The EvanMiya College Basketball Show

Evan (00:00)
Obviously the Duke blowing leads thing is a big deal. This is second loss this year when they've lost a big lead. And I think it really only is a big storyline because Duke loses so infrequently

Rob (00:11)
there's 38 and three

in the last calendar And yes, three of those losses were games that they led by double digits. The other 38 games they led by double digits and they did not lose.

I think that that's a pretty rate.

when it comes down to it.

Evan (00:30)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Evan Mia College basketball show. I'm your host, Evan Mia Kawa. And what a fantastic week of sports and specifically for college basketball. There is a ton to get into today on the show. UNC beats Duke, greatest rivalry in the sport. This game always delivers. Michigan State beats Illinois at home in a big one. In Madison Square Garden on Friday night, St. John's knocks off Yukon.

We also had big wins for teams like Houston, Florida and Kentucky. ⁓ So super packed show today. Rob Doster is on deck with me here in a second to talk about the weekend. And later on in the show, we've got Eamonn Brennan joining us to talk about some more games and do some early February bubble talk. And also in this week's analytics corner at the end, I'm going to highlight the teams that have been most impacted by injuries this year. And we may also go in depth on US Olympic mixed doubles curling.

Probably not, but we're gonna have some fun today. If you are a listener of the show, please leave us a review on Apple or Spotify or if you watch on YouTube, hit the subscribe button. It really helps us grow the show. All right, it is time to get into the big storylines from this week and here with me to do that is the great Rob Doster from the Field of 68. Doster, there are so many places that we could start to recap this weekend, but I think we have to begin with Duke, North Carolina.

the greatest rivalry in sports in my opinion delivers yet again a final score, North Carolina 71, Duke 68 in Chapel Hill. And I think starting this game, it did not look like this was gonna be a good game. Duke was up early 18 to five in this game, but North Carolina slowly and surely clawed their way back in this game to eventually tie the game late. And we had a couple late sequences when both teams had a chance to go ahead.

Ultimately, it ends with this North Carolina ball with 10 seconds left. Derek, Derek Dixon, the freshman with the ball. He takes Campooser ⁓ into the paint. Defenders converge. He passes it to Seth Trimble in the corner who hits the three to win the game. We have a court storm. We have some controversy around the court storm. ⁓ so many storylines here. Duster, what were some of your biggest takeaways from this incredible game?

Rob (02:51)
first and foremost, you got to give John Shire credit for being able to spin the narrative. You know, he's a young coach, but he's already figured out that if you start, if you say something about court storming in the press conference, that's what everyone's going to be talking about instead of having to talk about ⁓ maybe some of the late game offensive issues that your team has shown in a couple of games ⁓ this season. No, I look, I think you have to give North Carolina so much credit for this. ⁓ Being able to fight back against that team.

being able to execute late against that team with how good Duke can be defensively. Derek Dixon, I still don't understand how he saw Seth Trimble in the corner or how he was able to actually get the ball to him in the corner, making that pay that pass over the length and the bodies that were in between them. ⁓ The ability to knock down that shot if you're Seth Trimble, I mean, he's not necessarily the greatest three point shoot in the world, but he shot that thing like he was Steph Curry.

in all by himself in an empty gym ⁓ and knocked that down. Yeah, he put him to sleep, man. It was awesome. ⁓ It was everything about that moment was great. Like I, I, I loved the fact that they were able to come back and win it. I love the fact that we, we, kind of got the best out of the, the Caleb Wilson versus cam booze or matchup that we were all kind of hoping for. ⁓ I love, I think it's actually really significant too, that

Evan (03:48)
With the Steph Curry celebration too. ⁓

Rob (04:12)
The two guys, the questions that we've had about this North Carolina team, Evan has been, do they have enough guards? Do they have point guard play? We know how good their bigs are. Is their back court good enough when you look at some of these other teams around the country and the fact that the two guys that won the game for him were freshmen, Derek Dixon, making that pass and senior said, tremble making the shot. I think says a lot about where this team is right now and what they can be moving forward. I still think they're a little bit flawed, but

And frankly, I think that where they are ranked probably in the AP poll probably has them a little overinflated in terms of how good they are actually. If you look at some of the different metrics and all that. But I mean, you can at some point you just have to look at and say, when is a win is a win. And they found a way to be able to get the win when they needed it. And they made the plays that they needed to when they needed to. And we got a great moment, man. Seth Trimble is going to be able to look back at that for the rest of his life. I wonder how many times he's watched that video on his phone.

Evan (05:12)
I Mean yeah, you if it were me, I would have watched it probably a hundred times by now I know I will go back and watch highlights of myself from like rec soccer leagues as an adult So, you know if if I'm doing that then I'm sure he is I mean that that pass from Derek Dixon I was I kind of watched this back several times because it looks like initially I don't know if UNC got the look that they were wanting with that play and then he just decides to take Cameron Boozer to the basket

Rob (05:17)
Yeah, right.

He's

Evan (05:36)
And I think he was looking, you see four Duke defenders converge on him. I think he was looking to pass. And if you look, if you freeze it, he has Trembl open in the corner. He also has a cutting Caleb Wilson who might be the more like obvious play there, but he's able to fling it across the court and, you know, Trembl hitting that shot obviously big, but people have pointed this out. It's the setup from Dixon that I think is more impressive, especially considering that he's a freshman. He's not even one of their.

Rob (05:59)
Yes.

Evan (06:05)
top three to four most notable players, but the fact that he's trusted to have the ball in his hands late and make that type of play ⁓ speaks not just to like him as a player, but things are clicking and trending in the right direction. Generally speaking for North Carolina and Hubert Davis being able to coach his way back into this game and put his player in a spot to get that done really speaks volumes.

Rob (06:27)
Yeah, I mean, when you're able to get, they don't need their guards to be great. If you're Carolina, let's talk about them big picture, right? You don't need your guards to be great. You don't need, ⁓ you know, Seth Trimble to be Darren Peterson. You know, that's not what you need. What you need is a level of toughness on the defensive end, the ability to keep other guards and the Ibuka Koreas of the world in front. And you gotta be able to have guys that can make plays in moments when you need plays to be made.

Right? You don't need them to average 25 points a game. You just need to be good enough in big moments when Caleb Wilson is very clearly like run himself into the ground to be able to find a way to win when it matters to win in those moments. And I think that's exactly what they did. That's exactly what you saw there. And you got to give him credit for, man. It's hard sometimes and

I think there's certainly places where you can criticize Hubert Davis as a head coach, right? Over the course of his career. But I do think it says a lot about him that he has seemingly moved away from the significant monetary investment that they have in Kyan Evans. And it just kind of said, look, know what? Derek Evans is going to, Derek Dixon is going to end up being the guy. You played 33 minutes against Duke. I think it's pretty clear who is the preferred point guard at this point in. ⁓

in Carolina season and like stuff like that is not easy to do. And while it might not be the sexiest thing to credit a coach for is making personnel decisions that seem fairly obvious. It's a lot more difficult to do that than I think people realize.

Evan (08:08)
I think that's a great point by you. I think so many coaches in this NIL world kind of feel stuck to, well, we promised this guy this, monetarily, all this investment. And ultimately, you do the best you can to set your roster up. But then once the season's going along, the goal is winning, right? And so how are you able to change things around and figure out what's working? And not every coach would be able to do that. So I think that's a really good point. On the Duke side of things here, a couple of things that really stick out to me.

Obviously the Duke blowing leads thing is a big deal. This is their second loss this year when they've lost a big lead. And I think it really only is a big storyline because Duke loses so infrequently that when they do and it happens to be a blown lead situation, it kind of carries storylines. But it's not like they've had five blown leads this year. But certainly you think back to the Houston game in the Final Four, you think back to one or two games last year, certainly their game against Texas Tech earlier in the season.

That's certainly a trend. I don't necessarily have a ton of fear that that's gonna happen every single time. It's certainly a thing. ⁓ The other thing I think that was more of a factor in this game was, go ahead.

Rob (09:13)
Well, you know what, you know why it's a

thing, Evan, it's a thing because outside of the Clemson loss last year, which there were a lot of mitigating factors there, I think like didn't Cooper flag have the flu and it was on the road. And if you look at the last two seasons, the issue that Duke has had has been like being able to protect some of those leads when they've lost, right? They've had six losses in the last two years and five of them could be qualified as like giving games away.

Right. There was a Texas step game this year. They were up by 17. They were up by 13 in the first half against North Carolina. They were by 14 with what was eight minutes left against Houston. And then early on in the season against Duke and against Kansas, they had leads and then they were unable to execute in, in, um, clutch situations. So I don't know if those necessarily fall into the same category, but at the very minimum, uh, since in the last calendar year, right? Cause now it's February 9th. So in the last calendar year,

There have been three losses that Duke has had and in all three of those losses, they've held a double digit lead. So there's two ways to look at this, right? Duke is good enough where they're going to get up and put together. Doesn't matter who they're playing. They're going to get up big. They're going to put up these ⁓ these big leads are going to lead by eight, 10, 12, 14, 16 points at some point against pretty much everybody that they play. And at some point you are going to lose games when you have a lead. It's just it's it's just natural. Like in the world of sports.

especially when you're dealing with a team that has a lot of 18 and 19 year olds, you're gonna have games where you get a lead and you can't close it out. It happens, it happens in the NBA, in the NFL, it happens everywhere in sports, right? And the other way to look at it is that there have been too many moments where in big moments, Duke has not been able to close us out. I have a tough time criticizing...

this team in this program. And I've said this over and over again, the team, this program for blowing those leads when you also have to look at the fact that, ⁓ they, they were able to win in crunch time on, ⁓ against Florida and they had a game win a shot against Florida and they came back, in a game against Arkansas earlier this year and ended up winning by nine. they beat Michigan state in a game where they ended up having to switch to a zone of the second half and came back in one and made two big plays late, just

putting Ken Boozer into a ball screen with Isaiah Evans. So I think that this is going to end up being a narrative and being a thing for Duke because they've had three really high profile losses that have all resulted from having a double digit lead that they gave away. But it's also those are literally the only three losses that they've had in the last calendar year. And the last 365 days, they've lost three games and they've won. Let's do the math here. They're 22 and two this season.

Last year they won one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 games. So there's 38 and three in the last calendar year. And yes, three of those losses were games that they led by double digits. The other 38 games they led by double digits and they did not lose. So if you're going to tell me John, you're, the analytics guy. If you're going to tell me that John Shire has, what is that? Like a 92 % rate of winning games that he leads by double digits. I think that that's a pretty good rate.

Evan (12:23)
Correct.

Rob (12:35)
when it comes down to it.

Evan (12:36)
Yeah, my prognosis is not worried. ⁓ know, when you have all these other games where it doesn't even come close to being questioned and they just win by double digits, that means you're doing something well. I think it's a bit unlucky and unfortunate and you can question a few things there, but not a ⁓ capital P problem for them. I do want to move on quickly. Go ahead.

Rob (12:38)
Yes.

There are some like, let's be clear

too. Like there are some flaws with this Duke team. Like I think they're a little bit too reliant on Kam Buzer, but like he's a national player of the year and you don't have a point guard. It's kind of is what it is.

Evan (12:57)
Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

I also think Pat Ngongba being in foul trouble last year in this game was a huge factor. He was really, really good in opening four to five minutes. He only plays 16 minutes in this game that forced Duke to go small. And when you actually look at the analytics, like Duke has not played very well when both Caleb Foster and Caden Boozer on the floor and they had to play more time together just because of who they had available. So I don't think that helps them. And, and, you know, certainly hopefully that's, that's not an issue going forward for them.

⁓ But yeah, I'm not super concerned. Okay, I want to get your thoughts on on st. John's and you con Friday night in the garden you were there for this game this was the most anticipated game probably in the Big East all season outside of you know coming the Big East tournament most likely and ⁓ You know, it was gonna be a great atmosphere I think I've heard people talking about how the home court advantage of the garden has grown year-over-year Fort st. John's was that your impression and what were your takeaways from

from this performance for the Johnnys ⁓ in what ended up being a very convincing late game stretch for them to kind of take this one.

Rob (14:07)
Well, that building was on fire, right? Like there was a level of anticipation for St. John's fans that were there that ended up paying off. I think a lot of it was ⁓ the fact that, mean, look, normally when UConn plays there, even when it's a St. John's home game, you're looking at like 35 to 50 % of that arena being UConn fans. ⁓ Now,

That was the fourth time that you cons played at the garden this season. ⁓ And when you combine that with the BYU game, like there's been lots of opportunities for ⁓ some of these traveling fans that don't live in and around stores in Hartford to be able to go and see these guys play. So that might've played a role in it as well. ⁓ I think the price of the tickets was probably a little bit scary for people, ⁓ friends of mine that I know that went to that game paid.

$350 for upper level tickets, which is a lot of money for a ticket like that. I mean, credit St. John's for turning that home court into an absolute ⁓ hornet's nest. And I think that you saw in their performance, especially on the defensive end, what happens when you have a building that has that level of home court advantage, right? ⁓ The the intensity with which Dylan Darling was able to kind of

⁓ provide pressure on the ball against Silas Demery. Look, you can watch it on TV. I promise you, Evan, you can sit there and you can watch it on TV. I don't think you can fully appreciate how hard it is to go up against that St. John's team until you're, I was sitting like six feet away from where Yukon was trying to inbound the Zabals past Dylan Mitchell, who was going like this. And you can't appreciate how hard that is until you see it up close and in person with how athletic he is. had St. John's fronting.

the guys trying to get the ball in. Like there were probably six or seven times where I'm sitting there counting in my head like one, two, three, four, five, six. How is that not a five second call in the inbounds? I think there's a ceiling to how good St. John's can be just because I think when you are a team that relies on ball pressure and forcing other teams into making mistakes, like you get to the best teams in college basketball, you have a good point guard, you're not going to make mistakes, right? Like that's just kind of what it is.

But I think that this is absolutely a team that can get to a second weekend. If you can get to a second weekend, anything can happen. You could have a fluke you run to get to Indianapolis. I just, the levels with which they've improved since the first month of the season is leaps and bounds. They're as improved as any team in college basketball, I think.

Evan (16:49)
Yeah, I mean one of the storylines going in this game was how this is not a typical St. John's team in the sense that they've been stronger offensively than defensively and yet in this game, Petino really, really ramped up the defensive pressure both on those inbounds plays like you talked about just the way that they were guarding Silas Demery. I mean, Demery had nine turnovers in this game. It's the second most he's had in any game in his career. The most he had in his career was 10 against St. John's when he was playing for Georgia.

November of 24 so there's something that patino has found with Demery and he's not been this has not been an issue for him But it certainly was in this game. I mean he this was just an interesting game from him in general I want to get your thoughts on this because offensively at times in the second half He had a crazy stretch in the second half where I think he had nine points in an assist in a little over four minutes He makes a few layups hits a three has a nice stuff like he was he was driving you come forward, but ultimately the big picture was

all of the mistakes that he was making and the way that they were pressuring him. So a very mixed bag from him. Do you think that's an area that's exploitable in going forward for him? Or do you think this is mostly just a St. John's is really good at this type of thing?

Rob (17:59)
I think it's both. Like turnovers has been an issue for you. Constance, the season started. I believe they are still and I'll check on it right now, but I think that they're still last place in offensive turnover rate in a second to last now. ⁓ Because DePaul is apparently ⁓ the team that turns the ball over the most, but they turn the ball over on 18 % of their possessions offensively ⁓ in Big East play, which is just not something that is going to be sustainable. ⁓ And some of that is Silas Demery.

Some of that is a lot of the other guys on this roster that are just a little bit sloppy. know, the tough thing with this group is I think the talent is there, but there's a lot of just.

a lot of the mistakes that they make, like it's undisciplined stuff. It's sloppy offensively. is ⁓ being lazy, moving your feet on the defensive end and committing a reach and foul instead of sliding and trying to use your chest and get in front. ⁓ It is you're contesting at the rim and instead of going vertical, you're bringing your arms down and committing a foul. Those are gonna end up being the issues, right? Because Yukon is, they are very, very good.

on the defensive end when it comes to just kind of keeping teams in control. And because of the pace that they play, like there's a little bit of Virginia there where they're gonna run clock. They're not gonna make, they're not gonna beat themselves. They're gonna make it very difficult for you to get a good shot. And you're just not gonna be able to go off on these like six to nothing, eight to nothing, 12 to nothing runs in that. don't see kill shots against UConn all that often. And...

It's going to keep them in games and it's going to allow them to be able to be competitive. But when you're a team that plays like that, all of a sudden those like turnovers that lead to layups of the other. And I think there were four pick six turnovers that they gave up against St. John's. Those end up being the absolute killers because, ⁓ I mean, they always are, but because that allows you to get a quick basket when your whole thing is we're going to make it tough for you to score. Right. ⁓ when you have things where it's like sloppy fouling and then all of a sudden you have to go to your bench and

Malachi Smith who looked great at the start of the year, but he's completely lost his confidence when he has to come in for Silas Demery for long stretches or you got to bring in Eric Riba for Terrence Reed against the Big East player of year in Zubiedge. Like those are things where all of a sudden those like fine margins get trimmed down when you're kind of built around being this team that can play close games and can win close games. That's a difficult, it becomes more problematic for a team that is built the way this Yukon team does.

is, then it would be for most teams.

Evan (20:40)
Yeah, what most impressive player to me in this game was Dylan Mitchell. I've I've loved Dylan Mitchell for years. I have thought he's very underrated as a player who's never going to be your leading scorer or primary offensive threat. But I think he does so many things well in this game. He had fifteen point six rebounds to assist just felt physically and athletically just all over the place in a way that was a huge aspect for St. John's. And I was watching him thinking.

You know a player who he reminds me of, who if I had to say like, what's a previous player that he, his game typifies? I think he's kind of a similar role to Andre Jackson in what he did for Yukon. Do you think that is a fair comparison because big picture for both of these guys, obviously slightly different games, but they're kind of the like stereotypical glue guy for your team who does all of the connective stuff offensively and defensively really well. He's not as good a player as Andre Jackson was, but in terms of

Rob (21:36)
might be.

Evan (21:38)
of that type of role. Do you think that's a fair comparison or would you disagree with that?

Rob (21:43)
⁓ not like I thought Andre was a little bit more of like a, a pass first guy, but the impact that they have. Yeah. I see where you're going with that because a lot of what they do, ⁓ it's not the stuff that's going to show up in the box score. It's just the fact that you got this six foot seven dude with this long wingspan that, is literally the most athletic human being you've ever seen in your life. And they're making life miserable for opponents just because they are long and athletic. Yeah. I I'm picking up what you're putting down there.

Evan, but when it comes to like, I think where St. John's season flipped was when the effort that you see Dylan Mitchell playing with and the effort that you see Zuby Ejiofor playing with rubbed off on Bryce Hopkins and rubbed off on Ian Jackson. And when Dylan Darling turned into a guy that you could trust to play 23, 24 minutes as a ballhawking

⁓ point guard. when you when you saw the effort that Zuby and Dylan played with and then that that became the example that was used for these other guys on the rock. Like that's when it kind of impacted everything. And the thing about Andre Jackson, if you talk to people from that 2023 Yukon team was that he was the the leader and the tone center and the guy where that kind of in that locker room was like, we're not doing any yet.

Whatever that was that we were just doing that has not happened. There's a story that goes around ⁓ where he was in the locker room. And let's just say that there was a locker that did not survive a bad first half and a halftime meeting because of Andre Jackson in there. And I think that's kind of more than anything else. It's not just the athleticism. It's like there's a tone that he sets within that program that I think you see come through with the way that they're playing now.

Evan (23:31)
for Okay, I want to move quickly to a result in the SEC. Kentucky beats Tennessee 74 to 71. This was yet another example of Kentucky number one coming from back behind in a game that they were once again down and somehow they keep managing to win these games. Tennessee, you feel like you've seen this a lot with them over the last several years with being in commanding positions and losing them. For me, I think what really sticks out to me about this was

Otega Owe is really returning to the form and level player that a lot of people expected him to be. He has never been downright poor this year, but certainly there were body language issues, effort issues early in the season, as with most of the team. I think every single game this season, he has scored over 10 points, but in the last five games, he has scored 20 or more points. And when you look back to the beginning of the season, he won his first nine games of the year without hitting 20 once.

So he's really turning up the ability to lead this team by example. And I think that I was also then leading to Kentucky being better on the defensive end of the court. Kentucky held Tennessee to 37 % from the field this year, which was their lowest this season. know, Kentucky eight and one in their last nine games, they're trending in the right direction. ⁓ You know, what did you think of Kentucky in this game?

Rob (24:50)
It's not just away like Brandon Garrison was a guy who was called out and benched for lack of effort and he's been a monster here of late. ⁓ I think with away the biggest thing is if you watch the way the ball moves offensively for for Kentucky, he's getting a lot more opportunities to attack closeouts. And the thing about Otega is if you if you kind of put him in ISO situation say, all right, go make a move, go beat this guy off the dribble. It's not really what he does best.

Right? You don't want him to be the guy that's in the ball screen coming off of it. You want him to swing, swing, and then have somebody sprinting at him and allow him to be able to go past that guy. Right? That that's basically what he does best, maybe better than anybody in the sec. Cause he's so strong. And once he gets going to the rim, like, what are you going to do? You either got a phallum or just pray that he misses a shot of the basket. And I think that part of, uh,

I like Jalen low, right? I think Jalen low is a very good player. I think that he's the wrong fit stylistically as a point card and, ⁓ not having him there, right? He got injured in the first like 30 seconds of the Mississippi state game. Right. And if you look at what they've done since then, Kentucky's one eight of their last nine. And I don't think that you can, you can look at the, the, the fact that they don't have a ball dominant point guard out there anymore. And

the success that they've had offensively, to me it's very easy to connect those dots. And I think that part of the effort is that now the ball is getting shared a little bit more instead of being in jail in those hands. And I think that that helps when you're getting more touches offensively, it's a lot easier to convince yourself that you need to work on the defensive end of the floor. And then I don't know where this would stand in your metrics, but like, I think that there is a level of confidence that they have now.

where at the start of the year, some of it was, man, we're in a close game. How are we going to blow this? this is what we do. We compete and then we end up blowing this game. You know, they did not execute against North Carolina down the stretch. They did not execute against Missouri down the stretch. And when you combine those two things with some of those blowout losses where guys couldn't come, like they weren't able to get off the mat after they got punched against Michigan State and Gonzaga.

I think that those, there was a level of confidence that they lacked in those games. And I think after the comeback win against LSU and then the comeback win at Tennessee, now there's a little bit of, it's not, man, how are gonna lose this game? It's now we're down. All right, we're gonna find a way to come back and win this. We just gotta keep competing, keep fighting. And I don't know if...

It's hard for me to just kind of say this is the, it's a mental shift, right? It's a vibe shift, whatever it is, but it feels like this is one of those situations where you just kind of look at it and say, okay, this team believes now, right? They're, they're bought into themselves. And, ⁓ I, I don't know, man, like that. It just feels like something has changed within that locker room because if you would have showed me after that Gonzaga game and said, like, this is going to be a team that's going to have three 15 plus point comebacks.

in the SEC, I would have laughed in your face. If you would have told me that that was going to be a team that could blow a 15 point lead at Arkansas, find themselves down by five or six minutes left in like 17 technicals going against them and still come back and win that game against coach Cal in that environment, I would have laughed. Like I just, I'm blown away by the way that Mark Pope has been able to turn that thing around.

Evan (28:26)
You have to give him credit because I think he he was obviously very accountable for the mistakes and the lack of whatever was missing early in the season. And he basically said, I don't remember the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of we're not a good basketball team right now. We will be by the end of the season. Just, you know, keep the faith. And that is what is happening. ⁓ I still have concerns for them in terms of what I think their performance level can be against like the best competition in the SEC. ⁓

top four to five seeds in the NCAA tournament. ⁓ mean, basically, if you rank all of their opponents they've played this season on my website, the top five teams that they've played, ⁓ they've only won one of those games and that was their neutral game against St. John's and that was a much worse St. John's team than we see now. maybe they're gonna find themselves in a situation against ⁓ a team of Florida's caliber and be down 15 and they can't claw their way back because that team is just too good. But certainly against these middling teams, they're, yeah.

Rob (29:20)
Well, they just don't have any pros. Yeah.

They don't have pros.

Evan (29:24)
Yeah, against these meddling teams,

can do it more, but you're right. The talent level that maybe they were hyping in the preseason, certainly we've not seen that. They're missing some obvious players, of course.

Rob (29:34)
You know what it is? It's one of those things where I kind of think about this from a fantasy football perspective, right? Where how often do you sit there and look at your team and it's like, well, I got good starters and I got a good bench, but none of my guys are top 12 at their position. And then what you try to do is you're like, I'm going to package these two wide receiver twos to try to go get a wide receiver one, right? Like how can I get these two guys that are borderline starters to go get a star?

And then you would have to go try to find a team that has like this doesn't have the depth and is basically starting like a guy that gets three targets a game. You know what I mean? and, and find a way to be able to fill them in. But when you have 12 guys, like that's the biggest thing is they had 12 guys that were all good players. I don't know if they necessarily had any great players and that will only get you so far. and when it comes to winning a championship. So I think that this is a team that's got second weekend.

upside and it's kind of capped at that. if you would, I know Kentucky fans were thinking national championship when the season started. They were also probably thinking and I T after the Gonzaga game. And if you could say, Hey, look, even though you lost your starting point guard and you lost your starting five and you lost Ken Williams, you got a chance to get to the second weekend here and maybe win an SEC championship. I think most of them would probably say, all right, yeah, we'll take that and we'll see if we can find a way to be able to ⁓ find more talent next year.

Evan (30:58)
Yeah, okay, we're gonna touch on more of the big games from the weekend later on the show, but I wanna end with a fun game here. We're gonna take a big picture of where all the teams stack according to the metrics on my website, and we're gonna play a quick game of buy-sell. So I've I've roughly looked at all the teams that are kind of rated in similar tiers here, and we're gonna list each one, and I want each of us to quickly pick a team that we're buying and selling, not necessarily saying like, this team is the best team in this group.

therefore I'm buying them, more just like relative to their position, I think they're gonna end up being even better than this going forward or vice versa on the sell side. So in this top tier, again, this is not exactly scientific, but this is roughly how the numbers break down. There are four teams that are kind of above everyone else right now, and that would be Michigan, Arizona, Duke, and Houston. That's the top four right there. Yes, so Michigan, Arizona, Duke are all rated pretty.

Rob (31:49)
Houston. Interesting.

Evan (31:53)
close to each other and then Houston slightly below but still very much in that top group. So of those four, I guess I'll start with what's the team that you feel like most confident right now and then which team do you maybe feel like could fall out of that tier ⁓ going forward?

Rob (32:08)
Most confident in Arizona. I just, ⁓ I think that Michigan probably has a bit of a higher ceiling. I think Michigan probably also has a bit of a lower floor and we've seen that kind of play out with the way we got some results this season. ⁓ So I would buy Arizona out of that group and I'm probably selling Houston. And that's just because I don't, I think that there's a top three in college basketball this year. I think it's Duke, Arizona and Michigan. ⁓

And I don't think Houston's in that group. So out of that tier, I would have to sell Houston.

Evan (32:42)
That's interesting because for me, feel like I would slide, I would put Michigan and Arizona in kind of their tier A and I would slide Duke down to B with Houston. So I almost feel like I'm selling a little bit on Duke in that group and maybe buying Houston, I guess. I don't really feel comfortable saying I'm Michigan or Arizona because they're both really good, but. Okay, next. Yes, that's correct. Okay, so next year, this is where it gets interesting. I've got five teams here. Florida, Illinois.

Rob (32:59)
Yeah.

You're not getting a good price if you're buying them right now.

Evan (33:11)
Yukon, Iowa State, and Purdue. Florida, Illinois, Yukon, Iowa State, Purdue. What are your thoughts there by self?

Rob (33:18)
I know who I'm selling. I think it's pretty clear. I'm out on Purdue and that's here. Now I'm not out on Purdue overall, but I'm out on Purdue in that tier. And I would probably, honestly, I'd probably buy UConn out of that group. And the reason I say that is because I think Florida and Illinois have both kind of made their runs here, right? Like at this point, we're kind of at like the peak of what public perception can be.

for both Illinois and Florida. And I don't know how much higher they can go in that group. ⁓ Whereas I think UConn coming off of the loss and the fact that they're offensively, they've kind of like, they've been great for two games and they struggle and they're good and they struggle again. The solo ball hasn't hit his peak yet. I still think that there's more room for UConn to grow than anybody else in that.

Evan (34:12)
For me, I'm buying Illinois out of this group. I think once they get Kyle and Boswell back, I think they have the potential to be the best team or tie for Big Ten Championship. So I'm very high on Illinois. ⁓ I get the Purdue pessimism and they are certainly on a downward spiral right now and they are not at the level that they want to be entering the tournament. If the tournament was right now, I'd be out on Purdue. But I just have so much confidence and if you, on paper, if you're looking at any group of players,

who you're gonna say, this is the group that can with the veteran leadership and experience of literally many of these players, some of these players have literally been to a national title before and you have a veteran coach like Matt Painter, I think we're talking about Purdue in a very different light in a month from now. So yes, maybe they're the worst team in that group, but I'm not necessarily selling them.

Rob (34:49)
Yeah, they have.

Hey, Evan,

I'll tell you what, man, as somebody that planned a trip around getting to the Michigan Purdue game on the fit on February 17th, I hope that you're right. Cause I do not want to walk.

Evan (35:11)
I will also

be at that game and I hope that I'm right as well. This is gonna be a bit of a hot one for me, I'm selling, all these teams are great, I'm selling Iowa State and the reason why is they have been, they're on a five game winning streak, but all of those games have been against teams outside the top 40. No team in the top 10 has had their rating drop more over the last month on my site than Iowa State. Like I just, think they're a good team, but I do not think that they have been showing.

Rob (35:15)
Yeah.

Wow.

Evan (35:38)
the level that we saw from them in say November, December, they have a really brutal stretch coming soon. They're obviously gonna prove what they're about. Kansas, Houston, BYU, Texas Tech and Arizona shortly thereafter. tough call, but I'm just pointing some things out here about Iowa State.

Rob (35:55)
No faith, no

faith in TJ Ozelberg are unbelievable. Unbelievable, Evan.

Evan (36:00)
Okay, next tier

here, I'm gonna put 10 teams in here, so this is a little bit larger, and we'll just do this one quickly. Yeah, go ahead.

Rob (36:04)
Can I just, can I just say real quick

that you are, you are not selling the team that went into the, that, that was the home that played at home as the number one team in the country and got beat by 23, but you are selling the team that went into the then number one team in the country's gym and beat them by 23 points. Is that correct? That is correct. Okay. I'm just making sure.

Evan (36:26)
That is correct.

Yep, that is what we're doing here. ⁓ Okay, next tier.

Rob (36:33)
And if you're you

end up being right, then I will be the biggest promoter of the of Evanmia.com from now on.

Evan (36:39)
Yeah, we'll be

recirculating this clip clip everywhere ⁓ Although I'm just gonna say I'm not hate watching Iowa State. I think they're a great team That's just that's just where I'm going with this. Okay next year, Michigan State Gonzaga Kansas Nebraska st. John's Vanderbilt Virginia Texas Tech, Alabama, Tennessee. We've got the teams ranked 10 through 19 right there pretty wide tier But of those names what team sticks out to you as a team you're buying and selling

Rob (37:07)
What was the last one? There was.

⁓

Evan (37:08)
⁓ Texas Tech,

Alabama, Tennessee at the bottom there.

Rob (37:12)
⁓ I will sell, well, I'm going to buy Kansas. Yeah. I just, I've, I've been on this bandwagon all season long. If you're going to give me Bill self a top 10 defense, Darren Peterson and Melvin council. think that is a top five to eight ⁓ title contender. I don't want to say type five to 18, but I think they are top five to eight title contender in college basketball. So I will buy Kansas. ⁓ I'll probably sell. I mean,

Evan (37:16)
I'm also buying Kansas.

Rob (37:41)
pretty much anybody, all the SEC teams in that group. I don't think that there's an actual title contender in the SEC this year outside of Florida. ⁓ Alabama, I don't trust them defensively. I don't think that there's enough around Jacoby Gillespie or Nate Ament for Tennessee. And then with Vanderbilt, I love the story and I want it to work. I just don't think they have enough size, right? Like they feel like one of those really fun mid-major teams.

that everybody adores and then they get to the tournament and then all of a sudden their six foot point guard and six, two off guards got to deal with six, three and six, five and their six, eight bigs got to deal with six, 11 and seven foot. it's like, okay, well that's now we know why those guys were at the level that they were at. So I love this Vanderbilt story. I just don't think they have the size to be able to deal with ⁓ the monsters that you're going to find when you get to the elite eight and the final four.

Evan (38:33)
Yeah, I think that's fair. The team that I'm selling from this category is Texas Tech and it is purely for their depth issues. They're obviously their stars, Christian Anderson, JT Toppin, incredible, maybe the best duo in college basketball, but I just do not think this team has the pieces, the guns to consistently play in March Madness when everyone is giving 100 % to make it that far compared to maybe what they're hoping for just because

I think there was a massive, massive talent and reliability drop off once you get outside of their top three to four guys. And I think they've overcome that well to this point in the season. I don't necessarily know if that's gonna continue for them.

Rob (39:15)
Yeah, fair, fair, I get it.

Evan (39:17)
Okay, ⁓

I feel like we should probably leave it there. I know we could keep chatting for forever, but I'm let you go. Thank you so much, Rob, for joining me today. You and Field68 have been so important to college basketball, and so just wanna thank you for everything you're doing, and I really appreciate you coming on the show today.

Rob (39:35)
I appreciate you, man. Thanks for having me on.

Evan (39:36)
Thank you to Rob Doster for joining me today. You can find all of Rob's stuff on the Field of 68, on YouTube, on X and all of those platforms. The Field of 68 After Dark Show, if you're unfamiliar, is on almost every single night during the college basketball season, recapping all the day's action so you can find him there. I also know he records several other regular Field of 68 podcasts, like the Shoot or Shoot podcast, so be sure to check out Doster in all of those places for Field of 68 stuff.

Evan (40:04)
Well, we've got more games to get to along with some bubble and resume talk. And with me to do that is Eamon Brennan who runs the buzzer, a great college basketball newsletter, also does some stuff with basketball under review. Eamon, we have a huge big 10 game to talk about. Michigan State beats Illinois 85-82 in the Breslin Center. Big picture in this game. ⁓ Jeremy Fears, whatever way you slice it is kind of the storyline here. He was awesome in this game.

26.16 assists he continues to be probably the best player in the Big Ten obviously all the Tripping dirty play stuff is is still a conversation and there's some speculation about what happened this game I don't want to spend a ton of time on that but that's still going on either way you either way you slice it He's the picture the big picture here But Jackson Kohler also was great in this game 16 rebounds some big threes in the second half and I think on the Illinois side of things it was Keaton Wogler struggling really for the first time in a while and

struggling in a really big way. He finished this game with 16 points, just two of 16 from the field, he did make almost all of his free throws, which has been a consistently great thing for him, which has been awesome. He played most of this game. I do think Illinois is really missing Kylan Boswell in a spot like this. I mean, just overall, Illinois, who is typically a great three-point shooting team, just 28 % from the field, from three-point land.

on 36 attempts. So a lot of stuff here. What were your overall takeaways from this big clash between Michigan State and Illinois?

Eamonn Brennan (41:36)
Yeah, sure. No, I mean, I you touched on a lot of them. think on the Illinois side, for sure. It was, it was Wagler looking a bit overwhelmed and I don't want to overstate that case because he still took his shots. It's not like he shied away from it. Like things weren't falling. He kept going. Obviously he was overweight from, from two, two of eight from three. One of those threes was late when it was kind of, I think they were down what six or five or something needed to cut it. ⁓ needed to cut it quickly. And that was the first time he kind of looked like.

in the rhythm of his typical shot all night, which is probably telling, there was a moment late in the game. I was chatting along with, you know, my sub stack live chat folks. ⁓ And it was right after he had a turnover on a drive to the right side of the lane where the ball just kind of squirmed away from him. He looked a little bit weak relative to whoever was guarding him at that point. And maybe, maybe cam ward. I'm not sure. It was just sort of like,

I immediately was like, needed, Mirkovic needs to have the ball now and the very next possession and Brad Underwood and I Simpatico right on the same wavelength. ⁓ he put the ball in Mirkovic's hands instead, and they immediately got a layup, you know, with one of those little crazy left-handed floater finishes that Mirkovic is so capable of, pulling off. And yeah, it was just, it had that feel of like, if it's not Keaton's game by now, it's not going to be his game. There's about a minute or two left here. And now's the time where.

Yeah, obviously if you had Boswell, he'd have the ball in his hands, but, you've basically got the choice of those two guys to initiate your offense. And one of them looks a little bit more settled than the other. And so, yeah, that was a big takeaway. It's really the worst we've seen him play. And the most we've seen him look like a freshman and maybe not a particularly heralded freshmen since, you know, Yukon and Alabama early in the year, those are really his two other notably bad games. And he's still got it done at the free throw line and made some big free throws to kind of keep them in the game and did some other decent stuff. But definitely the first time all year, or at least.

you know, since the turn of the year where he's looked like, you know, not a top five, top seven, phenomenal, all of a sudden lottery pick on the Michigan state side. You know, you alluded to it and we don't, don't also kind of don't want to get into it because it's, it's, you know, kind of tedious, it is, it is a little annoying to me just as a neutral, you know, the Rob Lowe with the NFL hat on appreciator of college basketball that

Fears is by far getting more attention for what he's doing in various outlier moments of the game. And he's done it enough now where you can say it's not an outlier and it's skirting the line between, in this game, between what's intentional and what's not. think you could probably poll people and a fair number of them would say that was, given his reputation, probably intentional what happened in the Illinois game specifically. But the other incidents are just like kind of clear cut. And.

It's a shame because people are talking about that with him and he's gotten this kind of negative reputation throughout the sport a little bit, or at least among fans of other teams. When what he's actually producing as a player is like mind bogglingly good, especially coming in last year from last year when he was part of the reason why Michigan state's offense struggled so much last year. And you coming into this year and looking at their roster and being like, look, these guys are going to guard. They're going to rebound. be tough.

They're a top half big 10 team. No, no question, but where on earth are they going to get offense from? And it turns out they have the best passer in college basketball. Who's also a really good defender who runs their show and makes everything happen. And he's just been, every time I look at his stats, I'm like, this is remarkable and crazy. And, um, it's a kind of a shame that we're not all having the like, Oh my God, how good is this guy? How did he get this good this quickly? And his juniors, you know, theoretically junior season. And instead we're having a kind of a different conversation nationally about him.

Evan (45:27)
I agree it is a shame and I think some of that is obviously self-inflicted right he wouldn't be this conversation would be happening if he wasn't Doing the things that he had done in some of these recent games But I do think it is overshadowing just how excellent he has been I was writing down his stats from this game I watched the whole game and I write it down 26 points 16 assists and then I go back and look at him like did I write that down right like 16 assists at 26 points that's crazy he's

Eamonn Brennan (45:32)
yeah.

Evan (45:56)
You know, he's averaging 15 points and nine assists on the year, ⁓ but he's had 25 plus points in three of his last four games. I would make the argument statistically from a number of perspectives that he is the best playmaker in the country, better than Braden Smith. He's got the best assist grade on my website, far better than anyone else. And the other thing too is if you look at the best point guards in the country, in terms of the guys who have the best overall assist rates,

He also has the lowest turnover grade of any of those players. So not only is he like dishing the ball well, but he's also not coughing it up very much for a guy who's being asked to literally do everything for this team. So I think that's impressive. And I think nationally you can make an argument that at least statistically outside of Cameron Boozer, there's not been a better player this year in all of college basketball. On my website, if you sort players by box BPR, which is basically my own

college-trained version of Box Plus Minus. He is second in the country behind Cameron Boozer. So if you look at what he's doing from a statistical standpoint, it is almost unparalleled in college basketball this year. ⁓ So I wish that he would be getting more of this conversation because he's been that good. And I think even just the storyline of surpassing Braden Smith as maybe the front runner for Big Ten Player of the Year, I've heard some people talking about it that way, I can certainly see an argument for it. Like that's

pretty impressive that he's been able to do this. So yeah, yeah, he's been good.

Eamonn Brennan (47:26)
Yeah.

Yeah. And I mean, you think about it just from the classic, like, ⁓ you know, baseball MVP conversation or whatever, like you subtract one guy from one team and one guy from another team. Like you subtract Yaxle from Michigan. That's a big blow. He's a really, really good player and really important to what they do. That's still a really good Michigan team. If you take Jeremy Fears out of Michigan state's lineup, they, how are they going to score the ball? Cohen Carr is going to stand with 15 feet of space on the wing every game.

And literally teams are just going to play five on four. And you know, how is Jackson Kohler going to get a touch where he can step outside and make it three? Like it's just, you know, the, the, the value add is, is I think him and Boozer pretty obviously, and even Duke, could make the argument like that's still a really good Duke team and they'd plug, you know, another five star guy into the lineup and still be one of the best five teams in the country. I Michigan state without, without fears is like the whole thing just grinds to a complete halt.

Evan (48:23)
got a metric for this literally on my website called indispensable, indispensable score. And it's basically measuring exactly that the difference between how good a team would be with that player versus without that player. Number one, Cameron Boozer, number two, Jeremy Fierce. So that's there you go. And yeah, players like actual pack players like actual who are rated more highly overall in terms of player metrics and stuff. He's down further because like you said, Michigan still is has a lot of really other great players and

Eamonn Brennan (48:26)
Of course you do.

It passes the smell test for sure.

Evan (48:52)
They're not playing in such a way that they're relying on Yaxle to be the best player every single night in, night out. But the way that Michigan State is structured, everything runs through Jeremy Fears and he is doing everything for this team. I think for both of these teams, like Michigan State and Illinois, both of them have identical 20 and four records. ⁓ So in that sense, they're even. But when you're looking at from where they're sitting resume perspective wise, one of the things that I do on my resume quality metric on my website, which is similar to winds of a bubble,

actually break it into win quality and loss quality. And the difference between these two teams is they're almost similar in terms of ⁓ the quality of losses that they've taken. They're all pretty fine, but Illinois just has better wins overall. ⁓ They've won at Purdue, at Nebraska, at Iowa, at Ohio State. All of those carry the most weight there. Winning all of those games on the road is...

Substantial and Michigan State's only win of that caliber is this game that they won at home against Illinois And I think if you're just looking big picture for Illinois when you're talking about three weekends in a row pretty much right where you're playing at Purdue at Nebraska at Michigan State going two and one in that stretch and having one down game for Keaton Wogler Against the best defense of the bunch potentially the best defense in the country like that's going to happen and Illinois has still put themselves in a really strong position through this brutal stretch that they've played

to be in good shape going forward. So I'm not really worried about Illinois. How do you feel about them going forward?

Eamonn Brennan (50:24)
Yeah, no, completely. mean, look, like this is absolutely a game Illinois could have won, could have won it in regulation, could have won it, ⁓ you know, with a few bounces here there in the last couple of minutes and over time, I think the, and again, Wagler played poorly and, you know, Boswell is out. And I think if you, you know, you, you reasonably assume moving forward, Wagler will, will typically not play this poorly. Cause again, it's as, it's as bad as he's been since December, really, ⁓ or November even.

And you, you know, factor Boswell back in with his perimeter defense and his ability to handle your Jeremy fears of the world, bringing the ball up the floor and just the kind of vibe of the game and all the big situations he's already been in that, you know, Wagler Purdue in Nebraska side, ⁓ as incredible as those performances were. Like, you know, there's going to be this kind of stuff with, with even the most highly touted freshmen. we, we see it with, you know, AJ DeBansa who I'm sure we'll come onto like.

You have these moments, almost every freshman has them no matter how talented they are. And I think it's one of those things where you're like, a little bit like when you're watching a game at halftime, you're like looking at the box, we're like, oh, this guy's over four, this guy's over six, they're only down three, this is bullish for them going. It's a little bit like Illinois coming off, they still could have won this game. I have them in, it took me a little while to get there, I think, but I have them now very much in the.

Michigan, Arizona, Duke, Houston, Iowa state national title contender conversation because they guard so much better this year. They're as good as anyone, if not better offensively. And they have a dimension of height and, and, diversity of ball handling talent that a lot of teams in the country don't have.

Evan (52:06)
Yeah, I'm there with you. I want to move to the big 12 and talk about Houston ⁓ going on the road and beating BYU 77 to 66. I don't really want to spend a ton of time on Houston other than they're just a really, really good team. And I think people are seeing that BYU I think is the bigger storyline here because BYU now has ⁓ is on a major losing streak where they've lost their last four, albeit three of those teams were Houston, Kansas and Arizona. And then they had a road loss to Oklahoma State, but

BYU had aspirations in the preseason of being ⁓ a top 10 team, maybe a big 12 title contender. in this game, like, DeBonse played well. He scored 28 points. Robert Wright had some good moments. Richie Saunders, who has been excellent in previous games, just had seven. And I think a trend that we've seen recently is that it's been, you haven't found many nights against these good teams where all three of their stars have all played excellently. And then they don't really have the

the bench pieces or the depth to really supplement that anywhere near as well as other teams. Do you think that that BYU needs all of their star players to be good to win games like this? Because they're struggling to find ways to win or at least stay competitive in games early when things aren't really clicking for them.

Eamonn Brennan (53:26)
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think you look at their minutes distribution on Ken Palm and it's like those guys all play 80 minutes percentage wise or above of available minutes and they don't have, ⁓ you know, Davis plays 60%, Kata 50 % and they kind of fudge things in the front court, but those guys play a ton of minutes. I think you're right. They have to play well together. I mean, I think in this game, my sort of more specific concern,

With BYU at various points throughout the season and really I think in the Texas tech loss was the extent to which the ball kind of got stuck in AJ's hands a little too often and it was a little too much. Okay. Everybody clear out. I, I sewed 15 foot. I'm either going to take a jump shot or I'm going to back this guy down and I'm going to go score. And that's not really what BYU did at all last year. And that's not what BYU at its best this year does. Like the ball pops, they move, they get out and run. And I think in this game, DeBonsa.

First of all, that wouldn't necessarily be the worst strategy for this specific game because Houston just destroys everything everybody wants to do offensively. They're so aggressive. They hedge everything so hard. They blow up screens. They do all sorts of crazy stuff defensively. And so settling the game down a little bit and being like, okay, put it in the number two overall draft picks hands. Cause he's the like even against this ferocious Houston defense, athletic enough, talented enough to just go score on them one-on-one. There wasn't even a ton of that though. There was a lot of in the flow. I thought a lot of his offense came facing

The rim starting higher up in the floor, ⁓ you know, getting downhill, getting at people, was general generally pretty positive for him. But if that doesn't like to me, that should then sort of filter out more to Saunders and, and right. Who I think has been pretty steady most nights. mean, I think it, it comes sometimes feels like it's either DeBonsa or Saunders who's going to have a big night and DeBonsa is kind of has a higher floor. Like he'll give you 15 when he's.

He's having just a so-so night. Um, so I think that, that was the, difficult part. And again, like with Houston, um, you know, you just, you can't afford to make mistakes against them. And the other thing with BYU that I've noticed all season, this was a big thing coming into the year. So maybe it's a little confirmation bias because I was looking for it, but last year they were a general genuinely very poor perimeter, perimeter defensive team. And for whatever the variance of three point opponent shooting is, you can see in the film, like, okay, these guys are just open.

Evan (55:43)
Mm.

Eamonn Brennan (55:50)
You know what I mean? Like whether the shot goes in or not, you're giving up a lot of good looks. it came through in the numbers last year with the percentages they allowed and the amount of threes they allowed opponents to shoot. And it hasn't been nearly as bad this year, but you still see it in spots. You saw it in the Texas game, Texas tech game, numerous times with Christian Anderson, just getting wide open looks off simple screen action. And you know, in this game, there's like a minute and a half left minute left. Bonsa comes down, hits a three cuts it to five and BYU is kind of like, okay, here we go. The crowd gets up a little bit.

immediate next possession, DeBonse gets completely like just buried under a JoJo Tuggler, like kind of pinned down screen action. And Sharp is wide open, wide, wide open. Like no one's within 15 feet of him at the top of the key. That shot's going down like 60 % of the time, I'd say. ⁓ That open for Emmanuel Sharp. And it's just like, you can't have those mistakes against teams like Houston. If you want to compete with the Arizona's, the Houston's, the Kansas's of the world, even the Texas Tex,

⁓ Those fine details really matter and BYU, despite being better at them this year and more talented, I think than they were last year, still has those moments where they just let stuff slip.

Evan (56:57)
I mean, you mentioned that they were a lot more balanced last year in terms of players they relied upon, the depth of their roster. I remember keeping an eye on that during the season, being like, I love this BYU team last year going into the tournament just because of how they can go eight or nine deep and all the guys are very high level. So I was actually comparing this now and looking at, if you look at the sixth best player on BYU's roster last year compared to this year in terms of Bayesian performance rating on my site where they rank

Compared to all other players last year that the sixth best rated BYU player was Dallin Hall and he was inside the top 250 nationally this year that sixth best player on BYU is canard Davis he's outside the top 1,000 we're talking about a massive massive drop in terms of reliability as you go down the roster and yeah, that puts a lot of pressure on Saunders and de Bonsa and right to be great and

They're given a lot of leash in this offense to kind of do whatever they want and chuck shots up and stuff. but outside of that, like there's not really necessarily as much of a good, reliable system where you have all of these players who are able to contribute in their own unique ways. I that was a strength of this BYU team last year, and I certainly don't think they have that this year. OK, I want to move on to talking about Florida. And this was kind of a a

Shocking result in some ways because they played Texas A on Texas A &M's home floor A coming into the to the game had had an incredible start to SEC play I think just one loss in conference play and Or maybe two going into this game but I think we expected Florida to win because A has Notably played a very weak schedule up until this point in the SEC, but this game was completely like it was all Florida early, especially defensively I think

Texas A had like four points, 10 minutes in the game or something like that. And when you look at the final score of this game, it does not reflect how dominant Florida was. Florida won this game by 19. But if you actually go on my site and look at the non garbage time scoring margin of this game, basically the score up until the point when it was decided and this is not changing, that final score was Florida 58 and 30. So they more or less doubled A in points scored when it really mattered. Florida.

has won eight of nine games. They're definitely established themselves as the top team in the SEC. And I think even resume wise, like they're a much better team than what their resume shows up to this point. And then on the flip side, like A &M, yes, this is a bit of a come back down to earth moment for them, but probably to be expected at some point because they've played so well above what we might expect going forward. So what stuck out to you from this result in the SEC?

Eamonn Brennan (59:47)
Yeah. I Florida has been a really fascinating team to track all year. And it's partly because they were the national, obviously reigning national champion champion, partly because they were, you know, the first night of the season, they in Arizona played a great game to tip things off and partly because they're one of the more sort of interesting roster rotations in the sport in their willingness to lean into.

⁓ Whether by necessity or by choice, just super big lineups. you know, this is primarily seen through the fact, again, somewhat by necessity given the makeup of their backcourt, but moving Thomas Hawk to the three is an experiment. And it was an experiment coming into the year. This guy was a stretch four last year and he looks like a college stretch four and he's a very dynamic college stretch four. But this year's team has him at the three playing outside in.

90 % of the time, 95 % of the time, uh, it's kind of more of a slasher and running at the rim, um, with two bigs. And that has led to a dramatic, dramatic, uh, cratering of their perimeter shooting, right? They're one of the, mean, I think they probably are the worst high major three point shooting team in the country. They're in 358th and three point field goal percentage. But, and, you know, they've, they've had some turnover woes particularly early, early in the year, but I think I've just made peace with them as like.

Yeah, this team can't shoot from the perimeter, but if they do what they do and they don't turn the ball over, which they haven't much since we got really past the start of the year, they're going to beat almost anybody because their baseline for performance on both ends of the floor, particularly for rebounding, they're the best rebounding team in the country by a mile. ⁓ you know, top three and percentage on both ends of the floor. And they're really good, you know, interior defense. got to get a lot of, you know, offensive rebounds and put backs.

They just generate points in a way, ⁓ that is sort of sustainable and that doesn't require three point shooting. then they get the, ⁓ you know, 35, 36 % night from three. it's like, kiss your butt goodbye. Like you have no chance of, beating this team. ⁓ and I've kind of made pieces like early in the year, it's like, boogie Flanders, Avey and Lee. Can these guys get up to speed? Like they're not going to be as good as last year's back court, obviously, but can they, can they be plus.

Whatever. And Xavier Lee might not get there at all. And he might not get there this year. He may be will next year. Who knows what's going to happen with him. He's just kind of where he is. I think it's interesting that you have two, ⁓ Florida lineups among your top six in the country and neither of them have Lee in it. ⁓ you know, it's, it's Condon, Flan, Hang on Hawk and Clavjar and Chinuelu, Condon, Flan, Hawk and Clavjar. And so that kind of tells you the story of where like Xavier Lee is at.

Evan (1:02:30)
Mm.

Eamonn Brennan (1:02:33)
And I think Flann has sort of emerged as like the, more reliable, ⁓ of those two players. And then Claviar comes in and kind of gives them a little bit more perimeter spacing and shooting. but yeah, if, Florida doesn't turn the ball over, they're probably going to beat you and they're probably going to beat you by like 10 or 15 points. And if you, if you can force them into turnovers, you got a chance. But once they get the ball into the half court and get a shot up and their shot volume is high, you know, up where it needs to be. ⁓ they are, they are tough to deal with.

Evan (1:02:58)
Yeah, folks, if you're looking for a team when we get to Selection Sunday to say, hey, this team is under seeded and better than their seed line, I've talked about Kansas as potentially being one of those teams. Florida is going to be another one. No matter what seed that they're going to get, they've been a much better team in the last probably the last two months of the season than what they showed earlier in the year. And they played some tough opponents and lost some close games, but they're going to be a very interesting pick to potentially go far in the tournament. I want to turn our attention to some resumes. And I want to start with

the conversation that I know we want to have, and that is talking about Miami, Ohio, okay? They're still undefeated, and I know that you just did kind of a deep dive analysis on their resume and what this could potentially look like for this team, depending on if they end up going undefeated through the regular season, or if they have a loss or two. ⁓ Can you just kind of give the people a picture of what do you think their tournament outlook looks like, and how are they sort of changing or shaping the conversation around

some of the resume metrics and things like that related to ⁓ some of these more true mid-majors and profiles like this.

Eamonn Brennan (1:04:07)
Yeah. So I feel like for context, there's almost always a mid-major team that is sort of the darling mid-major team. And the typical way it works is that this mid-major team is like top 25, top 35 in Ken Palm, clearly a very good team, fun to watch and people, you know, they sort of gain momentum and then you get deep into their conference season and you're sitting there kind of, if you're rooting for them to make the tournament as, people, feel like the groundswell often does.

You're sitting there like nail biting because any loss in the Valley or the horizon league or whatever the case may be, uh, could, could kill their chances. Miami's a bit like that, except like they kind of flipped the conversation on its head. They, know, once again, and these teams kind of fit Miami's profile traditionally in that look, they don't get many quad one opportunities. Maybe they get one or two, maybe they split them. They have one win that they can lean back on and they're going up against these high major teams that play like 12 or 15.

⁓ you know, quad one games and maybe have five or six wins. And it's like, well, you know, the pundits on, on the broadcasts will be like, well, they beat so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so and so, and, you know, obviously the opportunity space is, is very unequal there. What makes Miami different and interesting is that their actual. You know, perf like predictive metrics suggest that they're like the 90th ish best team in the country. I'm not sure where you exactly.

Evan (1:05:30)
They're not even the best team in their own conference. Akron is

rated higher on my site and on Kenpalm, so if they were on a neutral, like Akron might be favored, yeah.

Eamonn Brennan (1:05:36)
By a margin too, by like

30 or 40 spots. Yeah. So, um, that, that makes them like a weird inversion of the usual conversation. That's kind of fascinating to me. And what's especially interesting is we now live in a, you know, a winds above bubble world where the NCAA has, I think in its selection in the last couple of seasons, pretty explicit implicitly prioritized. Wob, know, you step back from the bracket and you're like, okay, what are the patterns here?

Evan (1:06:02)
Yes.

Eamonn Brennan (1:06:05)
And you see it like pretty clearly. And you know, you have, ⁓ Dave Warlock, the, the great NCAA coordinator of media for the, for the basketball tournament. ⁓ you know, I, I highlighted this in my piece. I think it was last week, sort of kind of just coming out and saying it in response to, ⁓ I think it was Carrie Miller from a Bleacher report had done an analysis of various resumes, kind of coming out and saying it like the broadcast should probably be talking about winds above bubble a lot more often, like, cause no one ever mentions it. It's all quads. It's all, ⁓

You know, net and, and strength of schedule, but this is the thing that. Like people need to be more aware that we're really considering and taking into consideration or the committee is, know, he's in the room. He's not on the committee, obviously, but, just so people, um, you know, trying to raise awareness of like, don't be surprised. And what's interesting about that with Miami is they have the 34th ranked winds above bubble metric. And so, you know, you look at them and you see all these quad four wins and you see the, you know, number of 360 ranked.

or 350th ranked strength of schedule overall. Like they've played nobody and they, don't think, you know, with the exception of Akron, they beat Akron at home and they won outright state who's the 130th and net or whatever. Those are their two quad two wins. Everything else is quad three quad four. And so they will not be able to stack up to most other bubble teams in terms of like. I popping marquee quad one wins, but the actual metric, the NCAA seems pretty consistent on.

paying really close attention to, they stack up pretty well. And that's, think, going to kind of break people's brains a little bit, ⁓ when we get into this, because I think a lot of the people who are arguing on behalf of Miami are like the vibes guys who are just like, they're undefeated. Who cares what their Ken Palm rank is? Like, don't be a nerd about it. But actually the best argument is the newest kind of nerdiest stat that the NCA is using. So it's a weird, it's a weird sort of discourse around Miami and

You know, obviously they have to keep winning. think, you know, a couple of losses will probably doom them. ⁓ but if they get to the conference tournament undefeated and we're looking at a situation where they lose one game in the title game to Akron, but they're ranked 95th in Ken Palm, it's going to be a very interesting selection Sunday for this whole discussion.

Evan (1:08:18)
reason why they are rated so high in Winsabaub Bubble, I think I have them rated around the same in resume quality, which is calculated very similarly, is basically what is telling you is not look at all these great teams they've beat. What it is saying is it would be very tough for a team that's of at-large quality to win every single game on their schedule in the same way that Miami, Ohio does. What it's not saying is that like, ⁓ any of these games individually was really tough and we should give them more credit for that.

statistical likelihood of say ⁓ a Texas or a California or Oklahoma State or something to play the exact same schedule that Miami Ohio has played, including all of the road games in their conference play, which road games are a lot tougher than when you have a bye game at home. The probability that they would ⁓ win all those games is not very likely. And that is why that they're on the right side of the bubble.

when it comes to wins above bubble. And when you look at their win quality and loss quality on my site, which basically separates like how good are your wins, how good are your losses. Obviously they're undefeated. So their loss quality is number one, tied with Arizona. Their win quality is 97th best in the country. So if you were just looking at their stack of wins, like it's barely inside the top 100, but it's the fact that they haven't lost a single game. That is really what carries a ton of weight. And I think there is a lot of... ⁓

I would say more so in media circles than probably in the actual selection committee room because I know they're very, a lot more smart and strategic about this. But in general conversation, things are thrown out regularly speaking. It's quad one record, it's number of quad three, quad four losses, and it's often simplified down to that very small formula. And when you look at a team like Miami, Ohio like that, they're not gonna have any quad one games to speak of and...

all of their wins look like they're puny, the reality is there's a lot more nuance to it than just that. And I think that the general conversation around quad one games and the importance of that sort of thing, especially for a mid-major who doesn't have the opportunities to get as many good games, especially in this day and age when high majors don't wanna do that at all, they have played the schedule they have and they have won every single game. If this team was 19 and two, we would not be talking about them at all.

but they are 21 and 0 in D1 games, I 24 and 0 overall, and that is what is impressive. So, yeah.

Eamonn Brennan (1:10:45)
Yeah, and

I mean, just to jump in real quick, like the elegance of the situation and Winsaba bubble in some ways as a metric is that everything you just said is totally like intuitive to people who just be like, well, they've won every game. So what's the problem? You know what I mean? It's not the classic like, well, it's not easy to beat every team on your schedule no matter who they are. Right. I mean, and you can point to an example just recently, like Gonzaga lost to Portland.

And Gonzaga's, I will go on the record. I'm not afraid to say it, a better team than Miami of Ohio, right? Like it's just, happens and teams lose games all the time. And so, there should be some credit given for not doing that. And I think, look, if the field was selected today, I think Miami would get in. just don't think you ever leave an undefeated team out, regardless of what their predictive metrics tell you. It's just not gonna, it's not done. ⁓ but that's not a conversation that's relevant because

Evan (1:11:36)
Yes.

Eamonn Brennan (1:11:42)
they'll either get the automatic bid or they won't be undefeated. And so it's interesting to kind of thought experiment it out now. But yeah, mean, if you're a screw the alphabet soup, I don't care about metrics type of person and you wanna select the field based on ⁓ your ball knowledge alone, like Miami works for you too. It's an elegant situation on all fronts because the metric, ⁓ again, that the NCAA is very...

Now openly saying, Hey, this matters. Talk about it more on TV. Get, get people ready for selection Sunday. Please don't just throw up, you know, quad one, quad two in your graphics during the middle of the broadcast type stuff. ⁓ it's going to be an important part of the conversation moving forward.

Evan (1:12:26)
Yeah, okay, I want to end by asking you about a few other mid-major conferences and their cases to get teams in the tournament, specifically the Mountain West, and I also want to talk about Santa Clara. So the Mountain West this year, right now Utah State I think is solidly in the field, but San Diego State and New Mexico both have a good amount of work to do. think you could have made a case New Mexico is in the field coming into this weekend, but they lost it home to Boise State. That certainly hurts. ⁓ So, and then,

Santa Clara in the WCC has been a really, really good team this year. They're 20 and five. ⁓ I have them as a top 40 team in terms of the predictive metrics. They're right on the cut line right now when you look at a lot of bracketology. They obviously have the opportunities coming up to get some big wins. They host Gonzaga this weekend and then they beat or they're playing on the road against St. Mary's. Based on your kind of expert look on these teams and their resumes, where do you think the Mountain West

and the WCC sort of stack up right now and maybe what do you think is gonna happen going forward once we get to Selection Sunday?

Eamonn Brennan (1:13:29)
Yeah. I mean, look, I think projecting forward, ⁓ is tricky, but you do kind of try to look at where are the opportunities for these teams? Because again, I think, ⁓ for as much as the committee is moving away, ⁓ a little bit on the margins from what are your wins? Like how many, like ostensibly eye catching wins do you, do you have on your resume? That can be the difference when you hear conversations from like committee chairs.

Immediately after and they're asked hey this team got in and this team was the last team left out what happened and they'll often say well they did just beat you know st. Mary's on the road or whatever I think those like for Santa Clara it's it This is an oversimplification and it always is but it's just sort of like they need I think badly to be Gonzaga at home that is like a bright red flashing light like huge opportunity a game they can absolutely win because

They've been a very, very good team all year. ⁓ obviously, you know, there's more nuance. Don't, don't lose to Seattle at home a few nights, a few days earlier. ⁓ don't, don't fall down at, at Oregon state on the last night of the regular season, et cetera, et cetera. ⁓ but really it's the Gonzaga and the St. Mary's game. And I think, that same areas one is on the road, but St. Mary's is a bit more beautiful team than Gonzaga. If you put those at about equal probability of, of happening and get one of two, and then we'll, we'll have the conversation. I think for the mountain West, it's just like.

I look at San Diego state, I look at New Mexico and I'm just like, talk to me in, in, know, early March because, you know, I like San Diego state. think they've improved a lot over the course of the season, certainly since the, since the loss to Troy. think if you're going to have a really bad home loss, uh, it's probably good to do it in double OT. It's also probably good to do it in November, just in terms of what, you know, some committee members are going to think, like there's no explicit last 12 games thing that hasn't been the case for like 15 years, but I do think there's.

Evan (1:15:06)
Mm.

Eamonn Brennan (1:15:23)
an occasional, ⁓ okay, we like this team and we like this team almost equally. What is a deciding factor between putting them in? It's like, well, this team has been playing better basketball lately. Maybe that's a thing you can point to. So it's best to have that bad loss ⁓ further back in the season. But look, I think both of these teams are the epitome of bubbly.

They have good stuff on their resume. They do not have a ton of like amazing stuff. The metrics are all kind of like meh decent, as, not as a, you know, mediocre as your cows and Stanford's of the world, which I think they'd probably both be in over both of those teams right now. But, um, it, you know, if you have one of those teams in the field, like New Mexico, they're probably an 11 seed. If you have San Diego state in the field, ditto, and you can flip them if you want to. And it's just going to be, it's going to be very fine margins coming down the stretch here.

Evan (1:16:17)
Yeah, well, I think we'll leave it there. Thank you, Eamon, so much. Your analysis is always excellent. You are the bubble and resume king, among other things. It is bubble season, so it is that time of year. So it was great to get your insight today. I really appreciate you joining me on the show today.

Eamonn Brennan (1:16:33)
Happy to do it. I'm gonna go tell my kids I'm the bubble and resume king and they're gonna not care at all. They're gonna ask when we can watch Spider-Man again, but it'll be fun for me anyway. Exactly, I need that.

Evan (1:16:40)
Yeah, we'll make you a trophy. We'll make you a trophy for it.

Evan (1:16:44)
Thank you so much to Iman Brennan for joining me today. ⁓ For those of you who maybe have been following Iman for a long time, you know he has been at a lot of major publications over the last decade plus, and now he is writing his own newsletter. It's called the buzzer at ImanBrennan.com, which is a really, really great source for all of his insights. Additionally, he's also now doing the Weekend Under Review podcast weekly show for Bask Under Review.

And think Tate Frazier is his cohost for that show and they've been doing an incredible job with that. So be sure to go check out all of Eamonn's stuff over on his website and at Basket Under Review.

Evan (1:17:20)
All right, we were going to wrap with analytics corner this week. This is the part of the show where I go into some more analytically driven insights that are often from evanmia.com. And this week, I just wanted to focus on one thing, and that is talking about teams most impacted by injuries this year. I put out a graph

on social media, if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram, midweek last week, looking at the teams who have been most impacted by

production missed due to injuries. Basically the way I set this graph up is using metrics at evanmia.com, specifically Bayesian performance rating, which measures how valuable every single player is when they're on the court. You can basically quantify how much has a team lost in terms of their overall production based on players who have been unavailable for parts of the season or for most of the season with season-long injuries. This graph does not include ⁓ players who have been out for the entire season just because

It's a little bit harder to exactly quantify what their production and minutes and that sort of stuff would be. So this just looks at players who have played during the season and who have missed injuries either partially up to this point or season ending that sort of thing. So the main takeaways, the first thing that jumps off the page when you look at the teams that have been most impacted by injuries this year is USC. ⁓ has their quantity level for BPR missed per game is eight. That doesn't really mean a whole lot, but

The next closest team is six and most teams are under five. So USC has had so much more ⁓ injury misfortune than any other team in the country. And you look at this list, Rodney Rice, who is supposed to be a key piece for them this year is out for the season. He has missed 16 games as of last week. Elijah Arenas, the freshman, he missed the majority of the first half of the season. He is back now, but he has missed 17 games.

Amarion Dickerson another key transfer for them. He is out for the season. He has missed 14 games Chad Baker Mazzara just got hurt his timeline is TBD So this doesn't even really include how much he's missed there, but but that's gonna continue to to rack up for USC obviously they've had an up-and-down season but a They have had to battle through so much and actually when this went out on social media ⁓ Eric Musselman quote tweeted my tweet of this graph with basically a ⁓

A peace sign and more or less said like hey, we're doing the best that we can ⁓ So the funny thing about this though is it is not just USC. It is all of the West Big Ten team So Oregon who has had horrible injury luck the last several years comes in at second here Jackson sell shell status missed ten games He's likely out for the season Nate Biddle who is their other star player? He is now back healthy, but he missed seven games. So when you combine

The production from those two, they stack up at number two and they've obviously had a disappointing season. But once again, injuries have been a major issue there. Washington, also in the Big Ten, ⁓ has missed a lot of games. I think they come in at third here on this list. Hans Steinbach has missed three games. Wesley Yates has missed six. Desmond Claude is likely done for the year. ⁓ UCLA is a little bit lower in this, but they're also pretty high relative to most teams. And one of the highest teams, the highest injury rates for teams that are probably getting in the tournament or at least have a good case there.

Missouri is another team that's pretty high. ⁓ Some of these injuries were earlier in the year for them, but they've had to overcome that as well. Jaden Stone missed some time, Trent Pierce missed some time. ⁓ And then some teams that have been pretty high in the injury rate that are likely not making the tournament, and maybe you can blame that as being a large part of it, Notre Dame, Minnesota, and Virginia Tech. But if you focus on likely or possible tournament teams, I think this is really interesting. So Alabama,

Kentucky and UCLA now UCLA is not a lock to make the tournament by any means but Alabama and and Kentucky certainly are They have had the highest overall production missed due to injury Of all of those teams that are kind of in the tournament conversation So, you know you can point to especially I mean Kentucky's have been well documented But Alabama has missed some key games from key players as well And so they've had to overcome a lot and that certainly should be taken into account when looking at their overall season

When we're talking about possible title contenders who have had to overcome injury, the main three are Kansas, Gonzaga, and Yukon. Kansas, obviously, Darren Peterson. Gonzaga, I think the main thing is that Braden Huff, who has been one of their best players, a potential All-American candidate this year, has been out for a while, and it's still TBD on when he will be back, if he will be back this season. And then Yukon also has struggled with injuries. Braylon Mullins had a lot of his season initially off the board when he was dealing with injury.

And then it is really interesting to look at the teams who have been the best teams in the sport. Michigan, Arizona, Duke, Houston, and even Florida. All of them are have had almost no injuries to speak of. And that really does go to show that sometimes it is the most healthy teams who are the best teams. And you can make an argument that all of those teams, the only way that they are in the top five this year in terms of their predictive metrics is because of how healthy they have been and that some of these other teams. ⁓

might be in that spot if they had been more fortunate there. ⁓ you know, obviously there's only so much that you can do to prevent injury, but certainly this can have a key, be a key factor for teams who are wanting to go deep in the tournament. And when we talk about who is going to be a national title ⁓ favorite, win the whole thing this year, certainly those teams at the top, Michigan, Arizona, Duke, Houston, Florida, like they have been really healthy and that has been a huge part of why they have been successful this year.

So I thought that was very interesting to look at this week.

Evan (1:23:01)
Well, that is a wrap for our show today. I hope you enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun doing this ⁓ with both Dostor and Neiman Brennan joining me today. We'll be back next Tuesday for another weekly episode as we are gearing up towards March Madness. I cannot wait. I'm already planning what we're doing on this show to talk about the bracket and talk about the tournament once we get that sheet of paper with all those teams on it.

This is an ad-free show, ⁓ so please do the best that you can to help support the show by

leaving us five star reviews on the Apple and Spotify podcast platforms, liking and subscribing on YouTube, leaving comments, sharing on social media. This really, really helps the show a lot. It has been really awesome to see we've had a full month of the show now and the reception has been really wonderful. So thank you again for being here today. It really means a lot to me and I will see all of you guys next time.