savvy move. Classic move. Also the first live mascot Tom Easter accidentally hung himself In 1915 What kind of mascot was? I'm assuming a bunny because his name was Tom Easter I don't really know Decidedly hung himself leading to a tradition of hiring Or finding feline mascots until moving to a Costume version You remember when the Denver The Nuggets mascot hung himself? That was an ugly moment NBA history The campus also used to have a nuclear reactor So injuries Long Island, their mascot now, filling the shark, fins up.

1:06:47Big Cat:They used to be the LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds and the LIU Post Pioneers. So there's a little fun fact for when the fins are upping. Yep. Shock in the world. Brooklyn Blackbirds is actually a pretty sick name. Yeah. Villanova. They have a tradition. Max, I'll like this one. It kind of makes sense. They have a tradition of naming parts of the campus after cookies, i.e. the Oreo. Familiar with the Oreo? What's the Oreo? I'm curious of the other parts of the campus that are named after cookies. Well, you just said the Oreo. Yes.

1:07:27PFT Commenter:Bax, did you ever name any of them?

1:07:29Big Cat:I did not. They've also had a student athlete or alumni in every single Summer Olympics for over 20 consecutive games. Whoa. that's pretty cool it is very cool uh utah state uh their head coach jared calhoun is a bob huggins disciple uh they're very mad about their seating so they're going to be you know chip on their shoulder top 30 offense top 50 defense thought they were going to be a six or seven seed uh so there's someone to look out for and unlike byu which is owned and operated by the lds church uh utah state is a public university and does not have the same religious requirements for students Cool.

1:08:08Big Cat:Oh, so it's like the bad boy. Yeah. Utah schools. You can have Dr. Pepper. Wisconsin. I have Kamari McGee played for Wisconsin last year. Averaged six points per game and is probably the greatest basketball player I've ever seen in person. So if he wasn't scoring, I think their team is stacked. Yeah. If he was that good and not even that significant of an impact on the team. But, I mean, how lucky is High Point that he's not there? Yeah. Yeah. He's so good. He's the man.

1:08:39PFT Commenter:Shout out Kamari McGee for showing up to the stream.

1:08:43Big Cat:And Wisconsin invented modern stem cells. Love that. That's kind of cool. Yeah. High point. I have, they give free ice cream to their students. Yep. Bad sign for Big Cat.

1:08:56PFT Commenter:It's fine. Listen, we give free ice cream here to our students. I know. I'm saying.

1:09:00Big Cat:You're like, it's just, I don't know. It's just a bad, I feel like it's a bad sign. Okay. You're going up against. They're going up against the cream.

1:09:07PFT Commenter:I've already talked about it. Yeah, I'm going up against free ice cream school. It's cream on cream. Yeah, cream on cream. How to do it.

1:09:12Big Cat:Arkansas. The thing that could stop a bad guy with an ice cream cone is a good guy with an ice cream cone. They had women's basketball before men's. So they had women's basketball in 1910s. Shout out women. They had women's basketball in 1923. And they have over three miles of campus sidewalks that are engraved with the names of every graduate since 1876.

1:09:33PFT Commenter:That's great.

1:09:34Big Cat:Creating one of the largest monuments to alumni in the world called the Senior Walk.

1:09:37PFT Commenter:What if one of those guys does something bad?

1:09:40Big Cat:Yeah, do they dig up the brick? They got to think since 1876. There's been some bad guys from Arkansas?

1:09:46PFT Commenter:No. Hitler was a Razorback?

1:09:49Big Cat:Why do they call them Razorbacks? The team originally had other nicknames, but in 1909, a coach said his players fought like a wild band of Razorback hogs. The name stuck and became one of the most recognizable mascots in college sports. Look at that.

1:10:01PFT Commenter:You had it right on the rip. Hog up. Way to go.

1:10:04Big Cat:Hawaii. The hog line, take it to the hog. I do love the hogs. Hawaii, this ties into the DraftKings parlay we just did. They held their opponents to 75 or fewer points 22 times this season and are 22-1 when doing so. So the Arkansas team total on DraftKings is 87.5. If somehow Hawaii can D up and hold them 75 or fewer, pretty much a guaranteed win. I like that pick. And the head coach has a twin brother who's a high-end fashion designer. Oh. So that's cool. Twins and twins. Not always going to go the same path. What fashion design? Just high end. Not low end. Super, super high end. We probably wouldn't even know that.

1:10:48Big Cat:Yeah. I'm more interested. We don't understand high end fashion. Max is cookies.

1:10:52PFT Commenter:Yeah. So you would just like point to like a street lamp, be like butter butter.

1:10:57Big Cat:I have nothing to do with this. For sure. It has nothing to do with me. Would you point to your bedroom? That's the cream pie. I never lived on campus. A bench. Twinkie. Nope. None of these things are accurate. Now we're giving false facts. Started with fun facts, now it's false facts. Now you're exhausted because you're on a diet, and then you see the bank, and you're like, Thin Mint. Needle. Needle gang.

1:11:20PFT Commenter:Oh, man.

1:11:23Big Cat:BYU. AJ Deben. I'm going to fuck that last name up. DeBansa. DeBansa. Brockton legend, Massachusetts. Sounds Italian. Was the Massachusetts Gatorade play of the year as a freshman in high school? Impressive. And then he went to California in high school in Utah, which is bizarre. I have a conspiracy theory that I've been mulling over the last few weeks here. There are so many Mr. Basketballs. There can't possibly be this many Mr. Basketballs out there. 50. Yeah, no. It feels like there's more, right? Well, it's probably different years. Yeah, but there's so many Mr. Basketballs.

1:11:59PFT Commenter:Being Mr. Basketball would be so sick. So sick.

1:12:03Big Cat:They have hit their first half over in five of their last six games. Like that? Something to think about. It's a rollover over. And beards have been banned since 1960s. That's brutal. The Yankees. Coffee, tea, alcohol, premarital sex. Banned.

1:12:17PFT Commenter:What about leggings? But beards is really the bad part. Yeah.

1:12:21Big Cat:Roughly one out of every four students on campus is married. Around 55 % to 63 % of BYU students are married by graduation in some studies. Crazy.

1:12:32PFT Commenter:I guess credit to BYU for speaking for the guys in this room that have beards. Wait, did you say beards or beers? Beards. Hey, what are you saying?

1:12:43Big Cat:Are you using a D or no? B-E-A-R-D-S. I thought you were saying beards.

1:12:47PFT Commenter:No, you were saying beards. So for the guys in this room that have beards, if you ban beards, you don't also have to ban premarital sex. We're not going to have sex if we have to shave our face.

1:12:59Big Cat:Yeah, no, that would be a real breaker for me. Yeah, it's a little redundant. I've long said if the Yankees tried to sign me right now, I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't go. I've seen a lot of Mormon women. There are, some of them would qualify as beards.

1:13:12PFT Commenter:What about gay guys who have fake girlfriends? Are those allowed? That's what I was getting at.

1:13:18Big Cat:I think, I don't follow the secret lives of Mormon wives, but I think their star just got arrested or has some crazy conspiracy going on. That's fun. Fun for the Morms. Flying over Provo. I've never been there. Flying over, it looks like heaven on earth. It looks like just an incredible place. You got the lakes. Yeah. You got the hills. It looks amazing.

1:13:39PFT Commenter:I was just about to say I've been there, but I have not. I've been to Utah.

1:13:42Big Cat:And that's where - University of Utah. That's where they have the nuclear reactor, right? I think so. Danny Ainge, legend. Utah State, maybe? Gonzaga.

1:13:52PFT Commenter:BYU people are very nice, by the way. I was lashing out on the bracket reveal show on Sunday and being like, Like, it's bullshit that BYU got a better draw just because they can't play on Sundays. Like, it's fucking religion. And then I had a bunch of BYU fans be like, dude, what's your problem? You're spreading false facts. And I replied to one of them. I was like, yeah, man, I was just lashing out for no reason. I don't really care. And he was like, respect, love the show. That was a really nice exchange. Wait, that is true, though, right? No, but I was just basically, it has nothing to do with Wisconsin seed.

1:14:22PFT Commenter:But yes, they cannot play on Sunday. They've actually gotten screwed over by it more often than not. They've gotten worse seeds because of their restrictions. How does Kyle Vannoy get around that?

1:14:35Big Cat:Respect.

1:14:36PFT Commenter:I think it's just that at a school they're not allowed to.

1:14:38Big Cat:Okay, but it's not like a command to religion. Correct.

1:14:42PFT Commenter:Okay, keep going.

1:14:43Big Cat:Gonzaga has one of the smallest campuses of a basketball powerhouse. Despite their huge basketball reputation, they only have 7 ,000 undergraduates.

1:14:51PFT Commenter:Are they a powerhouse? Have they ever been to a Final Four?

1:14:53Big Cat:They have. Not. They have. how many

1:14:58PFT Commenter:well we're doing the fake facts again let's do it again so Max sees no we're not doing this again

1:15:04Big Cat:get your jokes in now boys

1:15:11Big Cat:Kennesaw State may be a team of destiny they stink well their leading scorer got suspended he was like in one of the gambling you know controversies He got indicted, but they rallied. They won their Conference USA Championship. Team of Destiny. Max disagrees. Their leading score getting suspended and still making the tournament. That's Team of Destiny vibes, is it not? That's like the start of the championship DVD. I just watched that championship game because I had the under on it. I was like, this is just the worst basketball I've ever seen before in my life. Muck it up. But maybe muck it up.

1:15:55Big Cat:and then Purdue versus Queens. Purdue, their campus, is home to Hugh Hefner's Playboy DC-9 aircraft. What does that look like, PFT? It's a big plane. Known as Big Bunny, which was used in the 1970s as a luxurious mansion in the sky. It featured a bedroom with a fur-covered bed and was staffed by Playboy Bennys. Cool. So I don't know why they would want that on campus, but they do. That is the second most controversial jet in Big Ten history. The first being the Lolita Express that Les Wexner flew on all the time. And then for Queens, the Royals, that's their mascot, or that's their team name. Makes sense.

1:16:39Big Cat:They're averaging 85 points per game. They shoot more than 28 threes per game, hitting at a 36 % clip. Their coach in college made over 40 % of his three-point shots in collegiate career. So three-point, that's their policy. That's their policy. That's their policy. Threes in. Threes out. All right, Zach, any others? Contrary to property belief, Purdue University has no relation to Purdue Farms, the poultry company. They do chicken's breast and chicken tenders. Purdue University does computer science and agriculture.

1:17:10PFT Commenter:Okay.

1:17:10Big Cat:Miami, Abel Danger has not yet confirmed her attendance for the tournament. kinsaw state has a double campus it's 100 more campus than other campuses yeah that's in the metro atlanta area hawaii my best friend nick has family in hawaii but he decided to go to florida state okay that's hawaii that's probably the farthest from magic city yeah nick respects women yeah nick loves women respects women and i think he's a flats guy Yeah. So Arkansas. So definitely not Magic City, then. Maybe Magic City. No, yeah, true. You can't say flats only when you go to Magic City. That's a good point. Arkansas, PSA, you do need to be worried if your school is playing against Arkansas with a bird-themed mascot because Arkansas hosts the duck-calling world championships every year.

1:18:01Big Cat:Nobody knows birds like Arkansas.

1:18:03PFT Commenter:Okay.

1:18:05Big Cat:Oh, never mind. John Blackwell on Wisconsin. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What was the high point? It was probably free ice cream. It was ice cream, but I guess to add on to that, theirs is mobile. They have ice cream trucks. So like some of the other schools, stationary, they'll come to you.

1:18:21PFT Commenter:Yeah.

1:18:23Big Cat:Villanova, just a quick reminder, power of the Pope.

1:18:26PFT Commenter:Yep. Anything about naming things after cookies?

1:18:31Big Cat:There may be like a Nutter Butter Street. I'm not sure I've never been. Not a Nutter Butter Street. What is the Oreo though? It's like a meeting center in the middle. It's not like a meeting center. It's like a little quad area. Is it delicious? Why do they call it the Oreo? It's a sculpture. There's a sculpture that kind of looks like an Oreo that's in the middle. It's like a little circle. Got it. I'll show you a picture.

1:18:57PFT Commenter:And you're like, I got to name this after a cookie to remember what it looks like. See, it looks like an Oreo.

1:19:04Big Cat:Oh, it's the bean. Yeah. They have their bean. Yeah, it's just like in the middle of campus. There's the Oreo. All right, now pull up the Samoa. There's no Samoa.

1:19:15PFT Commenter:All right, keep going, Zach.

1:19:19Big Cat:Wisconsin's John Blackwell guard. He may own a Lamborghini, may not, but on Instagram he frequently drives one. Oh. It's good for him. He goes fast. Yep. And I guess we can round it off with Missouri here. Missouri alumni Brad Pitt is the only Missouri alum in history to marry both Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston.

1:19:38PFT Commenter:Yeah, nice work. That's really good. Good work, Brad. Okay, last region. Max, you're doing a great job, Zach, by the way. Oh, wait. Say the Queens one that I sent you.

1:19:48Big Cat:The Queens one is a good one. Queens is the first school beginning with the letter Q to make the NCAA Men's Tournament despite giving Quinnipiac a 25-year head start joining division. That's pretty good. Yeah.

1:19:59PFT Commenter:First Q school. Okay.

1:20:02Big Cat:Alright, we got Midwest. We have Michigan. Michigan, I guess, was just the best Big Ten team in the history of the Big Ten this year. First team to win 19 conference games. First Big Ten team in 50 years ago undefeated on the road in conference. This is the fact that was really shocking. They still would have won the Big Ten outright this year if you only counted games that they won by double digits.

1:20:25PFT Commenter:Wow. But did they lose any games in the conference?

1:20:28Big Cat:They did. No. So Wisconsin. Oh! Cool. And they also have a Big Ten record for victories by 40 points or more, which is seven. That's crazy. Seven games they won by 40 points or more. Domination. UMBC, they're playing the winner of UMBC versus Howard. UMBC, this is the first time coming back to the tournament since they upset UVA in a 16-1 situation. I don't know why I said situation. They were in a situation. Their coach, Jim Ferry, came from LIU fins up. Any famous alumni at Michigan? Dave Portnoy I don't even know if Larry Ellison I think he went there No, it's his girlfriend Larry Ellison went to Illinois His girlfriend's like, hey, I'd like a quarterback You got it, babe Okay, that's cool I thought he went there because he gives so much money to them And Tom Brady Kind of a beta move to spend so much money on your girlfriend's school Yep

1:21:30PFT Commenter:Although when you're Larry Ellison it's no different than like for Larry Ellison it's like your girlfriend saying hey can you buy me a new purse? Yeah. Can you buy me a new $12 million quarterback? It's probably cheaper.

1:21:40Big Cat:Can you give me an Underwood? For how much money he has. Yeah for sure. You think Tom Brady's rooting for Michigan? Or does he have a dog in the fight? I feel like he's probably rooting for Michigan. You would think. Yeah. Yeah. You never know. Although he probably should have played more at Michigan he could hate Michigan. Yeah you never know. A guy like that. UMBC Kathleen Turner went there. She's an actress. Yep. I know her. Howard, they won their last game, their last eight games by an average of 25 points. They're beating the shit out of teams right now. They have a senior who got a lot of hype last year about maybe entering the transfer portal, but he decided to come back for one more year.

1:22:19Big Cat:And they have a powerhouse of alum from Howard. So many alum from Howard. Kamala Harris, Thurgood Marshall, Chadwick Boseman, Marlon Waynes, and ex-wife of Zach's so-called best player in NBA history, Lali Anthony.

1:22:38PFT Commenter:We don't say Kamala Harris's name around here. That might get Jerry O 'Connell beat up. Right. That's a good point. That's a fair point. We're going to have to talk about that because the next time he comes on.

1:22:53Big Cat:Next, we got Georgia. Georgia scored 120 points in a game this year. That's cool. That's so many points. It was against Moorhead State earlier in the year. 120 points are so many points. That had to have been a very fun game. Their starting forward, Kanan Catchings, is a nephew of WNBA legend Tamika Catchings. Oh, hell yeah. Some notable Georgia alumni is Ryan Seacrest and Coach Taylor, Kyle Chandler. Coach Taylor. Former prospective part of my take guest, Kyle Chandler. All right. Cool. St. Louis, we finally got Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. We talked about this. Robbie Avila, leading scorer. I think he's only scoring like 12 points a game, but he's the leading scorer for St.

1:23:36Big Cat:Louis. They have, I think, like six guys that average over eight points a game. It's the oldest university west of the Mississippi. Huh. And their mascot is a Billiken. What is a Billiken, you may ask? What is a Billiken? I'm glad you asked because I have the answer. It is a mythical good luck figure that is a symbol of things of things they ought to be, which is lame as hell. That's a horrible mascot. Yeah, bad mascot. So it's like always be wishing for something better. The opposite of grass is greener. They describe it as a mascot of optimism.

1:24:15PFT Commenter:What cookie does a Billiken remind you of?

1:24:22Big Cat:Probably just a chocolate chip cookie.

1:24:23PFT Commenter:Oh, so you are good at this.

1:24:25Big Cat:That was the most basic answer. And Jenna Fisher went to St. Louis. Nice. All right. Pam. It does make sense that it would be the oldest west of the Mississippi, right? Because it's on the Mississippi. So it's like they probably cross and they're like, okay, school. Right away. That's a good point. Yeah. That's a good point. Texas Tech, I was meaning to look up more, but all I have for Texas Tech is during finals week they offer free late night pancakes between 10 and midnight. That's good for them. That's a great fact. Yep. That's what we got for Texas Tech. Used to be in a dry county until pretty recently.

1:24:57Big Cat:Big Cat's assistant, next we have Akron, and Big Cat's assistant, Dom, went to Akron, so he gave me all of these facts. Let's not use a saying, he's Dom, he's a partner. He's a partner. No, he's... No, I've made him a partner. He's a partner. No, no.

1:25:12PFT Commenter:I have made... Big Cat made me partner is what he said this morning. I made Dom a partner.

1:25:19Big Cat:So Dom said that To him the most notable Alumni of Akron is Mark Davis' right hand guy

1:25:27PFT Commenter:Also a partner

1:25:30Big Cat:That's not I mean he very well could be

1:25:32PFT Commenter:That sounds like a guy who might be a partner

1:25:35Big Cat:A right hand guy for Mark Davis For an NFL owner? I shouldn't have said that Being a right hand guy? I shouldn't have said that No We got so many partners. All right, keep going. Okay. All right, I'm back. Their mascot is the most popular female mascot in all of sports. That's according to Dom. Disagree. And I'm a blue hen guy. There was a big shot made in the conference tournament by Shama Scott. He had a big buzzer beater to advance Akron. His grandfather is Pastor D. Scott Who is also Trump's pastor Oh, okay Way to get political, Max Do you have any tweets about that? I have a tweet from the pastor Had a good call with the POTUS We laughed, joked, and talked about several things Including the Akron Zips basketball team Going to the dance He said I'll watch the game Very cool Alabama Wait, 0 % chance he watches this game Yeah I don't know Maybe.

1:26:42Big Cat:He likes sports. Alabama. I reached out to notable alumni Rico Bosco for some fun facts on Alabama. Unfortunately, he did not answer in time. So I'm just going to go with their second best player was arrested for first degree possession of marijuana. And he is now the fourth player to be arrested on the Alabama men's basketball team since 2023. I saw an update to the story this morning. It was about two pounds. 2.1 pounds. Not really that much pot. Pot is basically legal right now. I mean, if this was anywhere else, let the kid play.

1:27:19PFT Commenter:Actually, PFT, I saw a bunch of people, because I thought the same thing, but it actually would be illegal in 50 states. No. All 50 states. But it's legal. Yeah. Having that much would be illegal in all 50 states.

1:27:31Big Cat:That's a lot of weed.

1:27:32PFT Commenter:It's a lot of kush.

1:27:34Big Cat:I mean, we did have Alex Caruso on this couch like a month ago. and he's a great friend of ours. I think that we should be willing to overlook minor marijuana infractions on this show.

1:27:47PFT Commenter:You're giving Nate Oates permission.

1:27:48Big Cat:I'm giving Nate Oates permission. If he can find a judge in town, that will okay it. All right, keep going, Max. I think it'd be way funnier if he just kept doing this. Yeah. Next, we've got Hofstra. I personally attended Hofstra for two years. Two other people that also attended Hofstra were Marquise Colston, great wide receiver in the NFL for the Saints, and Bernie Madoff. And Stephen Che. And Stephen Che. Yeah. Bernie Madoff, not as good of a guy. Yeah. But he made a lot of money. Dude, he could pick them. He probably had a pretty good life. Let's be honest. Bernie Madoff, if you have the biggest Ponzi scheme in the history of the world.

1:28:28Big Cat:A great run. You had a solid 30 years. Oh, yeah. Where it was just eating high off the hog. just loving every day waking up bright eyed bushy tailed they made a movie about you two yeah two movies Robert De Niro played you in a movie pretty cool yeah alright this is the first time that Hofstra's been back in the tourney since 2000 under coach Hank

1:28:57Big Cat:fastest mouse in all Mexico he's looking for Jay Wright Jay Wright was a coach the last time Hofstra made the tournament But this isn't the last time they won the CAA. They unfortunately won the CAA in 2020, but weren't allowed to go because COVID canceled the tournament. Sucks for Hofstra. It's good that they're back. Shout out Hofstra Hoops. A couple other fun facts. In 2016, the first baseman on their baseball team hit a home run against Manhattan College while simultaneously shitting his pants. And also in 2016...

1:29:27PFT Commenter:What was his first baseman's name?

1:29:28Big Cat:This first baseman's name was Max Delente. uh also in 2016 there was a very i just want to shout out there was a bar named dizzy's shout out dizzy's love that it was a good bar uh it unfortunately got shut down also in 2016 or no actually that was in 2015 because there were undercover cops that went in and busted some people underage for being inside of that bar i happen to be one of those people that were that or underage and was there the last night of Dizzy's. Sorry about that for everyone at Dizzy's. Wait, so you got Dizzy's closed down? I was one of the culprits, yes. I hate that about you, Max.

1:30:09Big Cat:Yeah. That's my least favorite thing about you. Sorry. Meme said he'd been to Dizzy's too. You could go there when you're like 15. Yeah. That was a thing with Dizzy's for sure. Okay. Oh, Tennessee. Tennessee, I got these from our good friend Big T, also alumni of Tennessee. The first one is their point guard, Jacoby Gillespie. His grandfather was a world champion drag racer. It's pretty cool. Yeah, I saw him on RuPaul. Yep. And Cade Phillips, who's an injured player for Tennessee, has gone viral on TikTok very recently for being hot. so I guess girls take videos of him while he's playing and say this guy's really hot it's important to have one of those guys yeah it's good to have one of those guys next we got Miami of Ohio notable alumni Big Ben they are an annoying school that say that they are the original Miami even though they are obviously not the real Miami

1:31:13PFT Commenter:not the one that people think of

1:31:14Big Cat:but their defense is that Miami as a school was founded before Florida was even a state there you go love and honor so whatever uh i have one more fun fact about miami of ohio yep it's from mad dog she told me this fact if you're ever at a bar and you see a really hot chick at that bar she probably went to miami of ohio that's that's a great yeah she swears she swears that that's true huh okay so just something to know like if you see if you're betting with your friends like where you think she went to school miami ohio you'll win like 60 of the time love that and that apparently they miami ohio also has a very cool bar on their campus which i guess most most of these works yeah yeah uh has his jersey retired in there yeah uh smu has a guy named boopy miller awesome name uh they don't tailgate at smu they boulevard which upon further The research looks exactly like a tailgate, but they just do it on a boulevard.

1:32:17Big Cat:And also, Larry Brown remains the only coach to win an NCAA title and an NBA championship. Not the current coach of SMU, but a former coach. Cool fact. It might be the number one MILF University. SMU. Love that. Yeah. That's a good fact. I crowdsourced a lot of these facts. Yeah, yeah. I had a lot of barstool alumni because we're going on to UVA next. Crowdsourced this one from alumni Jake Malisek, who is a barstool employee, works for Coach John Gruden. Jakari White has alopecia, and the students have created a kind of a group, a fan group for him, and they call themselves the Jakarmi, and they have a bunch of t-shirts and all sit behind the basket.

1:33:04Big Cat:It's a cool thing, it looks like. Jakarmi is a great name. What does the alopecia have to do with that? I don't know. I thought it was going to be something to do with raising awareness. I did too, but I'm just reading the facts that I got. Malisek just wanted to include that one. Yeah. They have a freshman, Teister Ritter, who is 22. He's a freshman.

1:33:28PFT Commenter:Okay.

1:33:30Big Cat:There's a guy, Chance Mallory, who went to high school across the street from the campus. And Ryan Odom is their coach. and he was the coach of UMBC when UMBC beat UVA. Okay. Then we have they're playing Wright State. They almost blew it in the Horizon League Championship, but they had a sick block to save the game and advance them to the tournament. And they have an underground tunnel system that connects 21 of the 22 academic buildings so students don't have to walk in the cold in the winter, which sounds awesome. That is awesome. You could probably have some fun in those tunnels. Kentucky, a lot of boring basketball facts, whatever.

1:34:07PFT Commenter:that's good that's a good fact

1:34:09Big Cat:that's it yeah that's fine we can go one of the facts I found is a John Calipari stat which I probably shouldn't have even included oh and they have more barrels of bourbon in the state of Kentucky than they do people

1:34:24PFT Commenter:oh that's cool that's very cool

1:34:26Big Cat:alright Santa Clara memes you actually gave me most of these facts you want to hop in wait wait wait read the Calipari stat that's actually it's kind of interesting. John Calipari, the longtime coach of Kentucky, coached a lot of NBA players in his time there. The players under Calipari have a total GDP of $5.8 billion, which is higher than the countries of Estuani, Liberia, South Sudan, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Wow. That's crazy. That's a crazy stat. That one was from Quig's. Quig sent me that one. Shout out, Quig's. Santa Clara. They're playing Santa Clara, which... Oh, wait, no. Oh, no, they are playing Santa Clara.

1:35:04Big Cat:This is Memes' favorite team in the tournament because they play late at night and hit a lot of overs. First time making the tournament since 1998 when Steve Nash was there. And they have a guy named Sash who transferred from Nova, and I liked him, but he never got any time at Nova. Oh, Sash. I like Herb Sendek too. He is like an old-school Pittsburgh football guy that coaches basketball. Then we have Iowa State for Tennessee State. Iowa State, basically, I just want to talk about Milan Monchilevich because he might be one of the coolest guys in college basketball. He just absolutely dominates threes.

1:35:41Big Cat:There's a lot of debates going on online right now of who's had the best three-point season in college basketball, and it's between him and Steph Curry. He broke the Iowa State record for most made threes in a season, and he did that while shooting 49.6 % from the field, which is the best three-point percentage in the country. He made eight threes in a game four times this year, including the Big 12 semifinal where they did lose to Arizona, but he was insane. So he is nasty, and I have loved watching him play, but I feel like I might personally be the Mumsilovich stopper because every single time, I think I've bet on his point total over five times this year, and it hasn't hit a single one of the times.

1:36:26Big Cat:So I just got to stay away. Yeah, you got to stay. He's so fun. I want to make a promise to all the clones out there. I'm staying away from betting Momsilovich points. Any prop with him. I'm not going to touch it. Okay. Last one, Tennessee State. Last one, Tennessee State. First time back since 1994. They used to be known as Tennessee A &I and was an NAIA dynasty. They won three consecutive national championships from 57 to 59, and they were the first HBCU to win a national championship in basketball at any level.

1:36:55PFT Commenter:Okay. Good job. Clean this up, Zach.

1:37:00Big Cat:I've got some cleanup for us. Michigan. Michigan's starting five lineup has a combined 26 syllables in their names. Average at best when it comes to syllables. Georgia. University of Georgia has the highest rated dining hall of any school that's competing in the tournament. They're 13 in the nation.

1:37:13PFT Commenter:Wow.

1:37:14Big Cat:Some notable options there. They have personal pizzas, customizable taco bowls, and scratch milkshakes. Texas Tech. Decent amount of moms and the parents of class of 2025 to 2026. 26, Texas Tech Facebook group saying Texas Tech is by far the longest tour they've been on by a long shot. Wow. Big campus. Akron, you know, their mascot is a kangaroo. Fun fact, kangaroos can't walk or jump backwards due to their long feet. Hofstra keeps a presidential debate on them at all times. Only college to have three in a row, 2008, 2012, and 2016. Tennessee, campus is located very close to the Tennessee Valley Authority TVA nuclear assets.

1:37:52Big Cat:Players are some of the most likely in the tournament to develop adaptations due to the proximity of seven nuclear reactors. Okay. When I was there during the Hofstra debate, I just wore my Caruzione jersey around campus all week that week. The most stupid college thing of all time. That's what I did. I love that. I love that. I got Kentucky. My friend Lloyd's dad, Big Lloyd. Was that the Ken Bone debate? It was. Fuck yeah. It was. All right. That's a fun fact. Ken Bone got famous at Hofstra. Most famous Hofstra alumni. I did not attend the debate. You had to win a lottery to actually get inside the building, but there was a bunch of stuff going around.

1:38:29Big Cat:What do you think Ken Bone's doing these days? Just hanging. What's Ken up to? Don't want to know, Hank? The Bone Zone sold about 10 of those shirts. Yeah. Hank's right. That's the guy. Don't look too deep into that. I want to hear Big Lloyd. So my fact for Kentucky is my friend Lloyd, his dad, Big Lloyd, of course, he's just sitting in his man cave in the garage in motherfucking Kentucky basketball. I ride with Big Lloyd, so if it's got to be fuck Kentucky basketball. He also loves Jeff Gordon.

1:38:55PFT Commenter:Okay, love that. Love Big Lloyd.

1:38:58Big Cat:San Clara sits in the – yeah, big shout out Big Lloyd. Love Big Lloyd. Great guy. All-time guy, man. San Clara sits in the heart of Silicon Valley, or some call it the global hub of technology. So they may have access to tech that other teams just can't touch. Love that. And Tennessee State have got – their next game is on a Friday against Iowa State. They played on one other Friday this entire season. UT Martin 68-55 with a victory. currently undefeated on Fridays. So if you're going off days of the week, Tennessee State might take it. And then I've got Alabama. Respectfully some of the hottest women I've ever seen on Instagram all go to Alabama.

1:39:32PFT Commenter:Yeah. Yeah. On Instagram. Sidney Thomas is who you're talking about.

1:39:39Big Cat:They got, I mean, they got all of them. Just hang them in the rafters. They got judges everywhere.

1:39:43PFT Commenter:She just released her bracket. I love the March Madness official account, just dropping random brackets. Sidney Thomas has Alabama over Illinois. Okay. Young, no. Who's the Young Gravy? Is Young Gravy? Is that a person? He has Wisconsin winning it all. Milf guy. Yeah, huge. Okay, good job, boys. Let's do Hot Seat Cool Throne, and then we'll talk some more actual basketball talk with Titus. Okay, before we get to Hot Seat Cool Throne, Twisted Tea. Twisted Tea is a refreshing hard ice tea made with real brewed tea and 5 % alcohol. Twisted Tea is the perfect drink to keep the good times going all day and all season long, whether you're hanging out at a friend's house, catching a game at the stadium or at the bar or day drinking with friends, Twisted Tea is there to turn your day up a notch and make a good time, a great time.

1:40:29PFT Commenter:Grab a refreshing Twisted Tea today. I'm trying to think of a moment from we were talking about it in the gambling cave on Thursday, PFT, you and I, the Creighton-Oregon game, double overtime from two years ago. That's a moment that could have used a Twisted Tea. We were a lot of stress. Yeah. Could have had a twisted tea. A great March moment. Yes, a great March moment. So go get a twisted tea today. Real brewed tea and 5 % alcohol. Grab a refreshing twisted tea today. Okay, Hank, hot seat, cool throne.

1:41:02Big Cat:My hot seat? I don't know. It's Matt Leinart. Oh, disagree. Disagree. Yeah, it's an embrace debate. I like this. So his jersey, number 11, is retired at USC. but the school is asking him to un-retire his jersey for recruits who wanted it. Leinart said he'll never agree to that. I think it's hot seat just because they even ask. They're like, he's not good enough. Maybe it was because of his pro career. I'm not sure. But the fact that the school thought it was even a possibility that he would un-retire his number kind of means to me he's on the hot seat. But I could see it either way. So he did clarify this, and he said Coach Riley, Lincoln Riley, has not asked him if a specific recruit can wear his number.

1:41:47Big Cat:But he has been asked in the past, and he's said the same thing every time.

1:41:50PFT Commenter:I think that's probably just a logistics thing because there's so many guys on the roster. They have to do double numbers anyway. So they're probably like, I wish we hadn't.

1:42:00Big Cat:But when they're recruiting, if they're recruiting a five-star and he's like, I need to be number 11.

1:42:05PFT Commenter:I would be like Matt Leonard. I would say no. We got to start opening up more numbers.

1:42:10Big Cat:Here's the thing. But if it's Wisconsin and you have an opportunity to get a great player as an alumni, don't you want to help your program?

1:42:19PFT Commenter:I would maybe say I'll let you do it this time, but he has to be really good. If he doesn't pan out, I'm never doing it again. You get one shot. I think that if your number is retired, it's retired. The word retired is retired. It means something. What if he gives it up to a five-star recruit and that recruit wins two Heismans? I agree. Then you just don't have a number anymore. But don't you think it's kind of disrespectful to even ask? Yeah, no, I do. Do you think if he was a Hall of Famer in the NFL that they would ask? I think he might actually say yes. I mean, USC is what he has. That's not disrespect to Matt Liner.

1:42:58PFT Commenter:I love Matt Liner, but USC is his thing. I completely back him on saying no. Yeah, he should never be asked. You should have too much decorum to ask Matt Leinart

1:43:11Big Cat:if he's going to un-retire his number for you. What about, is OJ's number still retired? I don't know. Probably. Google or... Yeah, it says that number 32 is... Yeah, let's get that one. So get that, you got a perfectly good number 32.

1:43:27PFT Commenter:Yeah, get that one going. Get that back in the mix.

1:43:31Big Cat:That's what Matt should counter with. Yeah. I can't do my number. Best I can offer is OJ Simpson. My other hot seat is PFT for a couple reasons. Uh-oh. A couple reasons. Did you see what happened to your JMU Dukes rugby team? I did not see what happened. Wait. What? Whoa. They lost to Southern Virginia 122 to nothing.

1:43:57PFT Commenter:Yeah, but remember, this could maybe be a tie in second place or something.

1:44:02Big Cat:Hang on. Let me do a little digging. Where did you see this? A few different places. Southern Virginia? What school is that? It's in Virginia in the South region.

1:44:15PFT Commenter:Yeah. You lost 122 to nothing?

1:44:19Big Cat:I need to read about this story here. You got to do some digging? They closed the match with a 40-point run. Oh. 57-0 at halftime. Oh. Listen, you sprung this on me. I need a chance to read about it. Are you reading? I'm reading about it right now, yeah. All right, I'll let PFT read, and then I'll say my other reason. It looks to me, just by reading the game recap of this, that Southern Virginia might import a lot of players. Southern Virginia is 2-6 in the season. Oh, no. It looks like they might. Now, are we going to find another spin zone? Are we talking about the same kind of? Oh, well, they lost to, yeah, Life University is like the best Sevens team.

1:45:12Big Cat:Also, this is Sevens. Life University? Yeah. So, Life University is a chiropractic university in, I think, Georgia or Florida. But they have like one of the best rugby teams in the world. How about University of Mary Washington? Yeah, Mary Washington. We played against them a couple times. This is Sevens, by the way. Well, JMU had the flu. I'm looking right now. I think it's sevens. Queens College.

1:45:35PFT Commenter:Everyone on JMU had the flu.

1:45:38Big Cat:I need to do some more research about this. We're going to regroup. We'll be fine.

1:45:43PFT Commenter:JMU takes precautions with flu on the rise.

1:45:46Big Cat:Social distancing.

1:45:48PFT Commenter:Yeah. That was from December 1st, 2022. But when was this game played?

1:45:52Big Cat:A couple weeks ago.

1:45:53PFT Commenter:You don't know how long the flu lasts?

1:45:55Big Cat:March 6th. Yeah, it's forever ago. March 6th, I guess, was when this article was written. and then listen that's ancient history in fact it's probably going to be good has JMU played another game since? yeah look up JMU's schedule here

1:46:13PFT Commenter:this could be dangerous

1:46:14Big Cat:we were very good in rugby just like two years ago

1:46:18PFT Commenter:this could be dangerous

1:46:19Big Cat:is it like an NIL thing? do you need to get on the horn? I did give them a bunch of money when I was there for the football game in the parking lot they were tailgating and I was like, here's$1 ,000, go buy some beer. I don't know if that made it back to facilities.

1:46:37PFT Commenter:Okay.

1:46:39Big Cat:And then my other hot seat for PFT was, you know, got a lot of skills, a lot of talents. Coaching basketball, not one. Yeah, no, I'll agree with that one. I mean, when it comes to rugby, listen, I built a legacy at JMU. It's a tough one for them to live up to sometimes. So I'm very aware of the shadow that my talents cast over the program. It's like if your dad's Tiger Woods, hard to become one of the best golfers in the world. That's why Charlie's so different and special. When it comes to my basketball playing ability or my basketball coaching ability, yeah, I did you guys a big disservice last night.

1:47:13Big Cat:I did. I got outcoached by Roan big time. No excuses on my part. Now, it was kind of tough that it was going 15 to 2 and you guys were still committing turnovers. and taking twos. Yeah. Yeah, we did pros versus Joes. We were playing former college, like all Americans, Tyler Hansborough, the Wisconsin kid we talked about earlier.

1:47:35PFT Commenter:Kamari McGee, shut up.

1:47:37Big Cat:At one point, I kind of knew we weren't going to win, but I was like, by the time we get to 15 versus four, maybe we have a shot. 15 versus three, we should definitely win. We lost 15 Barstool employees versus three former college basketball players, and it was one of the most demoralizing losses I've ever been a part of.

1:47:56PFT Commenter:Great stream.

1:47:58Big Cat:Yeah, I'm sure it was fun to watch.

1:47:59PFT Commenter:I was having a great time watching. Yeah, I think taking twos when we have no one who can shoot was probably a problem. And then, yeah, it felt like there was not a lot of organization. But that's okay. Those guys are good. They're good at basketball.

1:48:18Big Cat:We tried to organize. But coaching was pretty pointless last night I could say anything And you guys would just go out there And just dribble And bounce it off your legs in the lane Is that not a coaching concern? I was screaming no more dribbling No more taking the ball into the paint We could have had a better game plan I agree We could have had a better game plan What would you have done Max? I tried to switch it up too We were defending each other on offense That's a user issue We See people We needed less people on offense I was telling people to stay back And then I was telling people To cherry pick too

1:49:01PFT Commenter:You guys watching at home I was like just put five guys On the three point line extended Five guys underneath the hoop And then five guys on the offensive side

1:49:13Big Cat:We're trying to implement No dribbles I think that's too many guys underneath the hoop. I think five guys extended, three guys.

1:49:21PFT Commenter:Yeah.

1:49:23Big Cat:One guy in the – whatever. This is, you know. You could have trapped him. Monday morning. Trapping would have been, yeah. You had so many guys. Oh, I – well, funny you mentioned that, Memes. I tried to do that. I tried to do the – No, this was the stupidest idea ever. I tried to do the form of circle, the Steph Curry NBA Reddit post. and then I gave the plan to the guys and Max goes, this is stupid, we're not doing that and then I said fine, Max, go ahead and then you guys inbounded the ball and turned over and lost the game well, it was so fucking frustrating whatever, I was barely even playing because I was the only one who realized that too many people on offense who aren't good at offense is a detriment, but for some reason everyone in this company thinks that they're the hero and that they need to take that shot and it was like If we just actually try and win this game, we can get out of here now.

1:50:16PFT Commenter:No one has nailed this place better than our good friend Nick Turani, who said that we're just the home of pathetic Titans. That's what we are. We had a lot of small guys, too. We're pathetic Titans. Yeah, but they were. We also have a lot of wasted size.

1:50:31Big Cat:We have wasted size, but we had a lot of small guys out there, too. The most frustrating thing by far was the very last play of the very last game, and we're winning 15 or we're winning what was it six to three at the time and it was 15 on two and we're up six to three and we have the ball under the basket and i'm just the plan for the last three games has been pass the ball to deutsch because he was the only guy that could score on the inside but for some reason they just wouldn't pass the ball to deutsch so dave white socks dave gets the ball and uh on the inbounds play again it's 15 against two throws the ball directly to one of their two guys yeah that was tough who takes it up the court then nicky smokes takes his shoes off throws them into the crowd and we finally get the ball down court and and get off there with a uh a seven to three win but it was it was the most frustrating thing i've been i tried i i tried the best that i could max i'm sorry that i i was not able to put you guys in a good position to win but you guys weren't listening either next time next time next time we have that is true people weren't listening yeah that's fair shout out kamari mcgee he was awesome he was

1:51:46PFT Commenter:really good yeah brendan paul was awesome too all of them were awesome yeah uh and then my cool

1:51:52Big Cat:throne dune part three what do you mean the the trailer came out today dune part two probably my favorite movie last five years dune part three and then they have so it's like it's coming out the same weekend as like the new Avengers movie, but Dune part three has some deal with IMAX where they have the rights to show their movie in all of the IMAX theaters. So the movies come out at the same time, but Dune part three just owns the IMAX. So it's just a power move.

1:52:20PFT Commenter:Okay. Okay. When is it coming out?

1:52:23Big Cat:December.

1:52:24PFT Commenter:Okay. Excited? How many times are you going to see it?

1:52:27Big Cat:In theaters, probably two or three, and then I'll probably watch it. I watched Dune 2 on every flight. Are they one of those popcorn bucket advertisement things? Oh, yeah, the dick suckers? Yeah, the thing that everyone wanted to fuck.

1:52:40PFT Commenter:Yeah. That's cool.

1:52:42Big Cat:Yeah, it's exciting. Okay.

1:52:44PFT Commenter:PFT?

1:52:45Big Cat:Yeah, my hot seat is also going to be me. So there's a triple hot seat because I'm a broke boy, apparently, and was not able to buy one of Jim Irsay's guitars. So they all went for sale last week, and they all went for like$5 million. Yeah. And it was crazy Like I think The The black strat From Pink Floyd Went for like 15 million Jerry Garcia's Tiger guitar Went for what Like 11 million It was like 11

1:53:10PFT Commenter:Yeah Derek Trucks played it On Friday and Saturday At the Beacon Theater It was awesome

1:53:14Big Cat:Yeah so I did When they announced That this auction Was gonna happen When they're gonna Sell all of his guitars I made a note And I was like Okay check back in When this comes up Because I'm gonna Save up some money And I'm gonna buy One of the cheapest ones That goes up for sale There was not one That was even remotely In my price range To buy so everybody hit me up and they're like hey did you buy anything i was like no no absolutely not not even close i did not even think about buying anything um and the uh other hot seat is ryan whitney oh because dry saddle is out for the year they just announced which is a tough break and you know what maybe maybe this is what they need maybe it's like maybe the oilers are better without

1:53:54PFT Commenter:dry saddle yeah so dry saddle and awesome matthews right awesome matthews i think is out for the year too for the uh leafs yeah yeah yeah i saw that like two days ago that sucks yeah so there's a

1:54:05Big Cat:tough break from whitney i have not seen also kind of tough for us because we don't like if they're not good it's not even fun yeah there's no expectations i mean it just seems like it's all falling in place for the abs right now but yeah whitney had a bad couple days he said that he was in a uh he was in a coffee shop and some kid looked at him and was like hey ask ask that old man what time it is said that to their friend so whitney was just the random old man in the coffee shop damn then dry settle goes out for the year i don't know if that means also out for the for the playoffs yeah probably out for the regular season at least right now as he oh it's a yeah

1:54:41PFT Commenter:whitney said leon out for the rest of the regular season so no panic don't worry this is all part

1:54:45Big Cat:of the madness that is oilers hockey okay so i might be back it's part of the plan my cool throne is us as a group yeah we won something we did it good job guys we want memes what award did we win Best Sports Podcast Let's go

1:55:01PFT Commenter:Alright

1:55:01Big Cat:Love it First time in 10 years We won an actual award Who gave it to us? So that's a good question Because Memes put out a graphic Show them the graphic Memes Pull that

1:55:10PFT Commenter:Yeah I retweeted the graphic

1:55:11Big Cat:That was the extent of my celebration The graphic was wonderful It was just a graphic That says Best Sports Podcast Award First award in show history Yeah Yeah And Memes just refused To put the name of the The company that gave the award out Which I respect Good job That's great Memes I think we've disavowed awards in the past Oh yeah we have We don't really care I'm shocked that they ended up So I was thinking about it Like what's different about this show Zach Zach I feel like Zach This is your award Zach This is really your award Yes I agree We've been doing this shit for nine years And everyone is like You guys suck This podcast is terrible And then we get Zach on there We had a plus minus monster I'll bet that there's a I'll bet this panel is just women.

1:56:00Big Cat:Hot chicks. And they were like, Zach. Zach attack. I'm a Zach fan. I fucking love this guy. I'm just in the ecosystem. This is your guys' award. No, no, no, no, no. You are the ecosystem.

1:56:14PFT Commenter:We literally didn't win an award without you.

1:56:17Big Cat:You can't win an award without Zach. Zach, I would like you to give our thank you speech for this award. And now, to accept the award, Zach. Part of my take would like to say thank you for number one sports podcast award. Thank you very much. Wait a minute. There was an award show.

1:56:38PFT Commenter:Yeah, we get invited to it sometimes or have been. I think this one was in Austin.

1:56:42Big Cat:Oh, did you guys know about? No, no, definitely not. I think I might have got an email. Yeah, no, we didn't know about this. No, there's like a whole red carpet of people.

1:56:56PFT Commenter:doesn't it feel awesome to win an award and just not even know about it like did they announce it do we have video of them announcing it that would rock there's no way they announced it without us

1:57:05Big Cat:being there no no chance wait zach finish speech and uh today we would like to undisavow awards to accept this award may disavow awards in the future but today we're accepting okay i would like to say congratulations to everybody on the award great job so wait Thank you. So you just congratulate everybody else? Shane, yeah. Your award winners.

1:57:27PFT Commenter:Shane, can you make a graphic, but make sure you include us talking about Austin and everything in the middle of his speech. I want that as a transcript. Maybe we'll print it out and put it on a poster. It's like the Gettysburg Address.

1:57:39Big Cat:Listen, I think we were invited to this award ceremony. I can't be sure. I have 40 ,000 unread emails.

1:57:46PFT Commenter:Yeah.

1:57:47Big Cat:I don't have that.

1:57:48PFT Commenter:I actually keep a clean inbox, but I also would 100 % just cruise on by this one. You're in box zero? Yeah. I just open them. I just open every email, and then I don't do anything with it. That's awesome.

1:58:02Big Cat:40 ,043. I'm very jealous of that.

1:58:05PFT Commenter:Yeah, I actually can't stand having emails that I haven't opened.

1:58:09Big Cat:Oh, and that's just, listen, that's just one of my accounts. How many do you have, BFD? 40 ,000 and, oh, 44. I just got another one. 40 ,000 and 44. You just got another thousand? No, I just got another email. It was 40 ,043. Just got another one. And then my other account, 74 ,467. Nope. So I'm up above 100 ,000 unread emails. I have 110 ,859 total.

1:58:33PFT Commenter:So it just has that number on your iPhone? That would drive me insane.

1:58:38Big Cat:No, that's a different one.

1:58:39PFT Commenter:Text, I got 4 ,446. You have text messages unread? 449. How are you guys doing this? I get mad when I have like an Instagram DM that I haven't looked at.

1:58:51Big Cat:4 ,446 unread text.

1:58:53PFT Commenter:When the little red thing pops up? Yeah. It bothers me.

1:58:56Big Cat:Now, a lot of those are from an old group chat that I had when I lived in Austin, and I just don't have the heart to leave the neighborhood group chat because they have hilarious complaints that they always - Like, I'm not backing out of that one. I get a lot of entertainment for that. There's no way what? The requests that you don't all look at.

1:59:11PFT Commenter:No, no, not requests.

1:59:12Big Cat:Got it. The prime - Okay, okay. That makes sense.

1:59:14PFT Commenter:Yeah, look, PFT, you can verify. I have two because we've been recording and zero text message. Two emails. I can't stand it. It drives me nuts. All right, my hot seat, kind of me, although we just won an award. On Sunday, I guess it made kind of a story. I went a little hard at Ken Rosenthal. I thought it was kind of innocuous. I guess looking back, I was a little harsh. In context, it was like midnight, long day, long weekend. he popped up on the TV. I just went stream of consciousness. I don't really know him. He could stay in baseball. Yeah, but I think I said, get him out of baseball. Listen, I'm so sick of this guy.

1:59:53PFT Commenter:Yeah. All right. So I, and I had a couple of people reach out who know Ken Rosenthal. They're like, dude, you got it wrong. He's a good guy. Like, you know what? I hand up. If I got it wrong, I got it wrong. That's my bad. So Ken Rosenthal, you can stay. I do think it was weird with the Brewers thing, but you could say, I would say that Ken Rosenthal, He's just a jerk is what I said. I don't even remember because we do so many podcasts. I don't even remember saying it just popped up on the TV. And then on Monday afternoon, I was like, whoa, why is this trending?

2:00:24Big Cat:1.2 million views this week.

2:00:27PFT Commenter:I don't want to also take credit, but Ken Rosenthal, a lot of people came to your defense and said some really nice things about you. So you're welcome.

2:00:34Big Cat:I'm going to actually say that Ken Rosenthal, he does come across as a jerk.

2:00:37PFT Commenter:Yeah. Yes. But he can stay in baseball. That's where I was wrong.

2:00:40Big Cat:Because baseball, if there's any sport out there that needs some jerks, it's baseball. Baseball has always had several jerks, several prominent jerks that are announcing. And you know what?

2:00:49PFT Commenter:I'll do an olive branch. Ken Rosenthal, I think he raises money for ALS. I've had a family member die from ALS. So thank you, Ken Rosenthal. There's our olive branch. We can bond over horrific diseases. That's nice. But also, I'll agree.

2:01:04Big Cat:He is a jerk. Yeah.

2:01:06PFT Commenter:But he can stay. I think my mistake will say, get him out. I don't want him to lose his job. My quote was, ever since I've burst in last year, he's such a loser. Get him out. I don't want him anywhere near me anymore.

2:01:17Big Cat:I think that Ken Rosenthal should be allowed to stay in baseball. He might even, hey, why don't we just give him a raise, but also he's a jerk.

2:01:23PFT Commenter:Yeah, but when you guys, when we were doing the show on Sunday, did you guys, any of you in the room be like, oh, whoa, that was crazy. That's going to be a big story.

2:01:32Big Cat:I just thought it came a little out of nowhere, but I didn't know. But it didn't because he was on TV. Yeah, but I didn't know that. Yeah. I didn't know it was going to get picked up by anybody. Yeah. But no, I'm going to have your back. Don't let them bully you into saying that he's not. No, I'm not.

2:01:43PFT Commenter:I'm not apologizing for the jerk part. I'm just apologizing for saying he has to leave baseball.

2:01:48Big Cat:The amount of quotes that you could pull from this podcast of things that we say about people is insane. It's crazy.

2:01:54PFT Commenter:We say shit that we don't actually mean all the time. And Ken Roselaw, I'll say you do have some friends because I did have like two guys I trust reach out to me and said, hey, he's a good guy. And it's like people that I actually respect their opinion. Still going to think he's a jerk, but stays in baseball. Okay? Congrats to Ken Rosenthal. He's officially staying in baseball, according to part of my take. Is that fair? Yeah, he can watch. Congrats, buddy. I'll let him watch. And that's from an award-winning show. It's just so funny. Because I never know when. We really. I do think the reason why.

2:02:31PFT Commenter:Part of the reason why this podcast works. is we continue to do it as if no one's listening. And then every now and then we'll say something and be like, fuck, people are like, who cares about our opinions? But apparently some people do.

2:02:45Big Cat:Now, if it's because of the Fox sports thing, because we somewhat share airwaves. No, that has nothing to do with it. No, I'm just saying that's why it blew up.

2:02:53PFT Commenter:Oh, maybe, maybe. That didn't even cross my mind.

2:02:57Big Cat:And no one from Fox said anything to me. But keep that same energy for when we discussed Tom Brady. Yeah. We've talked about Tom Brady a lot on this show. Or how much we love Greg Olson. Yeah. That's nepotism. Probably even a better example. Yeah. I want these articles coming out when we're talking about how Greg Olson is the best human being on planet Earth.

2:03:14PFT Commenter:Yeah. So, I don't, I mean, Ken Rosenhall has every right to hate my guts. I think he's a jerk. He's a very powerful enemy. Can't stay in baseball. My cool turn is Thad Mata because Thad Mata is retiring. Congrats on a great career, Thad Mata. How old do you guys think Thad Mata is?

2:03:33Big Cat:67

2:03:35PFT Commenter:70 Thad Mata is 58 years old No way That is the oldest 58 year old of all time Disagree, Jim Leland How old is Jim Leland? When he was 58 But I'm saying currently Thad Mata has been old for like 30 years It feels like, doesn't it? Yeah, that's kind of weird If you want to quote treat this one Thad Mata oldest 58 year old going That's pretty nuts. And get out. Get out of here, Thad Mata.

2:04:05Big Cat:So he, yeah, he was born 1967. First coaching job was in 1990. So he's a young coach.

2:04:13PFT Commenter:Doesn't it feel like a guy who's been old? Like when I saw that he retired, like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Time to hang him up. And then I saw he was 50. I was like, wait, that doesn't make sense. So congrats, Thad Mata. Something tells me he'll be back. We don't get a lot of fads. So what's the other? Is there a famous actor, Thad? No. Thad Castle. Yeah. Is that a fictional? Thaddy is young. Thaddy is young. We don't get a lot of Thads, so we got to enjoy the Thads.

2:04:44Big Cat:Jazz musician Thad Jones. Oh, nice. He is the number one Thad that comes up.

2:04:49PFT Commenter:Yeah.

2:04:50Big Cat:Okay, Zach. My hot seat this week is going to be a technology company, NVIDIA. You guys seen NVIDIA in the news? I'm familiar with their games.

2:04:58PFT Commenter:Tell me the stock thing again.

2:04:59Big Cat:is it nv so nvidia did uh our oh i don't know the stock handle off top of my head but it could be

2:05:05PFT Commenter:nvda that yeah i've seen i've seen the stock handle because everyone's like you got to buy this you

2:05:09Big Cat:got to buy that is a good stock to hold for that's that's great advice nvidia is like financial advice one of four companies that is doing really well right now so they're one of the ai companies yeah and so their chips are so good that we absolutely have to have them and other countries want to buy them and now we're telling we've been going back and forth with nvidia for like the last what three years telling them okay yeah you are going to be allowed to sell to china no you're not yeah you will no you won't and then china's like yeah we want them no we don't and so they're just kind of like always in limbo but the stock keeps doing really well so they announced uh a product dlss5 so they're they're bringing uh they're essentially bringing ai into like video games animations and uh like graphics so like kind of boxing out guys like people who like jobs that would have been done by humans are now more getting outsourced AI not cool you know you just hate to see it little AI takeover for your uh head top this afternoon so their their chips are AI friendly yeah they're like launching a product that will like do more of the so essentially what it does is it's like it attributes the visual fidelity which is like how closely a digital image or asset uh like how realistic it looks and instead of like entrusting that to people to do in advance or like we'll just do we'll just plug and play ai in it got it okay i i'm still skeptical about it i also still don't understand what you said ai just screw ai is just if you ever if you ever look at the little thing with the little three stars at the top of the screen after you

2:06:40PFT Commenter:do like a search on anything it's always wrong i think i'm uh 100 for anytime ai comes up in any type of conversation with just an auto oh yeah that's interesting got it yeah that's fair oh yeah oh okay they're doing that now don't know anything about it nothing not good not i don't

2:07:04Big Cat:know i i can't tell you if it's sometimes not good this could not be good no clue why why would this one be bad i just it's just like uh sometimes you gotta get the a.s. lot out of here yeah i agree Okay, your cool throne. My cool throne this week is Savannah Bananas. Did you guys see Savannah Bananas last series that recently just happened? No. I did. They two-oed the party animals, but it was cool because it was at the dome. They two-oed the party animals. And the shuckster was there. Shuckster was there. Shuck was there? Yeah, I sent that picture, remember? Oh, yeah, yeah. So I heard from somebody behind the scenes, the shuckster hanging out with the bananas, they were chatting up part of my take.

2:07:40Big Cat:They were talking about the show.

2:07:41PFT Commenter:I thought you were doing just a dream sequence. You thought I was doing like fantasy?

2:07:46Big Cat:Yeah, and I was down with it. No, no, that actually happened, yeah. That's sick. The Superdome, it's like 140 ,000 seats for the bananas. I thought you were talking about the other thing with the bananas. Dude, I can't wait to watch Shuck play football again.

2:08:00PFT Commenter:Look at this. Look at that arm. Oh. What a shockster. We got a week one we're laddering Shuck. The Shuckster. Have to.

2:08:11Big Cat:I'm pretty sure I already have an MVP ticket Okay Look at that whip of an arm I only heard about the Savannah Bananas today Because Jeff D. Lowe cornered me And showed me a TikTok Of a guy that does a Savannah Bananas podcast So I guess what I'm saying is I think we're going to be one and done In best podcast awards Because next year that one is taking over Does he break down the matchups and everything? Yeah, yeah Listen, I could get into it I probably leave that to the pros That's a little bit too heavy for my intelligence level. Yeah. Okay. I did have one more quick one that was cool. NBA expansion teams.

2:08:47PFT Commenter:Yes. Seattle and Vegas. I think it's like 2029. And then potentially moving Minnesota and Memphis into the East.

2:08:58Big Cat:A little bit of a shuffle. Yeah. So it would be even 16-16. Okay. That would kind of make sense. Yeah. Now, they're going to give one of these to LeBron, right? Yeah. LeBron's going to own Vegas? Maybe both. What if they just gave him both? He could have both. Or maybe they give one to his son. Yeah. But yeah, I think LeBron's going to own the Vegas team. I just hope that they bring back the Sonics.

2:09:24PFT Commenter:Did you see a story about a college recruiter was like, yeah, it was so hard to recruit Bronny. I had to call the PR agent to ask for time with the moms. It's like, yeah, no duh, dude. It's LeBron James. What do you think? You're not just rolling up to someone's suburban house. Can I talk to the father?

2:09:44Big Cat:I haven't been able to talk to his dad yet, so don't really have a real beat on what the family's like.

2:09:48PFT Commenter:I want Seattle to get a team for our guy Spencer.

2:09:51Big Cat:Yeah, get the Sonics back there.

2:09:53PFT Commenter:Yeah, let's get them. Let's get them. Okay, let's get to our interview with Mark Titus. We're going to do some more bracket talk, real deep dive on brackets.

2:10:01Big Cat:Before we get to Mark Titus, is brought to you by Rhesus. Rhesus is teaming up with basketball titans to build their brackets. Brackets that will inevitably bust, but this year, those busts can score you a Rhesus. So pick along with the pros and just know whenever you bust, at least you can win a Rhesus. Will your brackets survive or will it bust for a Rhesus? Get your brackets in early and let's see who's the last one standing and the first to get a Rhesus because even busted brackets happen for a Rhesus. So turn your busted bracket into your shot at Rhesus and more. Post your busted bracket.

2:10:31Big Cat:tag at Reese's on Instagram, on X, on TikTok, and use hashtag for a Reese's sweeps for a chance to score a free Reese's and a shot to enjoy those Reese's at the men's or women's final four and the championship game. So no purchase necessary, open to only legal residents of the 48 U.S. and D.C., 18 years older, void in Alaska, Hawaii, were prohibited by law, starts 3-19-26, ends 3-27-26, includes daily entry period. See official rules at every bracket bust for a recess.com slash pages slash official rules for how to enter the prize details, the odds, and the restrictions. Sponsor, the Hershey's Company.

2:11:12Big Cat:So turn that busted bracket into your shot at recess.

2:11:18PFT Commenter:Okay, we now welcome on a very, very, very special guest, longtime friend of the program. made it in the reel for the PMT 10-year anniversary Instagram slideshow. I have, whoa, my mics. You're good. Is that good? Yeah, you're good. Hold on. You're fine. I'm fine.

2:11:37Big Cat:It's Mark Titus. What's up, guys? Let me take the headphones off. Well, Hank demands that we turn his microphone up, so that's the one that you're talking about. Oh, is that right? Okay. He needs a boost. I was on, like, the first picture. Yeah, the first picture. That's crazy.

2:11:48PFT Commenter:Nobody knew it was me. At the Indy 500. But I was there. Yeah. And it's nice because we always joke about it. In the past, texting you this week when you would get hammered with people being like, can you come on my show? Can you come on my show? It was tough to schedule you. Now it's just, hey, let's walk down the hall and do it. You can hear him on mostly sports, mostly hoops, yak. It's Mark Titus. Double intro. Double intro. I'm excited to be here. It's the best time of the year. I'm very excited about this. I will selfishly say that it doesn't hit me how much the NCAA tournament means to me until my team is out of the NCAA tournament and I have to watch it without Ohio State participating.

2:12:27Ohio State is back in for the first time in four years and I was feeling real emotions on Selection Sunday and we drew Duke we have to get by TCU first we have the first game. There are a lot of things I don't like about the draw but we can get into that later I just want to say it's the greatest event in the world and you think your team's going to be in it every year and when you go three years in a row without being in it. It is agonizing. The Buckeyes are back. I'm so excited.

2:12:51PFT Commenter:It's the worst because I went through it a couple years ago, and I think Wisconsin missed like two out of three years, and it was just like, what the fuck is this? Even if you're not making a run, you just want to see your name on the bracket. I've talked myself into us winning the national championship. I love that. But you just look at every matchup, and you're like, well, I mean, if this goes this way, then why can't we win that game? If we win that game, we'll win the next one.

2:13:12Big Cat:Could you do two national championships? could you do Ohio State men's basketball and Ohio State women's ice hockey? Because it is that time of year. It is that time of year. Where we have the Big Cat vs. Titus women's ice hockey championship. Dueling dynasties.

2:13:27PFT Commenter:PFT wasn't here for this because we've already had – it's gotten contentious. For what? We have dueling dynasties. Saturday it got contentious when we were – we do not have dueling dynasties. There are two dynasties going on at the exact same time. PFT, let me ask you a simple question. Is two championships a dynasty? With a pending third. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's answer the question.

2:13:47Big Cat:So we've been actually, we've had this discussion, a part of my take before. The line is on a dynasty three and five years. Correct. Or you could do four and seven. Four and seven, I think, works too. Okay.

2:13:59PFT Commenter:Or you could do four and six.

2:14:01Big Cat:Four and six, even better. Oh, that's what the Badgers have right now. Yeah, even better. So when we win on Sunday, that will be three and four years. Dynasty, dynasty. That will be three and four years, three and five years.

2:14:09PFT Commenter:But right now, the Wisconsin Badgers women's hockey team has a dynasty. We've won four out of six.

2:14:12Big Cat:You guys are trying to become dynasty breakers. Yeah. I don't know. Can you have two dynasties going at the exact same time, though?

2:14:20PFT Commenter:Well, that's what they're trying to do. And again, we would still have four in the dynasty. If you're like, oh, Ohio State has a dynasty, you'd look at that six, seven-year stretch, and Wisconsin would still have more championships in that stretch. So it would be dynasty cucked.

2:14:35Big Cat:Yeah. Now, it could be a passing of the torch from one dynasty to the next. I think that's what's happening. But to do that, you would have to repeat after getting your dynasty. I think the Wisconsin programs like UCLA, they racked up a bunch of titles. We're the new kid on the block. I mean, they beat us last year, but if you go back and watch, controversy. That's just loser talk. We've already beat them this year. We're ranked number one. Yeah, we'll see what happens. That's a loser talk. But the bracket's awesome. It's so cool to look at.

2:15:03PFT Commenter:Yeah. All right. So let's talk about Dio Hutton. By the way, I can't keep doing this, but whatever. All right. Yes, it would be great that you won three and five, and we'd still have four and seven. Okay. Four and seven is better than three and five. But if we have the most recent. Sure. That's what I'm saying.

2:15:26Big Cat:Like if Titus would then go on to repeat and win next year. Yeah, they'd have to win two in a row. If you win next year, then it's like the tour's officially passed. I'd be happy with that.

2:15:35PFT Commenter:I'd be fine with that if they won two in a row. All right, let's talk real quick. before we break down the bracket, you mentioned Ohio State, and I'm in a similar boat. How do we feel about being in the first time slot on Thursday? I absolutely hate it. You're the first game. We're the very first game against TCU. I think we're better than TCU, but it is a little bit of a coin flip, and I hate it. I do hate it. I'm probably just too pessimistic with my sports teams that I just assume the worst at all times because I've had people try to be optimistic and say, this is perfect. You want to be first.

2:16:09You want to win. You want to be the first team in the second round. Which, yeah, obviously if I could guarantee that we're going to win, that would be great. I don't like the nerves. I don't like that the entire world is going to be watching us. If we start out not hitting shots, that could be damaging for the reputation of Ohio State basketball for a very long time. This is the only game on. This is the one game everybody's excited about. I don't love it. I don't love it, but having said that...

2:16:34PFT Commenter:You can't go down like 12-2. We go down 12-2. If the other game hasn't taken. If we go down 12-2, you'll be talking about that like eight years from now where I'll be like, Ohio State will be a one seed, and you'll be like, I don't know, man. Every time I think Ohio State basketball, I think that one year where you guys start slow, you guys just can't hit shots.

2:16:51Big Cat:Yeah, people are going to forget what happens for the rest of the game, which could be a good thing too. If Ohio State loses that first game, by the time the weekend's over, no one is going to remember what happened. Right, that first eight minutes is huge. By the time Thursday night happens. We have to play well in the first eight minutes. But yeah, I think we should win. We're a better team. So I'm optimistic about that. And then I'm talking myself into us giving Duke a good game too. But I don't know. Can I just do like a broad topic thing real quick before we dive in? Because I have a broad topic for you after that.

2:17:21I'm kind of like, I don't know how I'm feeling coming on to the show because I do enjoy talking about the bracket. I love being on the show, obviously. But last year I came and I made the argument that we're probably going to get chalked. That's exactly what happened. Now, I'm back this year. It's boring as shit to be the guy that's like, this is going to be a chalky tournament. I hate that that's where we're at. I want to drum up some excitement for the casual college basketball fan. And casual college basketball fans love to latch on to the Cinderella's. Never mind the tiny schools that might go to the Sweet 16.

2:17:55It's also the idea that a 7th seed could win the national championship I think gets people excited. For the second year in a row, I don't see that at all. and it's frustrating because I'm the guy who's supposed to sell this sport. I'm the guy that's been given – I'm like a car dealer. I'm working at a car dealership, and the new model of cars we have are just kind of – boring is not the right word, but they're just like real reliable, not flashy, and I'm just like I don't know what else to say, but this thing's not going to break down, and it's going to run well. That's about all I got for you guys.

2:18:25I don't really have a lot of flashy bells and whistles. And last year that's exactly what it was. This year I feel like we're headed for the same thing. So I don't know.

2:18:32PFT Commenter:Can I sell you on, because I've struggled with this as well. Last year was the first time all the top four seeds advanced. And so if it happens again, it'll be the first time ever in the tournament that back-to-back years all four seeds. Four one seeds, yeah. No. All top four seeds. All top four seeds. Advanced at least the first round last year. Yeah. And that could happen again this year. They're all pretty heavy favorites. We had one double-digit seed in the Sweet 16 last year, and it was the team coached by John Calipari. Yeah. That was the situation last year. So the sell I'd give to you is that as much as the first, and you never know because that's why we love the tournament.

2:19:14PFT Commenter:There could be an upset we're just not seeing. The second round, there's so many good teams this year in college basketball. The second round has some insane matchups that could potentially happen, which is that's what I'm trying to sell myself on. Yeah. If the first round is a bust, guess what? The second round will be incredible. Don't get me wrong. Last year's tournament was awesome. It was just not a ton of upsets, not a lot of Cinderella's. But, yeah, the Final Four is an all-time Final Four. Every game in the Final Four was great. I was very happy with how the tournament shook out last year.

2:19:42But, anyway, I get the same. That's my, like, broad topic point is that I felt that – similar feelings going into this tournament that I felt last year, which is that there is a little bit of a divide. Now, Duke has looked susceptible in the ACC tournament. Despite winning the ACC tournament, it wasn't exactly domination from them. Michigan, of course, loses to Purdue, which like Purdue low-key dominated them.

2:20:05PFT Commenter:So that was my big topic question. Yeah. Was do we fall victim again? And I'm guilty of this because we taped Sunday night's show with John Rossi, and I was like, you know, I love Purdue's draw. The teams that play really well in conference tournament week and were like, oh, everything's fixed. Purdue was not good down the stretch. They lost five times at Mackey this year. They get into the Big Ten tournament. they beat a bad northwestern team they beat a flawed nebraska team where that's a matchup nightmare for nebraska's been playing awful bad yeah ucla has bill adieu and donovan dent go out of the game and then they played to their credit a perfect game against michigan they were incredible against michigan but it feels like we're like oh yeah produce because they were the number one team going into the season and it's like yeah they're fixed they're good they're yeah they're great yeah Yeah, I'm with you.

2:20:55PFT Commenter:And like Arkansas, similar, where Arkansas is like, oh, yeah, this team's incredible. Like, and Acoff is incredible, but just because they won the SEC title, does that mean like, oh, yeah, they're just peaking at the right time or they just happen to win their tournament? I do love Purdue's draw, but I agree with what you're saying. That like they've had some very obvious problems throughout the entire season. I don't know if like a four-day stretch erases all those problems. But yeah, I think that Michigan losing makes things a little interesting. Arizona, they did win the Big 12. I think the Big 12 is the best conference in the country.

2:21:27They won the Big 12 tournament, but they didn't exactly dominate the Big 12 tournament. So it might feel like those three teams at the top are not. There isn't a massive gap. But all season, there has been a massive gap. It's been those three and the rest. And I think people have wanted to throw Florida in there at different times. They've wanted to throw UConn in there. There is a divide. Now, last year, I think the gap was bigger. I think the top four teams in the country versus the rest of the country was a much, much wider gap than what we got this year. But it's a similar feeling. So that's my 30 ,000-foot view on this thing is that Arizona, Michigan, and Duke are, in my estimation, they've been head and shoulders better than everybody else all season.

2:22:10So with that, I feel like it's going to be kind of chalky because I also feel like even that next tier is way better than the four and five seeds. And once you start getting into the fours and fives and sixes, it falls apart a little bit for me. But yeah, I'm anticipating a lot of chalk, and I hate that because what makes the tournament fun, I think, for a lot of people is the little guy going on a run.

2:22:31Big Cat:You mentioned Dent from UCLA. I think he's going to play in the tournament, right? Yeah, I think so. Cap strain. Yeah, as far as I know. Should be back. What about this? I know we're talking about the high seeds and how they've kind of separated themselves. UCLA, before Mick Cronin asked the reporter if he raised his voice at him, which he did, I believe they were 1-5 against top 25 teams. After that moment, 3-1 against top 25 teams. Did Mick Cronin fix everything? I think you might have. I think if you were just observing the UCLA season through Mick Cronin clips, you would have assumed they won six games this year.

2:23:11Right. He would have assumed that there were various times where not only did I think he was going to get fired, I thought he wanted to get fired. I thought he was actively – it felt like there was a moment in the season where someone told Mick Cronin what his buyout is if he gets fired, and he was like, oh, my God, I should just try to get fired. Yeah. I should just purposely lose. I should be a dickhead to everybody and just go get my buyout and go to a beach somewhere. But, yeah, they have a good team, and they have multiple guys who can score. Donovan Dent was like a disappointment all year.

2:23:41And then he's really turned it on lately. He's got the injury now. Obviously, that sucks. But had a triple-double in the Big Ten tournament, which like...

2:23:49Big Cat:It's so hard to do. Triple-doubles in college basketball are like impossible. Insane. Which is really weird because NBA, they happen all the time. There will be like five triple-doubles tonight probably. Yeah. And in college, every time a guy gets a triple-double, there's a graphic. It's like this is the first time in 23 years.

2:24:04PFT Commenter:Right. It was since like 2002, right? Yeah. Yeah. Mick Cronin, by the way, he basically did a Frank Fleming on his own team. where like Frank, if you look at his Twitter, you'd be like, the Mets have not won a game this year. And then you look at the standings, you're like, oh, they're two games up. Mick Cronin, if you just looked at his press conference, you're like, this is the worst team in college basketball. No, they're pretty – and if they can be healthy, they're a sneaky team. By the way, I think we should – we obviously think about all the teams that the smaller schools, the 12, 13, 14 seed teams that have the upsets.

2:24:38PFT Commenter:it's not crazy like looking back the the best teams and this is my favorite time of the year where everyone has a tweet being like the national champion is going to come from these four teams analytically chris felica our friend uh had a tweet that shocked me 17 of the last 18 national champions have either been named yukon or been a number one seed i didn't realize that so it's basically yukon wins uh with you know kevin ollie or i think they were a four seed with dan hurley the first year or it's a one seed the only one that that didn't do it or that was outside of this was two-seeded Villanova in 2016 so the best teams usually right so when you fill out your practice you're like I don't want to be chalk you should probably be chalk you should be chalk chalk chalk makes the most sense yeah yeah yeah that one shocked me though I was like holy shit because the thing is too is like even if even if a number one seed goes down like I can already see the future here that like I'll just pick Florida because I think they're the weakest one I'm not even predicting that they will but say florida loses in the second round then everybody's going to be like you said this is going to be chalk you fucking idiot like where how's this chalk if a once he goes down if you just wait and you let the dust settle i'm going to go ahead and guess that the national champion will still be a one seed like just because one of them loses we're still going to get a pretty chalky bracket yeah also by the way florida is kind of the reverse of purdue where florida was the hottest team in the country going down the stretch they lose in a pretty convincing fashion to Vanderbilt and everyone's like Florida stinks now.

2:26:09Yeah. If you would have asked people around this office who's going to win the national championship a week ago, it felt like 80 % would have said Florida. Now Florida stinks and Purdue's awesome. Yeah.

2:26:19PFT Commenter:Maybe we should just cool it on the recency bias. Yeah.

2:26:22Big Cat:What can you tell us about Purdue? Because I think they are America's most hateable team. Yeah. Outside of Duke. They've almost become more Duke than Duke with this iteration of the team. When Braden Smith dove out of bounds into the scorer's table and deflected the ball back in, I was like, this is Steve Wojciechowski. This is 1996 Duke University right here. But the thought has always been about Duke. Duke fans will say that you hate us because we're so successful. And Purdue has been very successful. They've obviously not won a national championship. So why do we hate Purdue so much when they haven't ripped off a run of national titles like Duke has?

2:27:01PFT Commenter:I think it's the fact that they have three guys that stayed four years. And that's a rarity in college basketball. And when you get to learn the guys and you're like, oh, Fletcher Lawyer's still there. And you get to learn. And I like Fletcher Lawyer. But you could see how people would hate him because they're like, fuck, he's still there. That gets the hate going. Yeah. Because it's so rare. You don't have time to hate one and dones. It's true. You really can't. Like, I hate Duke. And I've started to really hate Shire and some of the things he's had to say this year. I don't hate Boozer I can't hate Boozer Boozer's awesome and he's not going to be a problem in a year even if you do hate Boozer even if there's a guy like Kyle Filipowski's playing for Duke and you're like finally a guy I can hate then he leaves and the next crop comes in and you're like that guy's kind of cool I never got my hate up for Cooper Flagg I wanted to but it just never came but if he would have stayed for three more years I'm sure by the time he graduated

2:27:55Big Cat:it was satisfying when he lost but it didn't have that same No, it sounds like there was no rosy-cheeked dupe kid crying.

2:28:03PFT Commenter:So that's where Purdue comes in, where Purdue is the – Yeah, Purdue is filled that gap, yeah.

2:28:06Big Cat:Those guys, they – It's a vital part of the college basketball ecosystem. Right. Yeah. So I described Purdue on my show, Mostly Hoops, like a month ago as an elite suburban AAU team, that when they play in these suburbs AAU tournaments, they dominate everybody. And then every so often, like once a year or something, there's a state tournament, and they got to go into the city and play the city teams. And when that happens, it's just a nightmare for them. And that's kind of been the story of them for a while, really. But this year in particular, that's basically what Purdue was. Purdue plays good teams.

2:28:43Purdue will play – like Nebraska is a great example. I think Nebraska is a good team. Nebraska is not a national title contender. Nebraska is not a serious team that can win a national title. When Purdue plays a team of that caliber, you walk away from that game thinking Purdue might be the greatest college basketball team I've ever seen. But then every time Purdue stacks up against one of the actual elite teams, one of the teams that has actual Final Four national title aspirations, things suddenly just for whatever reason go horribly wrong for them. And the offense can't get going. They can't keep guys in front of them.

2:29:13The one exception is Sunday they played against Michigan, and they look good. And finally, the last game that they played of the season, they've looked good. So I have to walk it back a little bit. But that's kind of been the thing with Purdue is like they're good. They're obviously not a bad team, but they're the preseason number one team. They have the preseason number one player of the year, Braden Smith. And it's been, I mean, even the most delusional Purdue fan will tell you that this year was a disappointment. And still, when the dust settles, you're Big Ten tournament champions. You have a two seed and a winnable region.

2:29:45I mean, I think Arizona's the best team in the country, but I think Gonzaga's a good three seed as far as the draw is concerned. I think BYU, if they can get through, I would like that. I like Purdue's draw a lot outside of maybe having to play Missouri and St. Louis, but Purdue fans are going to have a ton of fans there anyway. So I think Purdue, it's been an up-and-down season. I don't think that they're a lead. I don't think they're the number one team in the country that they were coming into the season. But, yeah, they're in a good spot to go. I have them in the lead eight at least, which would be a good year for them.

2:30:14PFT Commenter:Okay, let's go region by region, big picture thoughts. East, do we think it's a little ridiculous that all the graphics are like, look at how good these coaches are and they're including John Shire. Yeah, that's, yeah. A little premature. A little premature. Rick Pitino, Izzo, Self, Dan Hurley, and John Shire. He's a very good coach, but it feels like some of those guys all have national titles. Also, I feel like going into this tournament, Dan Hurley hates his team. Maybe that's not true, but I feel like Dan Hurley's like, I don't know about this team. I feel like Bill Self's saying the same thing.

2:30:47So, yeah, the coaches are great, but it's not like every single one of these coaches has the elite teams that we're accustomed to seeing from them. But yeah, Shire's on the list.

2:30:56PFT Commenter:Yeah, and I agree with you on UConn has not been overly impressive. The one thing that if you're a UConn fan, which is probably nice to be able to fall back on this, is Dan Hurley and the action they run on offense is so complex that it does feel like every time they get out of the Big East play, they can fuck teams up and you're like, oh, you're not playing the team that just knows exactly what you're going to run every single time, and it's a lot harder to game plan. So that would be what you're holding in your pocket if you're a UConn fan, being like, just get us out of Big East. We don't want to play St.

2:31:29PFT Commenter:John's anymore, even though they're in the same region, and we'll be able to fuck some of these teams up. Yeah, that could be. I mean, I don't know. UConn, I've just been sort of waiting for them to flip the switch all season. It's just not happening. I mean, they were good in the non-conference, but UConn is probably the hardest team for me to peg in this tournament. It's just I really feel like if Dan Hurley wasn't coaching and if it wasn't UConn, it would be very, very easy to just think that they're going to lose in the second round. It would be very easy to think that. And what's confusing to me, too, is that Dan Hurley does have this reputation as once the tournament rolls around, he's the best coach in the country, and he's going to obviously go on a deep run.

2:32:10He's made two Sweet 16s in his career. He's been to two Sweet 16s. They won the national championship both times. But he's not a guy that is accustomed to getting to Final Fours over and over and over again. So I don't know. I can't make sense of them. I've been waiting for them to flip the switch. They haven't really done it. The Marquette game is like a lot of people are pointing to St. John's dominating them in the Big East Championship. My biggest concern is Marquette because as much as you want to act like the Big East, they just kind of get bored with the Big East and they're just waiting for the real games to start.

2:32:44that was a chance to win the Big East. That was like a trophy was on the line. They're cutting down nets if they win. I guess they were playing at Marquette, so they probably weren't. I doubt Marquette would have rolled out the ladders for them. But if they win that game, they're Big East champions. And they looked horrible against a very bad Marquette team. So I don't know. The pieces are there. The roster looks okay on paper. Their names you know. It's a coach you know. It's a uniform you know. But they haven't really inspired confidence really at all, except for there were a couple games that they played a good non-conference schedule.

2:33:17I think they won at Kansas. They beat Florida, right?

2:33:21PFT Commenter:They beat BYU. They almost beat Arizona. They beat Illinois. They beat Florida. So they had a good non-conference. Marquette game, I guess the only thing I would say is they were – you're right. They should win the Big East there in that spot. But they were coming off like three pretty emotional wins, you know the Villanova the St. John's and then uh senior day with with Seton Hall but still they should win that you're right and I I feel like that's this whole bracket other than Duke like Kansas has been up and down yeah Peterson has played I think seven games in a row where he's he's logged 28 minutes so at least that feels a little figured out St.

2:33:58PFT Commenter:John's I think they're good but I I also have seen like they they can I I it's not like they have a guy who can just be the go-to guy like catch fire right yeah can they shoot that's the question they're better than they were last year but uh yeah i mean i don't know how you can watch the yukon gate not the not the biggest championship but the one at yukon and and not have that thought bounce around in your head yeah this could happen at any given time and michigan state's kind of similar to where michigan state's been yeah like they've looked good at times and they've looked really bad at times and they're kind of up and down.

2:34:36PFT Commenter:So it's a lot of brand names that I don't fully trust in this iteration of them.

2:34:41Big Cat:If we're doing the picture of the coaches in this bracket, why are we putting Shire in there and not Johnny Dawkins? Yeah. Johnny Dawkins won a national championship at Duke. Good point. Yeah. We should put him on there. That's a good point. That's a really good point. That's a great point. Any upsets in the first round that you see? South Florida? I like South Florida. I like South Florida to beat Louisville. I think Louisville has been a big disappointment this year. I think injuries have – it's a lot of injuries, but it's also a lot of just like they shoot threes and don't really have an interior presence, and they don't really have much of an identity.

2:35:14Mikel Brown is awesome, but I don't think he's good enough to single-handedly – I mean, I don't know. He can be, but he's not good enough to go into a game and say, let's hope that he single-handedly wins this for us. And I like South Florida. I don't know, maybe it's the Bosco effect, but he got me watching a lot of South Florida in the last few days, and they play hard, and I like them a lot.

2:35:35PFT Commenter:I don't know if I'll pick this in my bracket, but I'll probably be betting it at 11.5. I do think Northern Iowa is going to be a motherfucker. It's going to be a gross game. They pack line defense, they're going to make St. John's shoot, and they're also going to play in the low 60s possession-wise, and when that happens, it's like, all right, If you're shooting 30 % from the field, it's like, hey, how did this happen? Why are we in this game? Why is it 46-45 with five minutes left? So it's like, I don't know if they can win because the St. John's still significantly better, but those type of teams that just slow it down to a snail's pace always have a shot in the tournament.

2:36:15There's also the fear that Patino's just going to bench his best player for the entire second half just to prove a point.

2:36:21PFT Commenter:Is he having the best? Is he the happiest coach in America right now? He might be. I feel like he's having the best because his career was over.

2:36:30Big Cat:It's him and Coach Cal have kind of turned into happy-go-lucky guys in the last couple years. It's crazy to watch.

2:36:37PFT Commenter:His career was over, and then the Greece team, and then going to Iona just to try to get back into it, and then having St. John's open up and having it be. Not only is it a New York team, but it's a New York team that was bad for a really long time, so he can be the guy who saved them. He might be the happiest drinking beer, And, you know, it's like I would imagine all these big St. John's wins have just incredible, you know, dinners after with all his friends at Italian restaurants. Oh, him and Michael Rapoli going out. He might be the happiest coach in America. That's a great point. He was done.

2:37:09Yeah. Yeah. He actually said he retired over and over and over again. He's like, I'll never coach again. That's it for me. Now, yeah, he's winning the Big East. And he's like doing it in a way, too, where he was built for the Big East.

2:37:22PFT Commenter:That's where he started. All that stuff. It had to be at St. John's. It had to be. Like if Iowa opened up. No. He can't go. He's not going to go to Iowa. He's not going to go to. Can you imagine Rick Petito coaching like Arizona State? No. This was the only job that would have worked out. He had to be going to the Big East and having to almost get into physical altercation with Danny Hurley three times a year. That was the only way that this could all work out. Okay. How about the South? And Florida, who you said is the weakest one, which I would agree that's not really a knock on Florida. Yeah, it's not a knock on Florida.

2:37:53It's just the other three are so good. Yeah, I mean, Houston is – I have Houston winning the South. I'll just start right there. But Houston has been like a slight disappointment. But what's funny is like the narrative around them all season has been that the defense isn't quite as good as what we were expecting. They traded a little bit of offense for defense. They have Kingston Flemings is going to be a lottery pick, might be a top five pick leading the way. Yuuzhan, who's back, he was on the team last year. If you watched him last year, you'll remember him. Emmanuel Sharp, the guy who didn't shoot the ball at the end of the national championship, he's back, one of the best shooters in the country.

2:38:30Those three guys are dudes that can score 20-plus on any given night, all of them. They could get 20 out of all three of them on any given night. But in exchange for having that dynamic on offense, they now don't have – they missed Jawan Roberts where they don't have a low post presence. They don't really get – even though they have three great guards, they don't really get to the rim a ton. They shoot a lot of jump shots. A lot of floaters. So the offense is good, but it's not perfect. There are a lot of holes still in it. And then with that, the defense, the story's been like the defense is a Houston defense.

2:39:03It's not like an anaconda that's just fucking slowly crushing you. But having said all that, at this point in the season, the defense is kind of becoming that. They're kind of locking in on defense. And I think the three guards are so good that I'm talking myself into Houston, actually, they've spent the entire season being a step below and kind of in that second tier. And Arizona's obviously went to their place, beat them, and then just beat them in the Big 12 championship. And the good news for them is they wouldn't have to play Arizona until the title game. So I like Houston a lot. Florida's a team that – I mean, we can talk about Florida, Dan.

2:39:38You have a future, and you were probably higher on them at certain points than I've been. For sure.

2:39:42PFT Commenter:And I still am high on them. I just – it really comes down – Florida is a pretty simple one where it's like, how is Boogie Flann and Xavier Lee going to play? Yeah. Because their front court is probably the best in the country, and they have probably the best defender in the country in Chinuilu. And it's just will their guards. And they started to do better. They started to hit threes down the stretch. That Vandy game, I'm hoping that's just an aberration. I think Todd Golden's a really good coach. But, yeah, it's fair to say that Florida – we forget – you and I have talked about this, Titus. last year just how close Florida was to losing so many times.

2:40:19PFT Commenter:They almost lost to UConn. They almost lost to Texas Tech. They almost lost to the National Championship. Even in the SEC tournament, they were saved by Clayton, which it makes for an all-time run. But then you see Florida with a one seed, and you're like, oh, yeah, that team last year was so good. I assume it's going to be the same thing. They don't have Walter Clayton. Walter Clayton saved their ass. They have a very good team. They do not have a guy that's just going to pull magic out of his ass. I also think Illinois has got a really good draw to the Sweet 16. I like Illinois to the Sweet 16.

2:40:48PFT Commenter:I don't know how they match up against Houston, but I think Illinois is one of those teams that they also – this is what I love about the tournament too, is that you spend the last two months just beating the fuck out of each other in conference play, and Illinois is one of those teams that they – I think they're just tired of playing the same teams over and over, and getting out of conference is going to be great for them because they do play like a true five out, and they can pass every – Their offense is electric when it's humming, and I think it's going to cause a lot of problems for teams that haven't seen it where they have been playing against teams that have seen it multiple times.

2:41:20Bama is always going to, as long as Nate Oates is there, Bama will always be the team you point to as the, if they can get hot, the unstoppable team. Illinois has become right there with them. Illinois is, if you catch them on the wrong night and they're not hitting, then they look pedestrian. But if the offense is humming and Wagler is as good as he has been at times this year, Yeah, I like Illinois' draw a lot, especially Carolina's hurt. Caleb Wilson's going to be out. Yeah, they've been leaking.

2:41:49PFT Commenter:Yeah, and then Vandy was the other team in this, which I thought they were under-seeded. Under-seeded. Under-seeded, yeah. They should have been a four. Yeah. That's a dangerous team. Two guards that can score, man. I think that's my hesitation with Florida. I mean, you said it about Flann and Lee, but I keep going back to guard play. Every time I – like when I get excited about teams that can win the national championship, I think, how good are your guards? They're not bad. They're fine. But, like, I mean, you saw it with Walter Clayton. And even if you don't use Walter Clayton as an example, like go back through basically every national champion has, like, guys that are going to play in the NBA.

2:42:25And you could say, like, they have NBA big guys. That's not exactly true. Not every team has, like, NBA big guys. Like Villanova is a good example. Like they used to just run – they used to just throw, like, as many guards as they have on the floor and just say, you guys are going to go figure it out. You have Josh Hart. One guy that's 6 '9". Yeah, but one guy is like Amari Spellman who plays in the NBA. But yeah, guard-oriented teams are the ones that excite me.

2:42:47Big Cat:You get a big guy in foul trouble too. Yeah. True. If that's the strength of your team and you don't have a guy like Clayton, because there were so many times last year where it's like, is Florida in trouble? And then Clayton just gets on fire. And it's like, nope, they're not in trouble at all.

2:43:00PFT Commenter:Get a rebound five feet from the hoop and then sprint back to the three-point line and hit one. Throw up a three. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Cool. Good offense. Big guys aren't doing that. So that's my hesitation with Florida. I have a healthy respect for the front court and the coaching and the program they have. And I love Thomas Houck. I think he's a stud, and he's going to be a first-round pick. But, yeah, so I probably favor whoever wins the Illinois-Houston matchup I think is a good place to look for who will win this thing. But, no, Florida had a great year. And I'm not overreacting to just the Vandy loss.

2:43:35It's just like they've had turnover problems. The three-point shooting has come along. But, yeah, I do think that they are the weakest one. And, yeah, I say that pretty confidently.

2:43:46Big Cat:What about Nebraska? Nebraska ball? Is this the year? Is Rossing going to have to go put the card down for him? Did you talk to him about that, by the way? Yeah. He's doing one hour? One hour. I tried to nail him down on the rules. He was a little dodgy on the rules. I was like, well, if you put the card down, does that mean you can get whatever you want to drink? Well, this is what I wanted to ask. I don't want to pocket watch or tell a man how to spend his money, but are there too many stipulations to this? Should it be? How would you guys do this if you were declaring that you're going to pick up the tab?

2:44:17One hour during a happy hour is what he said, right? I would just say twisted tees.

2:44:24PFT Commenter:I would say, so Nebraska, what time does Nebraska play? What do they play?

2:44:29Big Cat:They play 1140. 11.40 in the morning.

2:44:32PFT Commenter:On March 19th. Okay, so on Friday. Or no, Thursday. It was Thursday. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, I would probably do, I'd probably just do like two hours right after the game. Okay. Like go to this bar. I've called the owner. Yeah. Two hours. Two hours. That would be what I would do. Yeah. I wouldn't do like in four months from now. I feel like that's what he's going to do. You got to strike while the iron's hot. I feel like he's going to do on a Tuesday from 3 to 4 p.m. John Rothstein day no you have to have a little bit because yeah I did this once and it was almost cost me a lot was uh with Chase Daniel when we were watching it was Georgia Missouri and I said for some stupid reason during the game football I was like if if Missouri pulls off this upset like I'm gonna do an hour at the biggest bar at Mizzou and Chase Daniel was like we'll match and I started texting with Chase Daniel I was like how much what do you think he's like dude if if they win this game, that's going to be like 10 grand.

2:45:28PFT Commenter:And I was like, what? They didn't end up winning the game. I think we bought a certain amount of drinks. But yeah, that's when you have to do it, though. You can't just pick a time. You have to do it right after the win when everyone's celebrating. And then that's the moment. It's like, hey, drinks on John right after we won.

2:45:43Big Cat:Yeah, everybody in town goes to that bar at the moment. I did that for JMU after a football game. And I said, okay, everybody go Finnegan's Cove. 500 bucks worth of Twisted Tea. So he put a cap on it, 500 bucks on me. It was like during the first week after people went home after finals in the winter. And so there were like four locals there. Five guys hammered. And they got fucked up. Twisted T's. They sent me pictures inside the bar. It was like four people in their mid 40s, like smoking cigarettes. Like, thanks, buddy. Appreciate you. But yeah, that's the way to do it. Ross didn't should do this over the summer when all the students are gone.

2:46:22Big Cat:Yeah. on a Tuesday afternoon. But you think they're going to beat Troy, right? Sure. Yes, I think so. I have them beating Troy, but I am worried. Nebraska is – they peak too soon. The defense is good. The offense has fallen off a cliff. The scoring has become a serious problem for Nebraska. I do think they can beat Troy. I don't like them to advance too far in the tournament, but I don't think they need to. I think winning one game, even though they were ranked in the top 10 at one point. Yeah, they were undefeated. They started 16-0. Any other program, you get ranked top 10, and then you get to a point where you're just like, man, if we can just win one game in the tournament, I'll be happy.

2:47:02You would laugh at them. Nebraska's a different story. I think they'd be happy if they just won one game. They've never done it before.

2:47:09PFT Commenter:They had the back-to-back games where they fucking dominated us. They beat us by like 30 in Nebraska, then they followed up with a win against Illinois. So that was like the moment in December. Their first loss was at Michigan. They were down two of their top three scores. Yep. And did they go to overtime or they had like a shot at regulation? I remember it was like, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, and I also would like to say I like Nebraska in the fact that we, as a society, we don't get this very often, but college basketball is the one time we do get it when you have a coach's son that's actually good.

2:47:40PFT Commenter:Yeah. And I love that. I love that Sam Hoiberg actually is a good player on Nebraska, and it's just something about it. You don't get into any other sport at this level, but it can work in college basketball, like Doug McDermott and all that shit. He's the best example of a coach's son who's not the best player on his team, but I still love watching him play. He might be the most important. Yeah. You're right. Every other coach's son is either like Doug McDermott who's an All-American or a guy who should not be getting minutes. Yeah, right. And he's like, the defense is important. He's very important for them.

2:48:14And it feels like he makes every open shot.

2:48:16Big Cat:Yeah. Before we get back to the show, it's brought to you by our great friends at McDonald's and the Big Arch. It's the most McDonald's McDonald's burger yet. Two quarter pound patties, three slices of cheese, tangy Big Arch sauce, lettuce, pickles, crispy, slivered onions, and it's got a poppy and sesame seed bun. It's everything that you love about McDonald's burgers between two buns. The new Big Arch sauce is tangy. It's creamy. It's a perfect pair for the Big Arch burger. What's your favorite Big Arch ingredient? Mine personally, I'm a pickles man. Love those pickles. The tangy Big Arch sauce is elite as well.

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2:49:59Big Cat:Check out the current offers. Build your own Chevy Silverado at Chevy.com. Chevy.com. And now here is Mark Titus. Okay. West. West. I had one more question about Houston. Go ahead. I wanted you to interpret something for me, Mark, because there's something about Houston basketball, Big Cat knows. I just find myself – I gravitate towards Houston. I like watching them play. They do play like a crazy hard defense, but there's some teams that play awesome defense that are not fun to watch. Houston, for some reason, I find myself just compelled by them every single year. So what is it about Houston, even though they play this tenacious defense that can be boring sometimes, what is it that would make them more entertaining than the standard just great defensive team?

2:50:42I think it's their relentlessness. They get in your ass. Is it because they get in your ass, PMP? They get in everyone's ass. They get in everyone's ass. Like simultaneously.

2:50:50Big Cat:It always, even when they're winning, it looks like they're going to cry from emotion. Yeah. Like everyone on Houston is like ready to cry because they're trying so hard all the time to get in everyone's ass. One of my free bets that I've given out to everybody, and I haven't, what's the spread in the Houston, the first round game?

2:51:06PFT Commenter:24 and a half. Fuck. It might actually be more right now. One of the most confident bets that I give out every year is Houston to cover in the first round. Because to answer your question, they get off on just like completely shutting down other offenses. And when offenses... 23 and a half. When they're going up against these small schools that are completely outmatched, Houston just does it. They'll be up 25 with three minutes left, and they're still playing the national championships on the line. And that's how they've been historically. And the only reason I'm kind of cautious with this year's team is because the edge has been turned down from a 10 to an 8.5.

2:51:46You saw what they did against BYU, that second half. But yeah, it's still there, though. They still got that dog. But I think the difference between this iteration of Houston and, say, of Virginia when Tony Bennett was there is they played great defense, but at the pack line, doesn't have an aggressive feel to it. So that's probably why you like watching Houston. It's almost like fun to watch them just completely shut their ass. Get in your ass. You want them to get in your ass.

2:52:12Big Cat:It's like watching the old Ravens defenses. Yeah. Those were fun to watch, even though you watch the Browns defense this year, and it's like dominant, not fun.

2:52:20PFT Commenter:And it's not even defense. It's like if I close my eyes and I think about Houston basketball, I think the first image that would come in my head is like four consecutive offensive rebounds and then a big three. Yeah. Like a possession that takes a minute and a half. Yeah. And they just keep taking shots, missing shots, getting rebounds, and then finally the other team is almost like so out of gas. They're just, all right, now we're going to hit a three. A stereotypical Virginia defense, the old Tony Bennett one, their defensive possessions were shot clock violations. Right, yeah. Houston's are like, they're just swarming all over the place.

2:52:56You finally get a little bit of a lane to drive. You go drive, and then a dude just pinning it off the glass and starting a fast break the other way. That's awesome to watch.

2:53:05Big Cat:It looks like the way they practice. I wouldn't be surprised if Kelvin Sampson kept score differently every game, where he's also giving out points on his secret scoreboard for a deflected pass or an offensive rebound. And then after the game, he's like, actually, Sharp, you are the leading scorer tonight. Not what you're reading in the stat sheet. He puts lids on the rims. He does, yeah. Yeah, which is such an awesome college basketball move.

2:53:28PFT Commenter:Okay, West. I actually think the West might be the most fun region in terms of offensive firepower in this region. Arizona's the best one, you would say? At least the healthiest right now. Healthiest. I think even if all the teams are healthy, I would still probably, I mean, I'll just spoiler. I picked Arizona to win the national championship. I think what excites me about Arizona is they can beat you in so many different ways. They're comfortable playing in a lot of different ways. And the one thing that people might point to is the three-point shooting, which is that they don't take a ton of threes, but they make the threes they take.

2:54:04They have shooters. They have multiple shooters. It's not like one guy does all the three-point shooting. They have guards that are – I mean, Burries is going to be a first-round pick. I don't know where Jaden Bradley's mocked. I think he's going to play in the league. They have a great frontcourt. I mean, there are a lot of great frontcourt. All four one-seeds have great frontcords. So I don't know if I want to say they're the best in the country, but they have rim protectors. They have guys who can feed the low post and multiple guys who can score in the low post. They grab every single rebound.

2:54:35Even when they miss, it feels like they get the offensive rebounds. They're dominant in mid-range. Yeah, I have loved this Arizona team all year. They played in the best league in the country. They won the regular season outright. They won the Big 12 tournament. I can't say enough great things about Arizona I mean the one thing that would give you pause Is the whole West Coast thing That like West Coast teams and this thing Haven't won since Arizona did it in 97 But I think that's kind of stupid I think that's kind of stupid I just think that's stupid

2:55:04PFT Commenter:What about Tommy Lloyd being a Mark Few disciple And he can't win the big one He can't get over the hump So the whole tree is poisoned That's also stupid but I like stupid narratives What if we get Tommy Lloyd versus Mark Few in the lead 8 Wouldn't that be something? First Final Four from our first year? Yeah. Someone's going to the first Final Four. That'd be crazy. Yeah, Tommy Lloyd has, I guess, yeah, he does have a little bit of a monkey on his back. The Sweet 16. Yeah, they've had good teams. This is his best team. At what point does that become a real thing for you, would you say? How many more years can Tommy Lloyd go to the Sweet 16 and lose before you're like, no, this guy actually.

2:55:37PFT Commenter:I think it might be this year. This year is the year. You need one really definitive one, and this would be the definitive one. because this is the year that they have the best team. I think this is the best team he's had there. Yeah.

2:55:52Big Cat:So, yeah, this would be the narrative starting. But you're right. We were talking to Fanta the other week about Arizona and how weird that the offense can be. Like, what do they shoot? 38%, 39 % from three? But they just refuse to do it. They're one of the – I mean, I'll pull it up right now.

2:56:07PFT Commenter:They're 362 out of 365 in terms of three-point attempts. based on their total field goal attempts. Yeah. So that's third to last in terms of three-point, just them taking them. Right. I think it speaks to how good they are at getting the ball to the rim. I mean, that's what I get. They just don't have to. I would be worried if they shot a poor percentage. If they were like St. John's last year. 36%. Yeah, 36 % is fine. It's good, yeah. Or I would be worried, too, if it was like nobody shoots threes except the one spot-up shooter we have, and he's the only guy that shoots. They have Del Orso and Karchinkov and Burry.

2:56:48All those dudes will shoot threes, and they're all capable. Yeah, I like Arizona a lot, but you have to be licking your lips at the idea of a Sweet 16 versus Arizona. Wisconsin's the Arizona boogeyman. Listen, I'm focused on high point. I also love Acuff, but I've started to talk myself

2:57:08PFT Commenter:into maybe betting on Hawaii plus 15 and a half. And here would be my case. One is that we talked about Cal last year, you know, going to the Sweet 16 with what was he a 10 seed? Yeah, 10 seed. The last two times that Cal has been a top four seed they've lost in the first round. They lost to Oakland in 2024 and St. Peter's in 2022. And everyone's going to talk about Hawaii's no help defense, which is probably a bad idea against Acuff. But it actually might not be because Acuff is so good at getting everyone to collapse and then finding his guys. if he has no guy, if they basically say, hey, A-Cup, we're going to just say you're going to get 30, you're going to get 35, but you're going to have to take 20-plus shots to do it, that might be a strategy that works because then guys don't get warm if you're not distributing the ball.

2:58:00PFT Commenter:I don't know. I also would just say for Cal and great coach, Hall of Fame coach, that Oakland game, remember that Oakland game where they were playing a crazy aggressive 1-3-1 zone. It kind of fucked him up. And Cal, not exactly an in-game adjustment guy. Yeah. If Hawaii's like, hey, we're going to zone or we will do the no-help defense, is Cal going to make an adjustment or is he going to be like, Acuff, you're better than everyone. Go do it. Yeah, go be great. Right. That's just his timeout speech every time is just go be great. Yeah, you might be onto something. Again, I don't think they're going to lose.

2:58:32I'm just thinking about taking Hawaii 15-1. Acuff has been great all season. Acuff, but Arkansas has not. And I think what makes Arkansas good right now is, yes, Acuff has been incredible. But, again, he's been that way all year. So that's not the new part. The new part is like Trevon Brazil, who is playing. If you only watched him in the SEC tournament, you would assume that he's a top five pick. He made every shot. Makes every single shot, blocking shots, long arms, runs to the floor. It's guys like him and Richmond and DJ Wagner, who was a number one overall recruit and there's just kind of like a castaway on this team.

2:59:09That's how loaded they are with talent, which I know DJ Wagner didn't pan out to be what we thought he would be. But just the idea that you have a guy who is the number one overall recruit in a recruiting class, and he's just kind of like a throw-in for this team is crazy. They're absolutely loaded. And I think when they're at their best, it's when the guys around Acuff are great. So you might be on to something.

2:59:29PFT Commenter:Yeah, I don't think Hawaii's going to win. I'm just trying to make a case because, again, we started this whole thing by saying it looks like it's going to be chalk. So the only way you can kind of attack this is like, all right, if you're going to make a case for anyone, where is it? And I just think Hawaii is such a well-coached team, and it's like, yeah, they could maybe hang in. I was prepared to – I said it in the cave before the bracket came out because I wanted someone to hold me accountable, and my team around me is just – frankly, they're just not those guys. They just didn't do it. Get a bunch of yes-men.

2:59:58I got a lot of yes-men around me. Yeah, Brandon Walker. I said in the cave, I was like, I'm picking Hawaii to win their first round matchup, whoever they play. Whoever they play. And the reason I'm saying this now is because I don't want to be talked out of it once I see the matchup. And then I saw the matchup and I immediately took Arkansas. Yeah, please talk to me. I immediately took Arkansas. But if Hawaii was playing like Nebraska, Hawaii is the 13 I'm most excited about. Unfortunately, Arkansas is the four I'm most excited about. Yeah. Tough draw for Hawaii.

3:00:27Big Cat:Who is the best player in this side of the bracket? Is it Acuff? It's Acuff, yeah. DeBansa? I don't know. Acuff is my favorite person to watch. DeBansa is really good. I mean, he's going to be the number one pick for a reason, and he's really good. It's not even just potential. He is that dude right now. That's a great call, PFT. It's a great call. Because I think if you're asking me who would I draft, it's obviously DeBansa. He should obviously be the number one pick.

3:01:01PFT Commenter:Malik Renu. Shit. I mean, I might have to go Braden Smith. Yeah. Yeah. I might have to go with the senior leader. Smart. So can we talk about Wisconsin High Point real quick? Because I've psyched myself in and out. Just tell me I'm not crazy. There's years where I'm very nervous about Wisconsin, especially the first round. We have one of the best backcourts, if not the best backcourt in the country. And you talked about guards. We're going to be okay. High Point wants to turn you over. We have Nick Boyd. We have John Blackwell. Those guys have been there. I mean, Nick Boyd is like 25. They've been there, done that.

3:01:40PFT Commenter:They've been in the big moments. It's going to be okay. I agree with you. I'm not just saying that to make you feel better. I think this is a bad matchup for High Point. Excuse me. Yeah, because they turn people over. But I trust your guys. I trust Wisconsin the only thing I'm actually really scared about is that Wisconsin's season so far I think Greg Gard needs to tell the guys actually high points the number two team in the country and then we'll win because that's what we've just done is just beat all the best teams and then had a USC loss and an Oregon loss where it's like what just happened so we need to somehow make it be like high point is so good and they're actually they have won I think like 26 six in a row or something.

3:02:21PFT Commenter:So that's maybe the only thing, you know, being a giant slayer, it's a little different when you have to play a small guy. Is Winter back? He's going to play, right? Winter's going to play. Yeah. And I'm hoping Jack Janicki comes back, too, because he's actually a pretty big piece for defensive rotation. Yeah, I think it'll be fine. For what you said about you guys in big games, I like you against Arkansas, too, to be honest. I hope we get that matchup. If it is Wisconsin-Arkansas. It'd be an incredible game. Because I think, like, Boyd is at his best when, And the more A-Cuff scores against you guys, that's actually every time A-Cuff scores on you, you should actually be happy.

3:02:55Yeah. Because that makes Nick Boyd more powerful. Yeah.

3:02:59PFT Commenter:I mean, the number one, oh, Boyd is one of those guys who is not to be fucked with. If you say someone else is better, was the Iowa game when everyone's talking about Bennett Sturtz being so incredible. He almost put up a triple-double against Iowa. Nick Boyd was like, it's me. He leads the country in this. He just turns to any Wisconsin fan he sees and he just says, stand up, please. I actually asked him to stop doing that. He came in and he worked out before he got his career high on Friday. I was like, dude, I feel like where I get him on too much. He's like, nah, nah. Just constantly. He'll do it after a Wisconsin team foul.

3:03:40PFT Commenter:He'll try to bump up the crowd. He's like the St. Joe's Hawk PFT. That's just who he is. He'll constantly flapping his arms like this.

3:03:46Big Cat:It would just be so nice and nostalgic if we had Coach Cal losing to Wisconsin and then Arizona losing to Wisconsin.

3:03:53PFT Commenter:It would make me feel like I'm 30 years old again. A dream run. I'm just excited. And you probably have this too, Tice, where it's like when I get in the tournament, it's a mix of excitement, but also especially in this era of college basketball, it's this fear of like is this the last time I'm going to get to watch a team that I've truly loved. Like I've watched every Wisconsin game. I truly love watching this team. This is the most fun team since 2015, right? Yeah, probably. As an outsider, that's what I would say. I mean, Tanjay was awesome last year. AJ Storr until he was illegally tampered with somewhere in February and the team kind of fell apart.

3:04:28But yeah, this is probably it. I think it's unexpected too, at least from my perspective. I didn't see... I thought they would be good. I didn't think they'd be this good. Yeah. I didn't think you'd have two... I didn't think both these guards would play so well together and both of them play at an All-American level the entire season.

3:04:46Big Cat:We got great – I mean, Rap, that was insane what he did against Michigan. What happened this year? Because I know you were down on the team until the Michigan game was really what turned it around. Well, because we had – Because that was a crazy last couple minutes doing that game.

3:04:57PFT Commenter:We had some bad early losses where we lost to Villanova. I know it was technically a road game, but it was in Milwaukee, and then we got 30-pieced by Nebraska, and we lost to TCU. And then we got smoked by Purdue in early, early January. So there was a moment where I think it was early January where Wisconsin was not a tournament team. And especially knowing the schedule we had coming, it's just that we stepped up in that schedule and started just ripping off wins against. That Michigan-Illinois-Michigan State run was pretty crazy.

3:05:33Big Cat:I do feel like we forget in basketball that college sports, it's possible for these guys to get a lot better over the course of the season.

3:05:41PFT Commenter:Greg Gard said that so many times this year. He's like, teams are not complete in December. But as sports fans, we're idiots and think they are.

3:05:48Big Cat:Yeah. I mean, with a good coach, your starting line can improve so much over the course of the year. Have they messed around with the starting lineup? Or is it pretty much the same?

3:05:56PFT Commenter:No. I mean, Nolan Winter's been out for a couple weeks, and Janicki was out. But, yeah, I mean, we got a good group of guys. You're kind of in a nightmare in a good way, if that makes sense. Nightmare spot where you're looking at the bracket and convincing yourself you could just win this whole thing. I think being a team like you have with two guards like that, but you're a five seed, so you're like, I know this sounds crazy, but... And you just start talking yourself into every single... Like I'm doing with Ohio State, but I know that second round we play Duke. That's a long shot. But I feel like a five seed...

3:06:33But you start getting higher than that. it's almost like pressure is on. If you're like a one or a two or a three, you're like, we kind of have to go this. A five seed, you're just like, holy shit. I never, you know what's crazy is a month ago, I never thought we could win the national championship. But now that I'm holding the bracket.

3:06:47Big Cat:It's right there. Oh my God. Right. There's a path. Yeah, there's a path right there. Right. Yeah.

3:06:52PFT Commenter:What about this Chase Johnson guy? Shout out Braden Carrington too, because he's also a part of what Wisconsin's done coming on. He wasn't playing at the beginning of the year much, and he's been lights out. So yeah, all these guys. You're talking about Chase and Johnson? Chase Johnston, the guy from High Point. High Point. The next goal key. He's 0 for 4 on 2-point field goal attempts, and he's like 45 % from 3. I can't wait to watch this game.

3:07:17Big Cat:I mean, that would be a tough way to go out to the next goal key. Because that way, you wouldn't even be able to truly appreciate it. Yeah. You'd just be like, fuck this guy.

3:07:26PFT Commenter:Well, I'd have to root for him to beat Cal as the next goal key. Another goal key going against Cal. Yeah. I just have to immediately pivot and be like, now I'm just this guy.

3:07:36Big Cat:What do you think about Nova, about the Cats? Max was just saying earlier that he's actually buying stock in the Cats now. There's no way that's true. He said Sweet 16 or Buss. No way. He said Boom. He's Boom in the Cats. I'm supposed to start.

3:07:50PFT Commenter:Max, are they one of the most uninspiring teams? Your mic's off. Your mic's off, yeah.

3:08:02Big Cat:All right. Okay, Max has no mic. All right. Well, Max, to his credit, he's back there by himself.

3:08:07PFT Commenter:It's funny because Nova beat Wisconsin. Like I said, that was a low point in the Wisconsin season. But Nova, I don't think, has beaten a tournament team in 2026. No other wins. Yeah, Max and I would text every time Wisconsin would take down a Michigan or an Illinois, and he'd be like, sick, thank you, because this is actually helping us. Hello? Yeah. You got me now? Yeah. All right.

3:08:30Big Cat:This is the worst. As far as talent goes, this is the worst Villanova team post-Jay Wright. Going into this year, they were supposed to be eighth in the Big East. They were getting a ton of production from Bryce Lindsey early on, who was a JMU six-man last year who couldn't really hold up on what he was bringing to the table. We have a Caden Lewis, who's a freshman. That's a four-star freshman coming in, who's our best player. But we don't have the firepower. Like, our most important player is a transfer from Penn, Tyler Perkins, and Duke Brennan, a big from Grand Canyon last year. We don't have the guys that can, like, really compete with everyone.

3:09:11Big Cat:We have Kevin Willard, who's done a really good job with a group of guys that, like, have overachieved all year long. And now when you lost Matt Hodge, who was the only one who had a little bit of size other than Duke Brennan. We're just kind of grasping at straws to stay alive and actually compete against the big dogs. But we're well-coached enough, and we compete well enough that we win the games that we were supposed to win, but we just can't compete with the big dogs. That's okay. And that's okay. That's year one of a rebuild. So I'm okay with this being year one of a rebuild. You can't make free throws, and that pisses me off.

3:09:51It pisses me off that Villanova's not a good game. It's crazy.

3:09:53Big Cat:But we made a ton of free throws under Kyle Neptune, so I'll take this tradeoff 20 times out of 20. You're like the best free throw shooting team forever, and now you're dreadful. Horrible. Like, very, very bad. But it hasn't cost them any wins yet. There hasn't been any games where it's like, oh, they were winning this game, but we couldn't make free throws at the end, and then we lost. Like, obviously, if you go through, like, the course of a game, it's like, oh, yeah, you lost by this many points. You missed this many free throws. But I'm talking, like, crunch time, it hasn't really, like we haven't had that yet.

3:10:25I wanted Villanova, Ohio State so badly. Yeah, I wanted you guys. That would have been an easy dub for us. In fact, I'm going to count it. It was an easy dub. Yeah. Yeah. Playing game. We beat Villanova. We would have beat Villanova.

3:10:38Big Cat:What do you think about that, Max? Yeah. I can't say I've watched a ton of Ohio State this year. Yo, you missed that game? I don't know. I don't know. Well, we beat you. We just beat you. I just played it out in my head, and we won by 12. I'm going into this week like I'm happy that my team is back in the tournament. I have zero expectations. Yeah. Which is a fine spot to be. Is there another team out there, like one that has higher expectations than Nova, that would have free throw shooting as a real problem? Because the Duke game the other day, I was thinking that this could come back to bite them right in the dick hole.

3:11:14Yeah. I don't know. I haven't looked at the free. I'm trying to think of who that would be. I think Tennessee's dreadful from the line. Who else? Yeah, pull up. That's a great question. We need to monitor these things because free throws are a big deal in March. Huge deal. They become a huge deal.

3:11:34Big Cat:Yeah. Massive deal. You got to know who the bad free throw shooting teams are.

3:11:38PFT Commenter:Yeah. Air Force is really bad at free throws. Okay.

3:11:45PFT Commenter:Miami, Florida, three underneath. All right. That's not good. Very bad. Missouri, 304. Oh, so that game. North Carolina, 315.

3:11:53Big Cat:So Miami-Missouri is going to be a slap fest.

3:11:55PFT Commenter:Yeah, but icing out Iowa State, 338. Iowa State? 67%. Iowa State can't shoot free throws? That's what I'm reading right now. Men's basketball. What do they shoot from the three-point line? I've got to find that as well. But yeah, those would be some teams you'd have to work. Gonzaga, not great. Yeah, because it really is like when you get to the end of the game and it's a five-point game and you've got to make the front end of a one-on-one, that's where the madness comes in. Dude, Iowa State, I don't know how I didn't know this until right now, Iowa State is 340th in the country in free throw percentage.

3:12:34They're 12th in the country in three-point percentage.

3:12:35PFT Commenter:That's crazy. They should back up. Yeah. They should shoot threes for free throws. A couple others, Tennessee is 279. They're 69%. Villanova, 280, 69%. and so those are some big dogs in Gonzaga, like I said.

3:12:52Big Cat:That's not even that bad compared to the – you just named so many other teams before Villanova.

3:12:56PFT Commenter:Yeah, no, Villanova's not – I mean, they're bottom 100.

3:13:01Big Cat:Yeah, they just feel worse because they normally – They normally call them. Yeah. That one guy, what's his name, a Northwestern, takes jump shots from the foul line. Martinelli. Martinelli, yeah. More teams should start doing that if you stink.

3:13:13PFT Commenter:Best free throws, by the way, because the reverse is obviously true. St. Mary's, Vanderbilt, Illinois, Wisconsin. All four of those teams are in the top ten in the country. There you go. Got to salt it away. All right, last one, Midwest. Okay, Midwest. Can I say that Michigan's really good, and again, we just talked about how you can't take the last thing you saw, but we also know it wasn't just Michigan losing to Purdue. They let Wisconsin back in that game when they had us on the ropes.

3:13:47PFT Commenter:there's some teams in this bracket that are just flamethrowers and do I think Georgia or St. Louis is going to beat Michigan no but Alabama or Texas Tech could right yes yeah I mean Texas Tech JT Toppin goes down and I think the thought is like their season's over and I do think they're I'm not making the argument they're better without them by any stretch of the imagination because they're just not but their season is not over They still have a ton of dudes that can score, and they still have Christian Anderson, who I assume is going to be fine. He pulled his groin on the slippery glass court.

3:14:22PFT Commenter:Are we done with glass courts for forever now? Max, did you hit up the person? I will. I really want to get the glass court here. Yeah. That would be so awesome. It would be so sick. The glass court was made for this place. It was made for this place.

3:14:35Big Cat:We could play video games from the second floor.

3:14:38PFT Commenter:I watched Iowa State. It was Arizona State on the court. there's this video that just was in my algorithm like they were doing they had a world map they had a track they were just running laps like an actual track like there's so much

3:14:52Big Cat:shit we could do we could do Mario Party with ourselves out on the court like as the characters we need the glass court we need the glass court but it is sad that we had one guy kind of get a little bit injured and now it's like no more glass courts with LED screens for anybody yeah we're at a crossroads as a society, if we just turn our back on this technology right now, we'll regret it forever. But what's it going to take, PFT? What if someone dies? Is that what you're waiting for? Someone dying on the glass court? Sacrifice is necessary for leaps forward in society.

3:15:26PFT Commenter:Yes, I'm sorry. Someone dying could also be a benefit. If we get the glass court and Lucas dies, I think most people would put in a glass court. That's a win-win. People died.

3:15:36Big Cat:The NASA space program was a tragedy, and we all wish that didn't happen, but we learned from those mistakes and we went to the moon. Yeah. Lucas is our Gus Grissom is what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So Michigan, I know I'm wearing an Ohio state hat. I'm a Buckeye. So this is going to come across as me just shitting on Michigan. I, I actually, I want to be as fair as I can. Michigan had a historic big 10 season. They, they, they went 19 and one. Their one loss was Wisconsin at home when Wisconsin could not miss. And outside of that, no team has ever won 19 games in the Big Ten.

3:16:12No team has gone undefeated on the road in the Big Ten since the 76 Hoosiers. There have been a ton of great teams in the Big Ten through the years, and this team was special in that regard. But if you've watched Michigan throughout the year, yes, in November they had that stretch where it was like, this might be the greatest basketball team ever assembled, where they beat Gonzaga by 40. That player's era run was historic shit. But they have had some – the dam has cracked at different times. Like Penn State had a shot to beat them at an unhappy valley. They had a shot at the buzzer to beat them.

3:16:46If you watch the Big Ten tournament, like I'm at a point now with Michigan where the offense, like all the metrics say the offense is fine and they're going to be okay. There's something clunky about the offense. There's something about the offense where like the guards aren't dynamic. Elliot Cadeau is capable, and he's a guy that like – I don't want to say he's not good because then Michigan fans will point to these certain games where he had like 20-something points and they're like, you said he couldn't score. Here you go. But there's something about how he gets his points that there's not a – it's got to be within the context of what he's capable of doing, which is to say he's not like a Nick Boyd or a John Blackwell.

3:17:20He's not coming off of ball screens and sizing up his guy and taking him off the dribble and hitting step backs. It's got to be like wide open, his shoulders are square, or he can come off a screen and just get downhill and get to the bucket. It's just like there's a really rigid feel to Michigan's offense right now, and they can get away with it because their size is so overwhelming. But that's what – I mean, a lot of people are talking about Michigan's defensive effort against Purdue. What stood out to me more than that was Michigan's offense was – like Purdue is not good defensively. Yeah. They shouldn't be able to – No, they're not.

3:17:49They shouldn't be able to stop Michigan. And I just felt like Michigan – like even when they would score, it just – it was too much effort. It was like the actual like putting his head down and trying to like get to the rim, and then he muscles it up. and then if he doesn't make it, Mara grabs the rebound and lays it in. And yes, you can do that against lesser teams, but what happens when we get to a Final Four or whatever? So I still believe in Michigan. I have Michigan winning the Midwest, but there was a stretch there where I think outside voices were saying Michigan is a historically great team.

3:18:20I think Michigan themselves at one point, I think Yaxle said in a press conference one time, he's like, I think we're one of the greatest teams of all time. He's a little bit of a bragger.

3:18:27PFT Commenter:I like it. They've fallen off of that, And it's not just because they lost to Purdue. I think it's like my eye test is telling me that there are a little bit of warning signs there, but I think they are head and shoulders better than everybody in the Midwest, even though there are some exciting teams. And there are, like you said, Dan, some flamethrower teams. I still think Michigan wins the Midwest.

3:18:44Big Cat:Yeah. What is the penalty for Aiden Holloway at Alabama? Sit out for 10 minutes? So I saw that story this morning. I saw what he was arrested for. It was the marijuana. But then the other thing I wanted to ask you about, Do you know what, like the tax stamp? Failure to have a tax stamp. Yeah. He didn't put a stamp on his marijuana? He did not register his illegal drugs with the state government and then pay taxes on it. And he has been, so - It's a great charge. This is like a - If you're a cop, this is the type of stuff you dream about. This is like Al Capone, tax evasion. Yeah, that's what got him.

3:19:18Big Cat:If you really want to nail somebody, you can always just put the extra stamp tax charge on him. But yeah, he did not have a stamp on his pound of weed, which is maybe worse than having the weed itself.

3:19:31PFT Commenter:So he was released from jail. He has been charged with a Class C felony. That feels big. Right?

3:19:40Big Cat:Class C. I mean. So Nate Oates will suspend him the first four minutes? Maybe half. Maybe a full half? Maybe half.

3:19:48PFT Commenter:Can he play on Friday? That's all Bosco's. He's on the phone right now.

3:19:51Big Cat:There's got to be a judge in Alabama somewhere that overlooked this for him. Yeah.

3:19:56PFT Commenter:It's crazy, too, that if this were like 20 other states, it would be nothing. You know what I mean? If he was playing in California. Yeah. What if? Yeah, a pound of weed. I think you're actually allowed to have up to 10 pounds. Illinois, any state that has legal weed, but Alabama feels like you can't do that. Yeah, if this is Oregon, he would have a very successful business.

3:20:19Big Cat:Yeah. He'd be like, where's your heroin? Entrepreneur. Yeah. He's not good enough for it to happen, but something like this happened with, like, Bama starting quarterback is how we become accepted. Yeah, we figure it out. Right. It's like if there's enough, like, rain outs or rain delays in college football. I bet you the cops even... Climate change might be real.

3:20:38PFT Commenter:Yeah, the cops even probably put it on a scale in his house and was like, fuck, dude, over a pound. We have to. We have to. We have to do this. If he had just been half a pound, we would have been fine. There probably is a judge somewhere that just legalizes all this. Let's step into the 21st century.

3:20:56Big Cat:It's high time. Yeah, it's high time. Alabama moves forward as a progressive. I hadn't really thought about it before, but now as we're facing a big game against Michigan in the Sweet 16, I was thinking, what's the big deal with some weed? Yeah. I think he's going to play probably. I think so. Yeah. Nate Oates will find a way.

3:21:13PFT Commenter:Innocent until proven guilty. Someone walked into Nate Oates' office and been like, listen, coach, we've dealt with worse. Isn't that – I mean, your content brain is always on, Dan. Isn't Bama – so I think Holloway being suspended the first two games, they make the Sweet 16, and it's now Bama versus Michigan. It's Bosco versus Dave. And NATO, it's like the day before the game announces that Holloway can play. Isn't that like the best thing for gambling games? By far. By far. Absolutely. To give Dave that ammo? Yeah. It's going to be – I mean, not that they need it, those two. Maybe even add in like a Michigan player gets caught for jaywalking and they actually sit him for a half.

3:21:49PFT Commenter:It's like Dave could be like, Michigan men do the right thing. Yeah, it's their ninth man. Yeah, ignoring the whole head coach trying to commit suicide with a butter knife in front of the girl he stalked.

3:22:03PFT Commenter:Michigan fans are like, well, he was fired. He was fired at that point. He did all that after. He's no longer a Michigan man. Their head basketball coach, who was a member of the most famous basketball team they've ever had in the history of that program, punched another coach in a handshake line. Trying to squish Greg Gard's face. Wasn't even like the top five craziest thing that happened in that athletic department. No. There's other programs, too, which is like... But I will say, this is also coming from a place of jealousy, that if you win a national title in football, I'd trade it all for anything.

3:22:32PFT Commenter:You give me institutional chaos. Do it all for... That's fine. to have the number one team in the country and also win a title three years ago. Okay, so what's your final four? Oh, Duke and Virginia. Sorry, Tennessee and Virginia. Tennessee, you can't quit. Virginia, you famously won a national title. I won a national title for them in 2019. Yeah, you did. They actually haven't won a tournament game since then. 21, Ohio. And Furman was. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Wow. Their last tournament game that they won was a national championship in 2019. Their last tournament when I believe was when they won the national title.

3:23:13PFT Commenter:Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah. I don't know why I can't quit Tennessee. I think that there's the idea that Tennessee can't get it done in March, which it's true if national championships or Final Fours are what you care about, but they can make sweet 16s. They went to the lead eight last year, did they not? They lost to Houston, I think, in the lead eight. This team isn't as good as last year, but Nate Amen is awesome. Jacoby Gillespie is awesome. They play great defense. They have a ton of guys that can block shots and grab rebounds. It still feels like a Tennessee team. They have struggled. I don't know what the problem is.

3:23:47I just, like, every time they lose a game, I find myself walking away saying, that's all right, they'll be fine. And at some point I have to just be like, all right, maybe they won't be fine. I just can't quit them. Having said all that, I do have them just going to the Sweet 16 and losing. But if you talk to Big T, which is a bad example, bad representative for Tennessee, because they could be the number one team in the country and he'd think they're going to lose in the first round. But you would think that Tennessee just has no hope and no players and nothing good is ever going to happen. But I like them against Virginia.

3:24:15I think they match up well with Virginia's front court.

3:24:18Big Cat:The amount of times Big T has said to me, we're a terrible ball club. Yeah, we're a terrible ball club. And I have to talk him into believing that Tennessee's okay. Yeah, I think the SEC was really, really good this year. I just can't quit them. I think they have a lot of losses, but they played a lot of really good teams well. Give us the chalk. I have a chalk Final Four. I have Duke. I have Arizona. I have Michigan. But then I have Houston. So that's like the one wrinkle. I have Vanderbilt upsetting Florida in the Sweet 16. Okay. And it's not just because of the SEC tournament. It's because when they played the first time in Nashville, Florida won.

3:24:53But between that game and the SEC tournament, I've seen enough to know that like Vanderbilt, one, is not scared of Florida. Two, it's like not fluky what happened in the SEC tournament. I think their guards are so good. I think they can turn over Florida. So if that game happened, I like the idea of Vanderbilt winning that. So that's the – I wanted a little bit of not chalk in my bracket. That's the best I could do, honestly, because I really think we're due for another chalky tournament. And if we don't get one this year, when I come back on this couch next year, I promise I'll mix it up a little bit more.

3:25:24But that's where I think college basketball is kind of slowly trending towards.

3:25:29Big Cat:So what about – we've had one of the playing games already, or I guess two of them, NC State-Texas, and then we also had Howard-UMBC. But we got SMU-Miami the day this show comes out. Okay. So what are the trends for those playing games? It's like every other year one of the teams that wins this play-in game goes on to win two games, right? Yeah.

3:25:51PFT Commenter:Well, is UCLA going to the Final Four? Was it Notre Dame? No, did Notre Dame go a couple? Yeah, UCLA in the Final Four. Was VCU? Maybe. No, I don't think that was. Are they the OG playing? Yeah. But yeah, it does feel like a playing team always takes a little bit of a run.

3:26:09Big Cat:I think usually every year, I think, there's been a team that's won a playing game that wins one game. Yeah. And then I think it's like every other year, there's a team that goes to the Sweet 16 for the playing game. So let's say. Hypothetically, yeah. FDU. Yeah, they did. They won a game. Hypothetically, we're looking at SMU. We're looking at Miami. A lot of people are looking at this game and just – it's going to be a complete referendum on teams like Miami, that level, that play a bad schedule. Like this could do harm to those types of teams in the future. Yeah. Where do you see this one going?

3:26:44I mean, I think SMU is a better team. I do think Miami playing in Dayton helps. I don't love SMU, to be honest. And I've been positioned in the college basketball landscape as a Miami hater just because I have the audacity to just say they're not one of the best teams in the country, but whatever. I still think they should have been in. I'm fine with them being in. Sounds like you don't like them. But when they play it, I expect SMU to win rather easily. But Miami is a team that they've been counted out many times. They've had a lot of close games. I do think that like I think they fell into that trap a little bit where they just assume that they're always going to pull these games out.

3:27:23And against UMass, they kind of just made some stupid decisions down the stretch. And even like the suitor hit like a really tough shot to tie it late. And even that shot, I was like, man, the balls to take that shot. But I think they got to a point where they just like literally thought that like we're unbeatable. It's all going to work out for us. And maybe they're on to something. So maybe playing in front of the home crowd. I just like if Miami wins against SMU, I think they get absolutely destroyed by Tennessee. I think Tennessee will just obliterate them. But, yeah, I give them a puncher's chance against SMU.

3:27:52PFT Commenter:VCU, you're right, is the OG. That was, I think, the first year of it. They went to the Final Four. You had LaSalle in 2012-13 go from the first four to the Sweet 16. You had Tennessee in 2013-14 go from the first four to the Sweet 16. Syracuse in 17-18. UCLA we talked about. So, yeah, it's happened. there's uh four five times that a team has won a first four game and then gone to the sweet 16 so there's going to be you know i think just win a game if you're look if you're looking for that candidate i think it's nc state or in texas just because like they both of those teams have lost a ton down the stretch they have not looked good but they have like the individual talent each of those teams have uh will wade right yeah will wade at nc state um sean miller at texas i i think both of those guys uh you know and i like the matchups i like byu is really good but it has really good talent but like byu is is not exactly a great team and gonzaga i think is a little over seated so if i was if i if you're telling me to pick one of the matchups to produce the team that goes to the sweet 16 i would look at the nc state texas rather than smu miami okay i got one last question Roback question, R-H-O-B-A-C-K dot com promo code TAKE.

3:29:06PFT Commenter:20 % off your first purchase. Q-Zips, polos, hoodies, joggers, shorts. Roback dot com promo code TAKE. Did you do the little sass or you could say the maybe better known the Leo meme from what was that movie? The Hollywood movie? Once Upon a Time. Did you do that meme when you saw the Ohio State president had to step down for having a relationship with a Columbus podcaster? Oh yeah. Were you like, damn, that should have been me. Did I accidentally fuck the president? Yeah, was that me? Me? Me? There before the grace of God. You were at one point a Columbus-based podcaster. I was. That's exactly right, yeah.

3:29:42PFT Commenter:So maybe, actually, you probably should be a little offended that he didn't try to fuck you. A lot of people trying to pile on Ohio. Listen, we have a lot of problems, and there's a bigger tie. There's an Ohio State tie to a much bigger scandal than that. Are you talking about old Les? We might be talking about Les, that I have a problem. Oh, Les West.

3:30:02Big Cat:The lingerie salesman. Yeah, yeah. Say what you want about that. I won't defend it. I would prefer... That's brave. I do think the Ohio State leadership, pretending like they're not sure how they would go about taking Les Wexner's name down. All these protests are like, we have to take his name off these buildings. And they're like, huh? Yeah. How would you even... How do you do that? The school that takes the M off every single building for a week every year.

3:30:28PFT Commenter:No, we can't just take his name down. There's some logistics. logistics we'd have to get a ladder out we'd have to get like probably i don't know if we have the tools i don't know if we have the time um that scandal aside i mean people are trying to pile on for the president thing i i one the guy the guy fucks yeah so like there's that two classy of ohio state to just nip it in the bud like the second we found out he's a bad guy you got him out of there so i thought i actually everyone like when this story came out people were trying to throw it in my face and i said this this is this is an example of weeding out the bad apples.

3:31:00Three podcasters are kings

3:31:03PFT Commenter:in society now. We're a podcast economy. That's our biggest export. That's right. Podcasting.

3:31:09Big Cat:There was a moment when none of us had sex. Yeah. It's actually good for the industry. Winning Grammys. Theoretically, we could all be sleeping with any president of any college. Yeah. I looked at that like representation matters. The new president's a woman, right? Uh-oh. Uh-oh.

3:31:31PFT Commenter:I think she did. She like any podcasts? Oh. That's just so. What's up? All right, Titus, you're the best. We'll be with Titus all weekend. Who'd you guys? I did my picks. Who'd you guys pick? All right, I don't remember what I did last night, but I'm going to change it. Maybe change it. I had. I had Duke. I had Arizona over Duke, by the way, in the championship.

3:31:51Big Cat:I had Michigan State, Houston. i think i took arkansas and then did i take michigan my second all right i had originally

3:32:06PFT Commenter:duke arizona houston and virginia i don't know what i was thinking there yeah michigan state arkansas houston michigan i'm gonna change my pick akron yeah zach picked akron and then yeah and then didn't pick them in bracket busters when we had them and he's just like no i don't want to do that my national champion i'm gonna i'm gonna change one i'm gonna go iowa state instead of virginia otherwise i'll keep it all right arizona houston iowa that's fair yeah i don't know why i was thinking virginia i think i was just trying this is the problem with the brackets every year you fill out your bracket and you get to the point where you have all number ones you're like you can't do this and then you get try try to get all tricky with it where do you just really force it in maybe just go number one where do you stand on the brackets more how

3:32:48Big Cat:How many do you do? I do one. One. I do one. I do one. Every pool that you enter. I think I would like to pretend it's like a moral thing. It's not. It's just laziness, I think. I think when I was younger, I did a lot. Like when I had more time or like, yeah, I don't know. I would sit down and just like rip through like 15 or something. But it kind of sucks. Come up with a crazy. This is my crazy bracket. But if you get asked to participate in like a college friend pool or something like that, do you take your bracket and then you like have it in your hands in front of you? or you just remember every game that you picked?

3:33:20I would probably remember every game I picked. I would remember every one. I printed it out. Yeah.

3:33:26PFT Commenter:Walk around with it. Yeah. Pull it out of my pocket. Like, oh, shit, I think I do have that. If your buddy was doing a pool and you could submit like up to five brackets, would you do five brackets? I would still probably only do one. Five of the same one. I would do five. Do five of the same one. I would do five. I would maybe change like the national title wear. But I'd stay consistent because you don't want to root for seven different things. So it's like I would maybe do the same Final Four but then switch the national title. Yeah, I do like the idea of one, the crazy bracket. It's like, yeah, when the women are like, let's do a crazy picture now.

3:34:00You know, you take your picture, let's do a silly one. I like that with the bracket. Let's do a silly bracket. Let's do crazy. In the Final Four. And then at the end of the first round, you're like, why the fuck did I do a silly bracket? Why did I waste my money on that?

3:34:12Big Cat:I feel like as a person who's been online as long as you have, Mark, you remember the day when like half of all content in the month of March was various brackets. And I feel like we've gotten away from that. I don't see as many content related brackets. When did we hit that peak? I want to say like 2016. We ran out of brackets. Baracketology. 2017. Yeah. Well, kind of busy with the drones, but Andy, I'll do your bracket. We need more brackets. We need to best condiments, 64 team bracket, and everybody vote. That was such a simpler time online. It really was. And people get mad. I can't believe you put mayo over ketchup.

3:34:52Big Cat:What the fuck? Unfollowed. Yeah. Okay. All right. Thanks, boys. See you guys. Mark Titus is brought to you by Venmo, where you can get in the game with the college-branded Venmo debit card and earn up to 5 % cash back at some of your favorite brands. with Venmo Stash Rewards. You can add your Venmo debit card to your mobile wallet as soon as you sign up. You can pay online and in-store right from your phone. And the best part, the card is tied right to your Venmo account. So if you got paid back from dinner, you can immediately access that money in your Venmo balance. You can spend it on whatever you want, game day snacks, tickets, merch, you name it.

3:35:33Big Cat:You can easily split purchases in the app. There's no monthly fee, no minimum balance what would you use your venmo stash on use on anything go to get some wings get a couple rounds of beer put your card down at the bar guess what you're buying drinks for the university of nebraska score more with the college branded venmo debit card get up to five percent cash back with venmo stash sign up at venmo.com slash college card the venmo master card is issued by the bank or bank in a select schools available venmo stash bundle bundle terms and exclusion supply at venmo.me slash stash terms. Max$100 cash back per month.

3:36:12PFT Commenter:Okay, let's wrap up. It's been a long show, but brackets are here. We're excited. Friday, we're going to have Stanford Steve on the show to talk about Friday's games. So after the madness on Thursday, you'll be able to get your bets ready with Stanford Steve on Friday morning with us, and we'll recap everything Thursday. Let's do numbers. 23. 68. I feel like today's the day.

3:36:34Big Cat:I'm going to do 10 for UCF. I'm going to do 66. I'm going to do 56.

3:36:40PFT Commenter:I feel like today's the day. I don't know why.

3:36:43Big Cat:I'll go 51.

3:36:46PFT Commenter:Do you want to select two at the same time? No.

3:36:51Big Cat:Same time. Oh, you mean two. Oh. Can't do that. I thought you said two numbers. One number, two balls? Yes, two balls can come out. Let's do that. The odds do change. Let's do that. Oh, here are the boys. Is that change? Go, go, go, go, go. 19. 88. Jack, 88. 69. 69 for Colton. It changes it a little bit because you don't – we always put the number back in. Right. All right.

3:37:21PFT Commenter:23.

3:37:22Big Cat:56. 10. All right.

3:37:25PFT Commenter:Two numbers are coming out. This count's official.

3:37:26Big Cat:Oh, this is exciting. This is the first time we've ever done this. Very, very exciting. Although it would be a little Mickey Mouse if somebody would.

3:37:34PFT Commenter:Well, not if they win with the first. True. Good point. Good point. Oh.

3:37:41PFT Commenter:88. The other one got stuck. Oh, here comes the other one. Here comes the other one. 21. 21. Nothing. Nothing? Oh. 88. 88. Oh, there you go. That's official. 88. First one on the board. Way to go, Jack. All right, Jack. Here we go.

3:38:00Great ball.

3:38:00Big Cat:Oh, Jack, do you have anything to say?

3:38:04PFT Commenter:doesn't like it

3:38:05Big Cat:just Patrick Kane two goals last night that's it

3:38:09PFT Commenter:just showtime showtime PFT did you forget anyone for birthdays

3:38:14Big Cat:I said Gaz's birthday

3:38:16PFT Commenter:did you forget anyone birthdays

3:38:19Big Cat:I wish Memes a happy birthday the other day thank you

3:38:23PFT Commenter:okay just making sure if you forgot anyone

3:38:25Big Cat:it was Jeff T. Lowe's birthday as well I think yesterday or Sunday wished him a happy birthday mmhmm okay whose birthday did I forget Monday Gaz No

3:38:37PFT Commenter:The Four time Five time Blake of the year Oh no Blake Griffin

3:38:43Big Cat:Wait is it Blake Griffin's birthday Blake Griffin Yeah yeah God

3:38:45PFT Commenter:You gotta retire You gotta retire dude I love I love how bad you are It's impossible It's an impossible It's an impossible task And I understand Like some celebrities I don't give a fuck about Blake Griffin is our guy You have to get Blake Griffin It was last Monday

3:39:01Big Cat:No Yesterday i was just that's that's what i get for thinking about gas done being nice to gas sorry gas you had a day i hope it was a great one by the way guys all right happy happy belated to blake of the year blake griffin um happy also birthday to uh brandon ayuk great guy where are you great guy He's staying in great shape What? What, Max? Who else? I'm just seeing all these other accounts Post about Blake Griffin

3:39:34PFT Commenter:It was a lot of Blake Griffin It was a lot of Blake Griffin

3:39:37Big Cat:Courtside Buzz tweeted about it Happy birthday to Blake Griffin Yeah You know what, Blake? I'll send you something

3:39:45PFT Commenter:There you go Nice

3:39:46Big Cat:How would you like a Hank dog toy, Blake?

3:39:49PFT Commenter:And a PFT gnome

3:39:50Big Cat:You got it We'll throw that in there

3:39:52PFT Commenter:You got it

3:39:52Big Cat:Love you guys.

3:40:24Thank you.

3:40:57Thank you.

3:41:24Thank you.

3:41:52You