The EvanMiya College Basketball Show

Evan (00:00)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Evan Mia College basketball show. I'm your host, Evan Mia Kawa, and the college basketball season is over. The Michigan Wolverines are your national champions, a very fitting team to cut down the nets after what has been a really awesome season of college basketball. We will get into how Michigan got here and everything else that went into, went down in the final four. I've got Eric Fossett here with me on deck in a second to break it all down.

I really enjoyed Indianapolis as a Final Four city, so I'll also share some of my experiences towards the end of the show. And now that we are in the off season, the cadence of this show will change a little bit. So I'll provide some more detail on that as well. And of course we had a listener contest this weekend, this week with a lot of submissions. So I will announce the winner of that at the end of the show. They will win some free merch from the Evanmia.com merch store, like this hat that I'm wearing here. Lots.

of great stuff to get to today.

Evan (01:00)
All right. Without further ado, let's get into the final four weekend that we just had, ending with the Michigan Wolverines as your 2026 national champions. And with me to do that is Eric Fossett, one of the great X's and O's evaluators in our sport, among other things. Eric, let's start with the game from Monday night and then work our way backwards a little bit. Final score, Michigan 69, UConn 63.

I think the interesting thing about this was it was well-documented coming into this game how Michigan had totally steamrolled pretty much every opponent in their path up to this point and had done it in their way, high-scoring games, high-pace games, and if UConn was going to have a chance at winning this game, they were gonna have to not let Michigan basically get on a steamroll like they've done before. And when you look at kinda how this played out, gameplay-wise,

Game plan wise, was kind of in UConn's favor. mean, is final stuff here. UConn made nine threes compared to Michigan's two. Michigan shot 13 % from three. Their previous game against Arizona, they made 12. UConn out rebounded Michigan, which is something that's very rare. 46 to 39, and UConn almost got 50 % of their offensive rebound opportunities.

And that has the worst defensive rebounding performance by Michigan all season their previous worst was against Duke Michigan only had two fast break points Michigan only had four points off turnovers They had 26 against Arizona and it was a slow paced game first half only had 29 possessions It ended up at 66 but still well below Michigan's average and yet Michigan still wins this game sort of semi comfortably It certainly wasn't a blowout, but they had the lead for most of the game

It was close here and there, but ultimately, it didn't go down to the final possession there. Tactically very interesting battle, even if the game was a little bit ugly. What were your main takeaways from Michigan's championship win over Yukon?

Eric Fawcett (03:01)
I think to start, it's the one to four switching that Michigan has used and kind of well publicized at this moment, but for it to bump up against a Yukon team that's so known for all that off-ball action, I think even on the first possession of the game for Yukon, they started getting into their kind of regular stuff. There's a chinscreen, there's the first shooter curling around a screen, but it's really a decoy to set up the second shooter and...

and Michigan's just like not moving. it's almost like they're in a zone the way that they will switch and keep their size and length at the rim. And right away, you know, I will say going into the game, I really thought this was gonna be close. And if anyone wants the receipts, they can probably go find a scout team episode I did with Kevin Sweeney. But... ⁓

I watched that first possession and I was like, man, if this is the plan for Yukon, I'm not sure it's going to work. And you could tell that, you know, right away they, they didn't have something that was super well suited towards that kind of switching coverage. And I think they certainly found some ways later in the game and were able to exploit that a little bit. But I think right from the jump, we saw just how disruptive that kind of switching coverage can be. And I think for so many people, ⁓ you know, yeah, switching looks easy to

do it's not the most complex thing. There's maybe a little bit of like chicken or the egg like is Michigan so good because they switch or do they switch because they're so good defensively and have all these guys but I think that was probably the first thing that jumped out to me and also because I certainly had my eyes on that what is Yukon? What is Luke Murray? These guys known for such good offensive game plans such precise tactical approaches to what they're going to do offensively what are they going to do with this Michigan

switching coverage and I don't think they solved the puzzle there. I'm not saying it was a disaster. I'm not saying they failed. They had a couple of good moments late where they only started to use Terris Reed or the five as the screener because that's the only way you could keep Michigan from switching and they got some good looks out of that. But overall that was kind of the big storyline.

going in for me from a kind of X's and O's standpoint. And obviously that one, I would say went in favor of Michigan. And now there's other things and you mentioned it with all the stats at the beginning. One of the other things that I thought was really fascinating was I did think that UConn was going to do a good job of keeping Michigan off the three point line. And they did a really good job of running them off and sending them into help where those attacked closeouts weren't punished. And then I thought they did a really

good job in transition defense, often just not really even sending guys to the offensive glass. I kind of liked a lot of situations, you know, throughout the year, Yukon would maybe send their just their five or their four and their five. And if they want to be really aggressive, they'd send three, but often in this game, they really like

Evan (05:44)
Mm.

Eric Fawcett (05:58)
kind of sent one and it was like the point guard because if they're just just so that as soon as Michigan got the ball the point guard would be there to jam up the outlet and slow things down that way and I thought they did that to an incredible level and I almost think that's like later in the game you saw like even like Mullins got some incredible offensive rebounds I feel like it was because for the first half of the game no one was even going out going after the offensive glass then they started to you know really surprise them a little bit that that's also why I look at that offensive rebounding number and I'm like that is

Evan (06:24)
Mm.

Eric Fawcett (06:28)
astonishing because for the first half of the game it didn't even seem like they were they were trying but those were some of the things i thought going in and it's it's really interesting like i thought every every interesting kind of schematic matchup between these two teams ended up being a really interesting schematic matchup and that's why like i i know there's a lot of hipster kind of coverage in college basketball media space there's a lot of people like to go against the grain but i i mean this with all seriousness i know a lot of people thought this game was kind of a slog not a very good one

I thought this game was tremendous. thought the way that every possession had just incredible value and the way that both teams really executed what they were trying to do offensively, the other team just executed what they wanted to do defensively. And it felt like every time that the ball went through the hoop, it was because of a Herculean effort. I actually thought this game was fantastic. I thought like, that's what makes college basketball. You just, would never see a game like this in the NBA. You don't really see it in Europe. And this is just like,

Evan (07:08)
Yes.

Eric Fawcett (07:27)
of the games that I thought like makes college basketball great is that there can be a game like this that is so slow paced that defenses can still dominate and it still felt like every possession was like I couldn't take my eyes off everything so ⁓ yeah this is also I'm glad you had me on.

Evan (07:43)
Yeah, I mean, this is great stuff. And I do think that sort of this perspective is why, like you said, even though the game was quote unquote, like slow or ugly, there was so much stuff going on here between two brilliant coaches. And I think the story of Michigan's tournament for the last several weeks has been, my goodness, they play so fast, they force so many turnovers, the offense ends up just completely blitzing people. At the end of the day,

It's their defense that has really been the most consistent factor for them this year. It's why I have them ranked as the number one defense in the country. And the big thing that's been talked about and it played its way in this game again is, regardless of how the three point shots are going down offensively or defensively for Michigan, it is their two point efficiency on offense and their ability to stop opponents from scoring from two on the defensive side. That's what happened in this game. UConn 34 % from two.

It was their worst two point field goal percentage performance of the season. They've only had two games, including this one all season where they've been under 40 % from inside the arc. So, you know, what they were doing was working. Obviously the presence of guys like a Diomara on the inside is just an absolute deterrent. We saw that over and over and over again in this tournament. ⁓ And then the other thing too is that like just because of their physicality and length, they often have a massive foul disparity. And this is not a

Ref controversy thing, it's just a style of, it's the way Michigan plays. And honestly, a lot of the teams in this Final Four, especially Michigan and Arizona, typically do have a massive foul disparity in their favor that allows them to get to the line more just because opponents just can't keep up with them. And so foul trouble was a big deal in this game, even if it wasn't the big guys for Yukon. Silas Demery fouled out, he only played 21 minutes. Solo ball.

Four fouls, he only played 16 minutes. That forced Malachi Smith to come in and I think he played relatively well in the minutes that he had for Yukon, but obviously having him play that many minutes in a title game means something isn't going your way. ⁓ And then on the other end, know, Michigan not only got to the foul line a lot, they also shot really, really well from the line. 89%, they made 25 out of their 28 free throws and that's one of their best free throw shooting performances of the season when you take into account.

how often they got to the line and their conversion rate. And they had a massive free throw disparity in this game, similar to the way that they blew out Tennessee. It's just a way that they, it's a part of what they play. Let me ask you this on the schematic side, because I love that you brought up how on that first possession, you mentioned that, this may not go super well. Because a lot of my listeners may not necessarily be as dialed in schematically and prepared for this game as you were. If you sort of put yourself in the Yukon,

Eric Fawcett (10:14)
you

Evan (10:31)
coaching hat for a second in terms of what their game plan was coming into this, what you expected Michigan to do, and then how it actually played out. Were you expecting to see the defensive scheme, the switching one through four like Michigan did, or was that a surprise? And what was the immediate like, oh, then UConn should try and do this, and ultimately did you think they were successful at that or not over the course of the game?

Eric Fawcett (10:55)
Yeah, great question because when I was kind of preparing for the game and doing my preview, of course anyone playing Yukon, you're wondering, okay, what are they going to do against all this wild pin down action? So, you you go and watch Star watching Michigan's defensive possessions and ideally you're looking for a team that kind of plays similar to the style they're going to play. So you're like, okay, well, who plays similar to Yukon? Well, not a lot of people. And then you look at the big 10 and you're like, like really

not a lot of people. So in trying to find games where they really were having to trail a lot of these ⁓ wide pin downs and lot of these complex swore like staggers and twirls and all that, like I had to go all the way back to Duke and Duke had some success with that. Ironically a game that they lost and then actually like going way back to January in Wisconsin, a team that did a little bit that again.

had some success. it was one of those things that on one hand, was like, well, Michigan kind of like does what they do at this point. And if I'm going all the way back like a month or beyond, ⁓ yeah, they guarded things a different way, but I don't know if they're gonna do that now. So when you go back to what they did against Duke, they got kind of caught in some instances, ⁓ trailing a lot of these actions, like they decided they were gonna chase over the top, which is what a lot of teams that have really elite size in the front court do. When you've got a lot of size at the rim, you've got Amara,

you can kind of tell guys like, when they set these wide pin downs, like chase over the top, let's try to take away the three point line because if they curl off it, like, okay, congratulations, you're met by a Deymara. So ⁓ I think that I was maybe expecting a little bit of that. ⁓

though I was going you know over a month back to see how they would guard it and then you know I also did a video on that for for basketball review and a lot of Michigan fans like thought I was an idiot and was like hey they this they just switched now that's what they do and that was what they kind of did and I kind of wish that ⁓ and again like I thought for for UConn to just be in this game I don't want to make it sound like I'm like wow like what was UConn doing how did they how did they fail they obviously their game plan was was was pretty good but I thought right away maybe diagnosing that

Michigan was going to switch everything. It took them a little while to get into the okay, Terrence Reed is our only screener. I kind of would have thought that they would have maybe earlier had some different ideas for what they wanted to do. ⁓ Sometimes when teams are switching a lot of those off ball screens, you end up being like the best thing to do is actually screening your own man freeing up someone that way. Trying to get some advantageous switches, which there's not a whole lot. know, we know that, but if you can maybe get a switch then

Evan (13:09)
Yes.

Eric Fawcett (13:31)
try to pin that guy down, screen your own, know, slip off that, like, I just kind of felt like UConn was like doing what they do as well, which they do at a high level, they're at a championship game, but that was kind of the couple of thoughts I had going in. Are they going to be the switch everything team they've been recently? Are they going to kind of chase thing, chase over the top and try to take away three point attempts like they did earlier in the year? ⁓ Yeah. Michigan fans who were all in the mentions where we're right about this one, they were just content to switch everything and it, worked really well. And yeah, like,

credit for some of the counters that that Yukon had. We saw the play that I think a lot of people ⁓ looked at when Reed set like five wide pins on the same action and it still was like a contested three though they hit it. They also had some of these just like empty side flares where they just cleared out a side

through a flare screen, lobbed it over the top and at least there was a little bit of room to operate. That was one of their counters as well, which was not a bad one, but I think after that first possession, I was like, okay, you better pivot quick. And it took a little while ⁓ for them to get kind of comfortable. And ⁓ that's always the challenge in any situation in basketball, particularly in a single elimination tournament. Do you do what got you there? Do you do you or do you try to adjust and... ⁓

You saw a game in this situation where like Michigan did what Michigan does. They played the way that they've played the last six weeks really. ⁓ And ⁓ Yukon kind of did the same, got into some of the changes. ⁓ But yeah, that just speaks to how good Michigan was. And when you are the more talented team, you're the better team, like yeah, you can usually be the one to dictate terms a little bit. And for Yukon, still be able to like dictate pace.

keep Michigan out of transition. Like, man, I'm still going back to some of those stats you said off the top of the recording. If someone could have looked at that blind, you might have said like, wow, did you can pull this off? But they didn't quite.

Evan (15:23)
Yeah,

yeah, I think Dan Hurley talked about it in the post game where he said, know, ultimately, I don't have any regrets about what our guys did or how he executed a lot of their their looks just didn't go down and they really did try and follow a blueprint for what more often than not has been the ⁓ Kryptonite against Michigan, which has been just like amazing three point shooting. You can't took 33 threes in this game. That was basically half their shots.

and they only made nine of them, 27%. And there were some contested looks, but there were also some looks that a lot of their players are used to taking that often go down, and they just weren't in this game. Now, Michigan also was in the same boat, so it kinda evened out in that sense that neither team shot the ball anywhere near as well as they did in their previous game. But I think certainly, from an offensive perspective, think UConn is happy with the looks that they got relatively speaking and...

You know, they just didn't go down, but it is interesting to note that, you know, UConn took 33 threes in this game. Arizona, a notably a team that doesn't shoot many threes in a higher possession game only took 17 against Michigan. So clearly that was part of the UConn plan was we really need to shoot a lot of threes because that is going to be our way to stay in this game. And they did stay in the game on a different night. Maybe, maybe they win this game because of that. I do want to focus before we move on to some of the other games from this weekend.

Just some some individual performances that stuck out to me Elliott Cadot ends up winning most outstanding player in this game, which just If we went back a year and looked at the way that people were talking about Elliott Cadot North Carolina fans but honestly just a lot of national media people when it was announced that he was in the portal and Then that Michigan was taking him. I know Michigan fans who were very non enthused with the fact that they were

losing Trey Donaldson and bringing in Kado and thought that that was a downgrade and Looking up a year later and he was the most outstanding player at the Final Four I know there were some arguments that maybe a Daimara would have been more deserving whatever Kado Was the engine for this team and his energy even if his efficiency was just okay I mean looking at these performances here in this game He had 19 points 5 of 11 from the field to assist two steals previous game

13 points, 10 assists, four steals. He did have six turnovers in that game, but he was the center of everything that Michigan did offensively. And he felt very in control the whole time. And he was so disruptive defensively against both Arizona and Yukon. It was just so clear the impact that he was having. And, you know, a lot of people point to, you have to have really good point guards to win a national title. Cadeau would never before the season have been in anyone's list of

best point guards in the country. Yet by the end of the season, he certainly was that. I know for me personally, if you looked at his transfer grade in the off season last year, I loved a lot of the elements of his game. I had him as a top 15 transfer. So I did think that there were some things that pointed to just things not being quite right for him at UNC, but could work in a different program. Certainly didn't expect quite this level of success. It is awesome to see how well he played. And then of course, Yax Elendaborg, their star player who was quote unquote limited

in this game with the knee injury, he played all 20 minutes in the first half and he played 36 minutes in total. He said in the post game, you it wasn't his best game. He was having to battle through some mental stuff in terms of how his body was feeling, but it was very clear that Dusty May trusted him to say, if you want to play and you want to be out there, I will let you be out there. And Yaxle battled through.

⁓ Even though quote-unquote may have not have been the wisest thing for him to play he ends up with 13 points in this game and was impactful in a lot of ways even if he wasn't at a hundred percent both of those guys just really stuck out to me Do you just have any have any additional thoughts on on any of those standout performances for Michigan there?

Eric Fawcett (19:26)
Yeah, well, I kind of think about it just kind of from our.

roster billing standpoint and not that everyone has the luxury of having as much size and athleticism and fluidity on the front line that Michigan does. looking at the way that this was not someone particularly known for his defense in North Carolina, but you go put him in the switching scheme where he's almost playing like a one man zone at the top of the lane because he doesn't have to work. If someone comes from behind and sets a screen, if someone cuts through, he might just switch it. And you saw him just on his toes, ready to jump on top of any action. And suddenly he's the kind of disruptive defender

talking about and that wouldn't have been the way that he was discussed last year but you put him in the situation where it's like hey like get stay on your toes be really aggressive trying to blow everything up because like you get back cut you get beat

Okay, well, there's like three shop lockers behind you and just the way that that style of having that much length and athleticism on the front line, it just kind of allows you to get guys that might not be known as your prototypical elite defensive players and you can make them that way. And I think as well on the offensive end, that's something that I don't feel like he, the thing that I don't feel like he did enough last season was just like get to the rim, put any level of pressure on the rim. And he saw him just dance with the ball a little bit,

Evan (20:39)
Yes.

Eric Fawcett (20:41)
when he started dancing and then trying to make plays out of it that's where the turnovers came that's where the problems for him ⁓ kind of came and that was where that's kind what he was known for is like it was a small guard who played small and then you just saw in this game like the fearlessness that he that he went at the rim and as well what they did against Arizona and you know some was some was made about the just like hey throw it off the backboard and and someone's gonna go get it and you kind of saw that kind of like

freedom from him, where he was like he had some of the most physical drives I've ever seen from him in this national championship game. And it's like, okay, well, if he did that, then suddenly he would be the top 15 transfer last year in the eyes of eyes of everyone. And so I just feel like the way that this roster was so perfect for him, like Coteau is fantastic. I'm still not convinced you put him on.

a number of other teams he has the same season he does like this was just like the perfect mesh of coach player roster everything there and I mean we don't need to like get into this and maybe this is like an offseason conversation but I think like for Cadeau to not be considered the top point guard in the portal and not even you know close to it in the eyes of many and then you look at Yukon on the other end who last year

I mean, it's, I can certainly say now, but again, you can see the receipts from me. Like I thought Aiden Mahaney was not it. When it came to that being the big, their big portal pickup this year, ⁓ you know, Malachi Smith, Silas Demery, good, players don't get me wrong, but you know, I just, I never thought that those were.

the guards that they needed, the guys that were gonna play at the level that Yukon required. And it's just like, if you're a Yukon fan, who's just like, man, we've just kind of swung and missed. No, I shouldn't say swung and missed. It's not like the guys this year were zeros. Mahaney was maybe close to it, arguably, two years ago. But whatever the case may be, if you are a Yukon fan, I haven't really heard anyone saying this, but I'm just wondering if Yukon fans are just like, man, if we could have just like...

gotten a point guard once over the last two years, how things could have looked a little better. And I just, that's one thing I just wonder as we of course start transitioning into roster build mode. Of course, Yukon's got a whole bunch to rebuild, but it's hard to look at, know, Demery was not a pickup. I was like, I thought was best for them. ⁓ I didn't think that Cadeau was best for Michigan, obviously was wrong there, but it just shows like, there's a ⁓ big swing that were like Michigan.

Evan (22:40)
Sure.

Eric Fawcett (23:06)
nails their point card evaluation what they need. Yukon does not as much. And you just wonder if that Yukon team we just saw had.

a bit better of a point guard someone who was a little bit more of a calming presence, a little bit more stable as a distributor, ⁓ much more of a threat scoring individually. I mean, that's one thing as well talking about Michigan's switching coverage, where Michigan just or sorry, you kind of didn't have anyone that's like, you could really switch and then say like, okay, no, no, go get a bucket against a weak defender. And that's really hard to play against switching teams when you don't have that kind of guy. So I just think that's my my thought as well when you point out just how outstanding canoes

Evan (23:46)
Sure, think, especially given what Ucom was used to in the title seasons with ⁓ Tristan Newton and how good he was, certainly, yeah, they've not had the last two seasons. I do agree with you on the Mahaney thing. He certainly was a swing and a miss, especially from a defensive perspective and part of why he didn't play a lot down the stretch. I would point out with the whole Silas Demery thing, I think that he was pretty solid this season, but then the injury...

slowed him down to the point where he's not had a game in probably a month where he's really been the full strength, you know, point guard that they needed. I think, and, you know, Dan Hurley mentioned this a bunch this weekend, they had to battle through a lot of injury adversity this year. Demery obviously being the biggest one down the stretch. And I think it's inarguable that the impact that he had in the final four was not what he would have had probably if he were healthy and hadn't been hurt. Numerically, like from an analytics perspective,

Have Demery as a top 20 player in the country based on what he did over the course of the season. I think he did a lot of what they needed him to do even if he wasn't maybe exactly the same type of point guard fit that maybe Dan Hurley would like to perfectly have. I still think he did a lot of good things for them and Malachi Smith was a, you know, as a backup point guard was more than capable. But certainly in this title game compared to the impact that Elliott Kadeau had, there was an obvious difference there. So I do agree with you that with their.

I do wanna touch on the roster building stuff in a second because I know a lot of teams are gonna try and copy Michigan and what they've done. So we'll pin that, but let's just quickly go back to the Michigan Arizona game because I do think that this was the game coming into the weekend that everyone was talking about as being the real title game, the two best teams. Certainly the game that we thought would be pretty close. I think Michigan was a slight favorite going into this. I had them predicted to win by three.

I don't think anyone saw Michigan completely boat racing Arizona. Both teams just such strong forces this year. ⁓ Both are capable of doing this. I didn't see this happening. And the final score was not really illustrative of the way that Michigan totally took control of this game because they only won this game by 18 points. But if you take out garbage time,

which is something that you can look at at evanmia.com, see the non-garbage time score. That was 73 to 48. So basically, by the time we got to that score, it was kind of already out of mind. And that is similar to what happened against Tennessee. Their non-garbage time score against Tennessee for Michigan was 64 to 36. So just an absolute pummeling. Pretty much out of the gate. They had a 30 point lead at one point. And Michigan shot the lights out from three in this game, 12 for 27.

The crazy stat in this one was they had a 22 to five assist margin. Like they were able to move the ball perfectly on offense in a way. And those 22 assists doesn't even count the viral plays that were mentioned and talked about when Dusty May talked about how they had Elliott Kiddo throw the ball off the backboard as a way of passing it to a Di Mara to get past Mateus Krivass and the length that Arizona had. So there were some missed shots that.

could be classified as a cyst as well, if you wanna put it that way. And you know, on the flip side, Arizona just never ever was able to really get any level of offensive rhythm whatsoever. And then those missed shots turned into runouts for Michigan. And it was, they just completely took over. ⁓ And some standout individual performances as well. A Daimara had a career high in points in this game. None of Arizona's players were really able to get into a rhythm. I would imagine going into this game, you probably thought this was gonna be a close

a more even tactical battle than it was. What were your thoughts on this game as it unfolded?

Eric Fawcett (27:37)
Yeah, I mean, I actually didn't think it was going to be a close game. I just think like that's college. I was, well, I just feel like that's college basketball where we can talk about the clash of styles, but when there is absolutely not a clash in styles and two teams play a very similar way, like that's where you start to see blowouts in college basketball. I think in a lot of instances, it's not.

Evan (27:42)
Were you predicting Michigan to win this one or?

Eric Fawcett (28:00)
only times you see blowouts even between good teams but like that is one recipe where it's like okay like well two teams that like to play fast well who's better at playing fast michigan ⁓ two teams that you know really play on the interior well who's tougher on the interiors better on the prov... michigan and then you can even look at like okay well then you've got this this thing called the three-point line and who has a advantage there okay like ding ding ding massive advantage so i actually so just for me it's like i i'm i'm not even i'm not even

Evan (28:23)
Massive advantage, yeah.

Eric Fawcett (28:29)
I'm not trying to say that Arizona is bad or not good. Like they're in a Final Four for a reason, but just one of those things that like, I just didn't particularly see an area in which I thought Arizona was better in any particular category than Michigan. so, but yeah, I was ready to see what was gonna happen. Because I did think it was somewhat poetic that in this season where...

the roster build among the teams that had the money to do so was to get as big as possible while still playing fast. I thought it was somewhat poetic that one of these national semi-finals was like the two champions of that style of play. I think that Michigan and Arizona proved themselves to be the best at that, you know, more than Iowa State, more than Florida, more than...

Tennessee, Houston, whatever, whoever you want to throw into that mix. And then on the other side, you have you had, of Illinois, who's doing things the offensive way and against the Yukon team, of course, by the numbers was so much better defensively, yet in style of play, it's still hard not to look at them as an offensive team. And so I thought I thought that was somewhat somewhat poetic, and that these were our two semifinals. And I thought it would have been I'm not saying that that Illinois would have won, but it would have probably been like

most interesting if it was Illinois and their crazy offense and struggles on the defensive end versus Michigan. I do think Michigan would have won that game more handily than they did against UConn. But yeah, that's that's just kind of the the thing in this battle of two teams that are playing the same kind of let's rebound the ball, let's get on the offensive glass, let's play really fast. I just you know every every single category you know Arizona's really good.

just like Michigan's a little bit better and then just you just go down the line in every one of those ways and when there is there's no clash of style, I feel like those are the games that often just go in favor of the team that that does it bit of high level, higher level and then we of course saw like the for Arizona fans, the worst case scenario of Michigan just like going crazy from three while Arizona ⁓ did their kind of regular thing of a respectable percentage, nothing wrong with it but not a high level of attempts and.

And who knows too, I mean, even looking back, like I don't even remember which shots I guess on either of those sides, Michigan or Arizona might've been in that lengthy period of garbage time. But ⁓ yeah, that was the game. Like I know for a lot of people, that was the de facto championship. And like, hey, fair enough, that kind of maybe ended up being the case, it might've been the de facto national championship, but it was definitely the national championship of teams that were playing bully ball. ⁓ so Michigan got that title as well even before.

Evan (31:01)
Mm.

Eric Fawcett (31:05)
before they got the natty.

Evan (31:06)
Yeah, I think that's a fun way of putting it. ⁓ you know, I think I had Michigan, you know, as a little bit of a tear ahead of Arizona for most of the season. And a lot of Arizona fans were kind of upset the way that I framed that. But I did think that Michigan had the edge. But that did not mean that I thought Arizona wasn't capable of a winning this game or be winning a national title. And they would have been a very deserving champion if they had pulled that off. And I do think it is a little bit disappointing that their brilliant season ended in this way.

in such a flat manner because they're going to be remembered very differently than even if they just lost by five in this game. ⁓ So to me, that was a bit of a disappointing thing. I think when I was looking for the reasons why Arizona could win this game, was their guards on paper coming into this game were arguably better than Michigan's. know, you would have taken Jaden Bradley, the Big 12 player of the year. Brandon Burry is one of the most clutch composed freshmen. Both of those guys really felt like a very stereotypical Final Four backcourt.

And comparing that before these games started to say Elliott Cadeau and Namaari Burnett, you would have thought Arizona had the edge there. Ultimately, Cadeau was just so vicious defensively, they weren't able to get into a rhythm. And then the rest of Michigan's length and athleticism just completely took away any sort of confidence and, ⁓ you know, comfortability that the guards had. And then the other thing too, which was a surprise was that Arizona has just been so consistent all season. hadn't a single, you know, in their two losses.

They went right down to the wire in every other game in the clutch time that they're they're winning games that are close. And so you just didn't really think that they would allow themselves to get completely blown out like that. think Tommy Lloyd talked a little bit afterwards about how, you know, he said ultimately they hadn't been in a situation like this before where they were down 15 in the first half. And it was a little bit of like, what do we do in this situation? We've never quite been there. So credits in Michigan for being able to punch them in the mouth early.

because that really kind of threw them out of their rhythm. But I do think I just want to give Arizona credit for the great season that they had, even though it ended in this way. Let's go to the other semifinal game and then we'll wrap up some potential roster build stuff here. So UConn, I just want to take big picture how, I would say arguably, that though UConn won titles in 2023 and 2024 and those back to back was as impressive.

a two year run as you're ever going to see. I would say arguably their run to the title game in this tournament, given their roster and given the teams that they had to play, the adversity injury wise that they had to overcome. I would say it's more impressive that they got to a title game in this tournament than them winning their previous two based on how likely of a favorite they were in that second year, certainly. And in the first year, it was clear by the time we got to the tournament, even though they were a four seed, that they were a really strong team.

and they had a relatively simple path once they got to the final four because of how weak the rest of that final four was. If you looked at the pre-tournament odds of them making, just making the title game, on my website it was 6%. There was only a 6 % chance that they would get here and that's knowing that they were a very good team. And obviously the comeback against Duke was probably the moment of the tournament big picture in terms of...

What we're going to remember for years and years to come, the Braille and Mullens shot obviously, the, you know, overcoming a 19 point deficit. So very impressive. And I think this, this win over Illinois was kind of an example and capped that off. Terrace Reed, my goodness in this tournament, he was probably overall the most impressive player in this tournament, even though they didn't win the title. He finishes this tournament with averaging 19.5 points and 13 rebounds per game.

in this tournament. had 17 and 11 against Illinois. So I thought his run was incredibly impressive. And just the fact that they were able to play all the teams that they did beating UCLA, Michigan State, Duke, Illinois, all who had a variety of bigs who were very challenging and tough to play against. And Terris Reed stood out amongst all of them and outshone them. ⁓ It was super impressive.

And then, you know, on the Illinois side of things, I also thought this was another example of a game where, man, there were so many shots for Illinois that I, you know, I felt like their energy level was below par for most of this game. They didn't look quite as, as up to the task as Yukon did, but I will say that they had a lot of shots that, didn't come close to the rim, but a lot of that went kind of in and out. There were a lot of buckets. thought this is dropping. There were probably four or five of them that didn't. So they had a lot of breaks not go their way as well. ⁓

So I thought it was a well-thought game, Yukon the deserving winner. Anything else that stuck out to you from this one?

Eric Fawcett (35:59)
Yeah, well, I know there's been a couple of like, I told you so from me on the podcast, I got to just point out that I definitely thought Illinois was going to win this one. And I thought, I thought Illinois was really going to control this one. So this is the one I was way wrong on. And just to see the way that ⁓ particularly like a Mirkovic, like some of the, some of the play they had from some of their like bigger wings and, and even like, like Jake Davis at times like

Evan (36:06)
Ha ha ha ha.

Eric Fawcett (36:22)
just whenever they caught the ball in the wing trying to get into some of those like second side actions, just like the way that Yukon was able to shift over and make things difficult and route those guys away from where they were trying to go. just like felt like these possessions for Illinois that were turned into ⁓ longer, more uncomfortable situations that ended in the hands of someone other than Keaton Wogler where they'd like to have it. just, again, thought that was... ⁓

Like I mentioned how I thought that like as much as the numbers obviously show that that that Yukon was a much better defensive team than an offensive team. It's still hard for me not to like watch them and talk to to coaches that have to prepare for them and like still view them as an offensive team. But then you watch what they did against Illinois and you're like, yeah, like that that is what they were this year. They were tremendous on the defensive end. I think that's also what goes back to what you were saying about just how impressive it was for them to get into the

Evan (37:10)
Mm.

Eric Fawcett (37:18)
the title game with this particular team is like, you look at a lot of the prototypical things you would look for from a team that could be a top 10 defense or ⁓ whatever you want to say UConn was by the end of the season, whether by the numbers or by the eye test or whatever combination of the two. Like, it's not like they're loaded with a ton of athleticism and length on the wing. Like, I'm not saying they don't have some of that. Like, they certainly do, but.

the way that they were so connected and the way that they were able to keep everything in front. And I think that you mentioned it, like there were, there was some luck, I would say involved with some of the shots that didn't fall for Illinois. But I also think like Yukon did well to just take away the home runs, the layups, the real easy stuff and just kind of like try their luck with some semi contested catch and shoot attempts and ultimately that worked. And that's kind of what you got to do when you don't have

Evan (38:09)
Mm-hmm.

Eric Fawcett (38:12)
elite, elite athleticism, elite, elite defenders going against a in Illinois team that was so, so dominant. So, ⁓ yeah, this, this game was, was incredible. And I know you mentioned Reed as well. also thought just his ability to dominate one-on-one even against, against like size and like, physicality, like that had me thinking like, man, maybe this guy actually could like have the, you know, do something against Michigan. You saw like a little bit of that where he had a couple of moments doing a great job taking it right into Mars chest, but, wasn't quite enough. So

⁓ Yeah, I think too that was a guy that has kind of been seen as like, you know a serviceable big-bodied player that like never quite kind of reached a ceiling until this tournament where you were like, my goodness this player is Tremendous and he is yet destined to have quite a pro career. I would think

Evan (38:51)
Yeah.

Yeah, and the development that he has had over his two years at UConn has been astounding, because like you said, I don't think people really expected him to be this level of player when he transferred from Michigan to UConn. And he was really their only interior force that they had all season. And he more than handled that mantle against a lot of teams like Illinois, who had multiple different bigs that he had to compete against. ⁓ So that was amazing. ⁓ know, Alex Caraban didn't have the best tournament.

Safe to say I think he was five for 23 from three going back to the Duke game in those final three games ⁓ So tough to see that that you know one of their most reliable players who by the way Alex Carabin has played in his college career in 20 NCAA tournament games that is insane to have that many tur... It's like that's like almost a whole season worth of basketball just in March Madness So just a credit to him and what he was able to do. I know that he will

You know, have some regrets about about his performances, but you can't take away from, you know, what he meant to this team. And ⁓ so, you know, again, just super impressed with UConn. Illinois came up short. Obviously, I think they they ultimately had a first half slow start, which has been a theme of theirs in this tournament where they had 24 first half points against Houston, 28 against against Iowa and the Elite Eight.

They had 29 in this game. Those were their three lowest first half point totals of the season. They were able to have great second halfs those previous two games against UConn. That was not the case, so that came back to bite them. So tough to overcome that in one of those games finally. But overall, Illinois was one of the most interesting, intriguing teams from a roster build perspective, certainly. And I know that even though they came up short and didn't make the title game or win a title,

A lot of teams will be paying attention to what they did from a recruiting perspective. Let's go ahead and go kind of end this conversation with talking about some of the things that other teams will try and copy. Let's be real. This is a copycat league and when something is successful, other teams will try and emulate it. There were a lot of things that teams like Michigan did this year that they succeeded in that other teams tried to do and sort of failed. From the Michigan side of things, the...

the three big experiments, if you will, of having a Daimara, Maurice Johnson, Yaxel Lendeborg, all traditionally players who would play at the four or the five, all being on the court together a lot, and that ended up working really well for them. I know is something other teams are gonna copy. They're obviously not the only team this season that was successful doing that. You look at Arizona, you look at Florida, you look at ⁓ several other teams like Duke who were just...

had massive, massive front courts and had some guys playing down at the three, Florida being another example of that. ⁓ That's certainly gonna be a trend going forward. What are your thoughts overall on the things that you see, think are most likely to happen in terms of what coaching staffs are looking at and how they're trying to title contending rosters based on sort of the trends this season and what do you think will work?

Eric Fawcett (42:09)
Well, this is really interesting because...

So two years ago, Yukon wins their second championship and they're playing one of the slowest paces in the country. They're calling a set on every play. And this was at a time where everyone is talking about, we're going to get up and down. We're going to play fast. don't, know, a lot of coaches really, you know, loud about like, we don't run sets. play conceptually, we play out of concepts. And then you've got like Yukon who's like, yeah, we're valuing every possession. Like it's the last possession of the game and we're calling a set and we're going to value the rock and we're going to try to get the best shot in every, every possession. And I kind of thought to myself, no,

this

is something that might change college basketball people are going to see the success of this and they are going to say okay instead of just preaching hey we need to play fast we need to play out of concepts we are actually going to just you know get guys that are we're gonna really drill down that we're going to learn lot bigger playbooks and we're gonna run sets and we're gonna slow it down now that didn't happen at all and I shouldn't say at all but it certainly did not it doesn't appear like that really changed the trajectory of the sport at all in my opinion and

The reason why I also thought that that was something that was going to be replicated was the fact that like, you know, I know this is a little bit different than the consulting you did, but like it wouldn't matter if like.

If you know, if like Bethune cookman or wake forest or Youngstown state was going to ⁓ look at that run, they could be like, okay, well like you can play slow. They play really methodically. They run a ton of sets. Like we can do that at our level. Like no matter, no matter what anyone could have watched that and said like, yeah, like we probably need some like smart players, but like if we really work on this, like we can probably play really slow, run a lot of sets, not push the ball as much. So then you look at this and you look at like Michigan.

and you look at Arizona and earlier in the season, look at the other one seeds, you look at like a Florida, ⁓ what is Wake Forest got? Like what can Wake Forest look at that and say like, we can do that? What's like a Virginia Tech gonna, okay, like so that's just why I'm like, I don't know if this is a trend necessarily. Now I know you also did say like teams that are trying to build national championship rosters, which is a, an elite few. And if this is the trend, like it is only gonna be an elite few because this is a trend that,

Evan (44:05)
Right.

Eric Fawcett (44:21)
Like again, if you are a mid-major team watching this, like there's nothing to be, to learn from that really, like until you can get that kind of player. And I mean, unless you do just get whatever possible size and length you can and just put those guys out and have a little bit more of a leash of like, okay, we're going to be less concerned with ball handling and shooting because we think we can just put out as much size as we can at our level, whatever that may be. Maybe that's six, eight at center and six, seven.

at the four and and and six six at the three but you're in a you're in the Ohio Valley and that's just like whatever you do you get that site like you know maybe that happens but I just don't know if that's actually gonna really change things and when it comes to the teams that are looking to build national championship rosters and have the means to do that like yeah I do think the the teams that have the money are

just like they did last summer, they are going to pay up for multiple seven footers, multiple true centers and feel free to put them out there. for me, what's gonna be interesting is what does everyone outside of those 10 to 15 programs do? ⁓ Do they look at what UConn was able to accomplish this year? I went back and like, well, they went to championships. I don't think anyone's gonna look at what they did this year and now think, we should play that way. But like,

You also did see Iowa playing a similar style and beat Florida and go on to run themselves. Like I do wonder if more coaches are going to look.

at that but at the same time if you didn't watch Yukon win two national championships and say like hey I think this is something that could kind of work I like I don't know if you're going to do it now but the for anyone outside of these national championship contenders like that's just the thing is like I I just don't know what what people in one big leagues are thinking about watching Michigan saying okay well what what can we do at our level based on what what Michigan did how can we win our league well it's just like at this point it's different games and and then like ⁓ of course it would have been interesting if Illinois went a little farther to

Evan (46:04)
Yeah.

Eric Fawcett (46:15)
to see the conversations about, know, furthering the European guys as well. And, you know, maybe that's a way that a year or two ago, you maybe could get some front court guys for a little bit cheaper guys that are ready to contribute right away. like, man, now, now the pendulum might swing the other way, like seeing some of these guys. And, you know, for people listening that don't know, like the European basketball world is one that I am very involved with. And I am seeing guys that I don't think are very good that are getting much more than I think

Evan (46:16)
Sure, yep, yep, yep.

Eric Fawcett (46:44)
they should and like, hey, that's all credit to them. But it's just funny for years, it was an untapped market and there was guys that should have got opportunities and didn't or guys that like ⁓ did come to college basketball, went to lower levels than they should. And now I can almost feel like the pendulum's gonna swing the other way because of the success some guys have had. So I am actually like, for years have been someone that's like.

I think these European players are amazing. I think that they're underrated. gonna be like, I actually think that there is gonna be a lot of European players that are let downs this year because I think the pendulum might have swung the other way. So those are some of my kind of roster builds that, that, you know, touches on really all, all, all four teams, I guess that we're in the final four.

Evan (47:19)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, there's so much interesting stuff there.

did some research a little bit earlier this season looking at just what was the impact the actual international recruits that came in as freshmen, quote unquote, actually had this season. And basically what you found was you had some teams like Illinois and Virginia who found really great international recruits that ended up being top three to four players in their team and were awesome. But I know a lot of other teams sort of just viewed it as a kind of like

hoping it was just throwing a dart at a dartboard and seeing if it stuck and they got names and some of those players just didn't pan out. And so I do think you're right. It's not just that any international prospect will work. It's about finding the right ones and knowing how to actually be good at valuing that talent. So that'll be interesting to watch. I do think just a couple of notes for me on the Michigan thing specifically, because they're the one who ended up being the most dominant team this season and everyone's gonna be thinking about this is the likely blueprint for winning in the future.

For starters, it's obviously well cataloged that Michigan had, you know, among the largest resources of any team that ended up being in the sport this year. But it's not like they were comfortably number one. I don't know the exact numbers, but I would say there were probably 10 to 15 other teams that you could say were kind of in that range of spending a lot of money. Some notable teams that's been publicly stated, teams like Kentucky, who had over $20 million for their roster, obviously fell well short of what Michigan did this season. So it wasn't just.

throwing a lot of money at it because a lot of other teams did that too. It was about doing it in a way that was smart, that fit their scheme, that found underrated talent at that price point. Players like Elliott Caddow, who I had rated a lot higher than he was viewed as a consensus player. He ends up being a really great fit for them. Obviously they had to pay up for guys like Adai Mara and Moraz Johnson, but the way that they have turned out to be as players this year was even better than a lot of other people expected. ⁓

And, you know, I will mention a little bit more detail on this later in the show. I know that Michigan used a lot of analytically driven tools like the front office suite, which is a tool that I have at evanmia.com. They use that among other things to help shape their roster. And so it is not just about chasing the players with the biggest cache, who might cost the most money. It's about being really smart and efficient with the way that you're using your money. So obviously that's going to be something that I know every team is paying more attention to this off season.

The other couple of trends I found are interesting is if you look at before this tournament, most teams who won a national title, if not all teams, had a strong reliance on returning players as a part of their roster build. think every champion in the modern Portal era until this year had over 50 % of their minutes played by guys who were on the team the previous season. And then they brought in fresh talent through the Portal or through the high school ranks or international ranks to sort of supplement that.

but the ⁓ bulk of their production still came from returning players. This season, the average percentage of roster continuity has dropped every single year over the last several years because of how much more fluid these roster situations are. So every single Final Four team this year still was above average in that department. I think the average percentage of minutes played amongst high majors by returning players was 30%. Every Final Four team was above that, so it still is

Important to be on that side of things, but Michigan was at 34 % in other words 34 % of their minutes were played by returning players everything else came from their freshmen or their transfers So they had a challenge ahead of them of saying how can we get all of these new pieces to be? I mean you look at their starting lineup outside of Numeri Burnett. It was Yaxle Lindeborg, Adai Mara, ⁓ Elliott Cadeau, Mares Johnson, and they were the most important players on the team

they were able to pull something off that I don't think is a given for every team. So I really give them a lot of credit for that. And the last thing that I will mention is, I think there is a, even though a mid-major team can't try and copy what Michigan did, because they're just not gonna be able to have the ability to get those same types of players, there is going to be, and already has been, a trickle-down effect from, okay, well, if the best teams at the very top are gonna try and build this monster front court type of identity,

What that means is the market for all bigs is just going to get astronomically big because if those players are getting taken off the board for high amounts of money, well then the next guys who maybe wouldn't be good enough to play and start for a Michigan, but maybe they would be good enough to start for a Cincinnati or a ⁓ Georgia or a St. Mary's or something, they're also going to want more money because they're the next ones in line. And so I still do think we're gonna have a trickle down of

the emphasis on bigs or the amount of money it's going to take to get a quality big will be higher than ever before. What that makes me wonder is, will we see other types of roster builds that de-emphasize that for the sake of getting a better ⁓ allocation of their money on talent at the other positions? Will we actually see those teams succeed more this year? I look at a team this year like Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt was not a team that had a classic big. Jalen Washington, I guess, was the big that qualified, but they were a more sort of

guard and wing dependent team and they found a lot of really good roster pieces both through the returners and through the portal of guys who were underrated but really fit and were very talented at their level. I wonder if we're gonna see more teams like that be successful. Those are just kind of a few of the thoughts that come off my head as we discuss that. I will be doing a lot more research on the whole.

Economics of the portal and things like that in the coming week so listeners can stay tuned for that But but any any final thoughts on any of that stuff that I mentioned there?

Eric Fawcett (53:11)
Yeah, I think that when you look at the portal even three years ago, which is funny because it feels like an eternity ago, I felt like the most overvalued player was like the undersized combo guard gunner. And a lot of those guys that had really good production, ⁓ raw production, I will say, ⁓ a lot of those guys did

really well in terms of getting to much bigger, much bigger schools. And looking at the portal right now, there is just an absolute glut of guys that are six three and under, you know, not really point guards. And many of them have averaged at in multiple leagues from low major to high major are averaging 15 to 23 points a game. Most shoot the ball pretty well. Most defensively are not great. And there is just

There's there's just so many players that are on good teams from from good leagues Averaging 17 points per game and and and two point three assists and there's so many guys out there that that a lot of teams could get excited the fans could get excited about and this story of this year's portal as So much of that money has gone away from these guards and go into the front court that the story of this year's portal evaluations to me are going to be which teams can get the actual good players from that batch how and

that yeah so that I just think that's kind of my last my last portal kind of ⁓ roster built I think but like could you see someone end up with two absolute studs in the Vanderbilt type not that those guys were like you know mid-major type but like that that style of like two really really good smaller guards in the backcourt that can be awesome and lead in the lead offense like I wonder if that's that's out there somewhere for a whole lot

less than building a roster the other way. but yeah, just kind of generally speaking, like one, one look through the portal and, that's what you see a whole bunch of, and you, do not see a lot of impactful centers in the ones that are there, man, are they going to get paid? So, so that'll be interesting, but yeah, those would be my final thoughts.

Evan (55:10)
If you're listening to this show and you want to track the portal closer I have daily multiple times daily updated portal ratings For every single player who is announced that they're going the portal or who's signed with teams You can see my analytical evaluation of them and a lot more so you can find that stuff at evanmia.com Eric this has been awesome Both your insight on the games and talking about the roster construction stuff. I think the listeners will find very interesting So thank you so much for joining me on the show today

And I hope you enjoy the off season and maybe that it's a little bit slower for you though, realistically speaking, for anyone involved either in the content business or on the sort of coaching side, which you are both, things don't necessarily slow down right now. So either way, I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for joining me today.

Evan (55:56)
Thank you to Eric Fawcett for joining me today. You can find all of Eric's work on Twitter at Eric Fawcett underscore. Eric does a lot of different stuff. He does some ⁓ stuff for Baskin under review. He does stuff for a couple of other publications. He does a lot of stuff on Twitter, breaking down X's and O's. He is a great follow for all of that sort of stuff. He also is involved with a lot of different teams in what they're doing as well. So be sure to go follow all of Eric's stuff on Twitter.

at Eric Fossett underscore.

Evan (56:27)
Alright, for this week's analytics corner, this is the portion of the show where I will talk a little bit more about ⁓ analytically driven stuff often from my website and I will have more really dedicated analytics driven stuff for the transfer portal coming soon which I will mention at the end of the show. So this will be pretty quick but I will mention a couple different things to kind of to sort of set the stage for what we have coming ahead as well as draw a bow on this tournament. First on the tournament side of things, I know a lot of you guys

really ⁓ were dialed in for a lot of the bracket advice, insights, data that I shared during ⁓ the week prior to the tournament starting. And I heard a lot of people who listened to this show tell me that the bracket stuff that I talked about really helped them win their bracket pool.

If you've been following my bracket progress online, ended up picking the winner in Michigan.

I had two of the final four teams correct in Michigan and Illinois. My bracket finished in the 99.1 percentile. In other words, it was in the top 1 % of brackets nationally. I was in a bracket pool with a bunch of other people who are in college basketball media, just as smart and as dialed in as I am. And I ended up winning that group as well as every other group that I was in this season with that bracket. So it was really awesome to see it pan out so well.

It does take some luck breaking in your way to win a bracket pool, but if you make the right decisions and view it in a sort bracket value lens of how can you sort of be contrary to what everyone else in your group is likely to be doing. If things do break right, it really does make your odds of winning your bracket pool higher. That's certainly what happened with my bracket this year. So was very cool to see it do well so well, as well as so many people who followed the advice and took similar principles and are working for their brackets to.

So I look forward to doing that again next year. That does make it two out of the last three years where my bracket has finished in the 99th percentile last year, think was pretty poor. ⁓ I had Florida losing early and they ended up winning the whole thing. So obviously that wrecked a lot of my bracket, but two out of three years, the process led to really good results. So that was really fun

see. The other thing that I will mention, and this is again, a little bit of a teaser that we'll talk about more in the coming weeks,

has been some...

I'm recording this on Tuesday. There has been some noise

about the front office suite tool, which is a tool that I have on my website that is specifically designed for teams and general managers to help with roster building and NIL evaluations. It is not a product that I make available like a lot of my other public subscriptions. It is something more specific for a certain clientele. And ⁓ last November, I launched this product a year ago.

right around the Final Four last year. And last November, I tweeted about it, because I was given permission to, that Michigan was the first team who signed up for and started using the front office suite when I launched this back in April. So what that allowed them to do as well as many of the other teams who used it, but they were kind of the first on board, is using my analytical projections for players to translate to estimated dollar amounts in terms of how much they're worth. This tool,

responds to the current market allows for each user or team to put in Intel that represents where the current market is at and it helps my tool kind of fill in how much everyone roughly should be worth based on their projected impact and where the market is currently at and so obviously ⁓ you know, I cannot attribute ⁓ a much of Michigan success to my tool because Michigan had so many other sources I know for ways that they ⁓

went about recruiting players as well as all of the great coaching and development that took them to a national title. So I do not want to claim any large portion of their success, but it was very cool to see that the very first team that did sign up for this, ⁓ obviously the way that they built their roster really turned out to be quite incredible. A lot of other teams are trying to replicate similar things who had similar budgets, but really failed to execute on putting a roster together that number one worked and number two,

had as much chemistry and ultimately as much power as what Michigan was able to pull off. So it was very cool to see that. ⁓ I was a little bit reticent to kind of ⁓ toot my own horn, if you will, with that ⁓ last night coming into today, just because again, I don't want to take more credit than I deserve for that because it's a very, very small slice of the pie. And I do know that I'm sure I was not the only analytical tool that they were using to do that, but.

⁓ Nonetheless, very cool to see how that kind of played out and ⁓ With that being said there are other programs who like Kentucky who have announced recently that they're also using the front office suite ⁓ As well as other things to help assemble their rosters at this point I have around 30 teams who are using the front office suite for this this offseason and would continue to expect that to grow just as more teams are seeing the value of

using analytically driven tools like mine to not only help identify which players are the best ⁓ players to recruit, but also how does that translate to using your money wisely? Because there is a big difference now between just ranking transfer portal players to actually saying, okay, well, if these two players are similar, but one player is gonna cost twice as much, it's a much better use of our money to ⁓ spend that money elsewhere and maybe get two players for the price of one.

and that allows for your budget to go further. So really cool to see some of the reception and conversation around that tool and looking forward to seeing that more going forward. We will touch on a lot more Transfer Portal stuff in the coming weeks, so please stay tuned for that.

Evan (1:02:22)
I do want to spend just a little bit of time talking about reflections from the Final Four this weekend outside of the games which we've already discussed. Indianapolis is my home city, it's where I grew up and my wife and I recently moved back to Indianapolis. This was my first time experiencing Indianapolis as a Final Four city as an adult. So very cool to kind of see how well Indianapolis does it.

A lot of people who go to Final Four's regularly will talk about how the big three are Indianapolis, New Orleans, and San Antonio as being the sort of like most desirable, most logistically friendly Final Four sites. Obviously Indianapolis typically does not have the same weather to compete with some of those other cities, but logistically, mean, Indianapolis does such an incredible job. Everything is so close between Lucas Oil Stadium,

⁓ Downtown Indianapolis where you know a lot of the the restaurants and bars are the convention center where the ⁓ The the NABC does their convention as well as a lot of the fan stuff. It is literally all within walking distance It was very very easy to get around Indianapolis had a tough challenge because not only did they have the final four they also had several other Championships going on all in the same weekend, but they pulled it off great. So that was really cool to see How well they did that?

For me personally, outside of the games, which, you know, were in and of themselves not that entertaining compared to say what we had in last year's Final Four, but there were so many other great things that happened. ⁓ You know, for me personally, the Final Four is the best opportunity I have every single year to network with a lot of people in media, as well as meet up with a lot of coaches, because everyone is in town for the length of several days. Several cool things for me personally that occurred ⁓ in chronological order here.

I had the opportunity second year in a row to be a ⁓ featured speaker, if you will, at the NABC. This is the National Association of Basketball Coaches, I think is what it stands for. The NABC conference, ⁓ coaches conference is a thing that happens every Thursday, Friday at the Final Four. A lot of coaches come in for this. It's a networking event, but it's also an event for education, a lot of different things. There was a general manager session for the first time this year and I was invited to speak.

⁓ in that with a bunch of other really brilliant folk, both coaches and other kind of people adjacent to the college basketball space. That was a really cool experience to get to do that and talk about some of the roster building ⁓ tools that I do and use ⁓ and just kind of talking about general strategies for general managers in this modern portal climate. So that was a really cool experience getting to do that and I met a lot of great people afterwards.

Saturday morning, there is a tradition that happens ⁓ every Final Four for people who are kind of national media members. An email chain gets sent around and there is often a group of anywhere between 10 and 20 people in the media who will show up for a basketball pickup game. This year it happened at Hinkle Field House, which was an especially cool venue for that. ⁓ So it was really fun to play in that game. I did not technically play in the game this year, though I did show up. I am still recovering from an ACL surgery.

⁓ Back last ⁓ summer, so I was probably close to being ready to play but couldn't play this year, but I brought a clipboard and did some ⁓ Analytics and plus-minus for everyone else who was playing so that was super fun And if you're one of those who was there, thank you for making that experience enjoyable and then last thing I will say too is I love getting to meet ⁓ Fans at the at the Final Four, you know, I never you know, I haven't like hosted a an event per se but

There were a lot of fans, I know some of you listening to this show came up and introduced yourself to me ⁓ over the Final Four weekend. That was really cool just to get to meet listeners of the show who, you know, I've only been doing this since January and I got a lot of really positive feedback from people saying that they love the show and that it's been a regular part of their sort of college basketball ⁓ content intake. So that was just really, really encouraging to meet people in person who are

listeners of the show. anyone who said something to me over the weekend, I really appreciate that. That meant a lot to me.

Evan (1:06:40)
Before we get out of here, I do want to announce the winner of our listener contest. The contest that I announced last week was to pick the player whose BPR improved the most over the Final Four between then and this week's show. Any of the players from the Final Four teams were eligible and the winner went to Reese Van Haften, at Reese underscore VH on Twitter, who picked Trey McKinney.

And Trey McKinney was the most improved player from last weekend to now in terms of how he performed and his overall stock improved in his player rating at EvanMia.com. So congrats to Reese. I will be sending you your free merch item of choosing in the mail. And for anyone else who wants to get merch stuff, you can find the link to the merch store at EvanMia.com.

Before we get out of here as well, will note that the cadence of the show will change going forward. I was doing a once a week show during the season. I will not be doing that during the off season, partly just because there's way less to cover. So what I'm planning on doing is sometime over the next couple weeks, having an episode or two that is dedicated to off season transfer portal related stuff. I'm doing a lot of really interesting research now about

the way that teams are approaching the portal, evaluating players, tracking transfer classes, ⁓ how budgets and NIL are interacting with all this. And so I'm gonna have some really good content related to that, both on the podcast and on my blog, blog.evinmia.com. So I don't know exactly when those episodes will drop on the podcast feed, but they will be up.

and there will be some stuff over the next month or two related to that. So please be tuned for that, but I do not know exactly the cadence of that. Once we get to the heart of the off season, probably June, July, August, September, there will probably be a bit of a hiatus over the summer as I'm just working on a bunch of other stuff. But I am planning on revealing the pre-season team and player ratings on this show sometime around August.

is when I will do that and subscribers to the show will get that information first before it actually gets put up on evanmia.com. So I'm already looking forward to that. It's just a couple months away from having an idea of what the 2026-27 season will pan out. So looking forward to that. Thank you all for being here. ⁓ It has been finishing up the season here. It has been such a wonderful experience starting the show back in January and all of the

positive reception and dedicated listenership that I've gotten over the last couple months. So I really appreciate everyone who's here. ⁓ We'll be back sometime soon. As always, this is an ad-free show. So if you listen on the podcast platforms on Apple or Spotify, please give us a five-star review. It really helps grow the podcast and helps more people find it. Leave a review as well. I love to read reviews on the show. So if you leave a review, I will likely get to it. If you watch on YouTube, please subscribe to the channel.

Like the video, leave comments. Again, a lot of that stuff is helpful and I love to read those comments as well. Thank you so much everyone for listening. It truly means a lot to me. I will see all of you guys next