Latest / Cocaine Willie / A full MBB roster before June!? + March Madness Expansion, Spring Football Thoughts (S5//E1))

Transcript

A full MBB roster before June!? + March Madness Expansion, Spring Football Thoughts (S5//E1)) · Cocaine Willie

• 0:01
  You actually have to be on cocaine to be on this part
• 0:34
  Buddy, you're listening to yet another edition will be the
• 0:37
  official. I'm your commissioner Bob trolls
• 0:41
  meeting and as always, I'm joined by my Co host, the good
• 0:45
  chef on grenade fireball Tonight.
• 0:49
  We have a lot to cover, right? We're going to talk through
• 0:52
  spring football. We're going to talk about men's
• 0:54
  basketball portal and the updates around that.
• 0:58
  We have a complete men's basketball roster, which is
• 1:00
  really nice for once before the month of June beginning, so
• 1:04
  that's pretty cool. We got a full basketball staff
• 1:06
  as well. And then there are a lot of
• 1:08
  changes happening in college sports right now, one of which
• 1:11
  is the NCAA tournament expanding on the men's and women's side to
• 1:14
  76 teams, right from 68. And yeah, there is a
• 1:19
  recommendation by the Football Coaches Association to expand
• 1:23
  the field to 24 on the football side.
• 1:25
  So some interesting things happening on the periphery of
• 1:28
  college athletics, but Chef and Matt, first time in a in a long
• 1:32
  time. How?
• 1:32
  How are we doing? Oh my God, Oh my God, A.
• 1:38
  Rookie mistake Season 5. It's a glorious day to be here.
• 1:45
  Internet is in tip top shape. Who would have ever thought that
• 1:49
  I would have pristine Internet going into a fresh new season?
• 1:54
  And we're here. It's it's it's might be a sign
• 1:58
  of things to come. Yeah, yeah, a new day, a new
• 2:03
  chef. Have you switched providers?
• 2:10
  No, we can get it If we can get an I, if we can get an ISP to
• 2:14
  sponsor the show just for Chef, that would be great.
• 2:18
  But yeah, things are good. You know, taking some time off,
• 2:22
  revitalizing the love of K State.
• 2:26
  I'm still still trying to get there, but yeah.
• 2:31
  I think for all of us, we're we're feeling a little bit
• 2:34
  energized. We took some time off.
• 2:36
  We've got 2 new coaches in the biggest sports at the
• 2:40
  university. The back Cats aren't really
• 2:42
  doing all that much, so we don't really have any anything there
• 2:45
  to talk about. But before we get into the
• 2:47
  episode, we do want to give a shout out to sponsor one of two
• 2:51
  Auntie Maze Parlor, located at 616 N 12th St. in the heart of
• 2:54
  Aggieville in Manhattan, KS. This beer crack is brought to
• 2:59
  you by oh, there it is, Maze Parlor.
• 3:08
  They've got live music, comedy and all sorts of events every
• 3:11
  single week. It's the the the go to
• 3:13
  destination in Nagyville on game days and school nights alike.
• 3:16
  They've been in business for 53 years running, maybe longer.
• 3:22
  I forget exactly how long it is. It's been a long time though
• 3:24
  they've been around for a while. It's a great institution.
• 3:27
  If you go to their website, auntiemaze.com, you can take a
• 3:30
  full list of all their upcoming events.
• 3:33
  You can take a list of their cocktail of the week.
• 3:35
  You can see all sorts of stuff on their website.
• 3:37
  They even have merch at their shop on the website.
• 3:40
  You can buy merch, I think for the Wiener Hole in addition to
• 3:44
  Auntie Maze. So they've got all sorts of
• 3:46
  crazy stuff going on there. Nice look chef, love that.
• 3:56
  That was Wiener Hole. That was his nickname at the
• 3:58
  postal School. Man, boy, things, things
• 4:03
  associated with me in Wiener holes.
• 4:05
  Just we got it. We got it.
• 4:07
  Chill out. Oh.
• 4:09
  My God, the cocktail of the week this week is the jalapeno
• 4:13
  Paloma. Give me 12 of those.
• 4:15
  OK? Not a Paloma guy, Nah.
• 4:18
  Nah. Grapefruit.
• 4:20
  Nope. Oh good Lord.
• 4:22
  House infused jalapeno tequila, lime juice, salt and grapefruit
• 4:25
  soda for $8. Now you make that with a a
• 4:30
  Margarita all in. It's hard.
• 4:34
  To beat it's. Hard to beat that deal, but even
• 4:37
  though it's the offseason, they still have stuff going on every
• 4:40
  single week. Till Willis in Erratic Cowboy
• 4:43
  with Jared. Dustin Griffin are performing on
• 4:46
  Saturday, May 9th at Auntie May's Tuesday, May 12th we've
• 4:50
  got pie and cocktails yet again with Sarah Pie.
• 4:54
  Tuesday May 12th at Auntie May's.
• 4:55
  Matt, you think you're going to make it out to pie and cocktails
• 4:58
  next Tuesday? No.
• 5:01
  I can't unfortunately. Bummer.
• 5:05
  Yeah, I can't. I will make a third pie at some
• 5:08
  point. Yeah, I promise.
• 5:10
  Yeah, we'll hold you to that next Wednesday, May 13th, trivia
• 5:14
  smack down. And then next Thursday, May
• 5:16
  14th, Nathan Pages Underground guitar pull.
• 5:19
  So a lot of the, a lot of the usual suspects are going to be
• 5:22
  playing or, or being at Auntie Mays here in the next couple of
• 5:26
  weeks. So get get on over there, get on
• 5:28
  over to auntiemays.com and you'll see a full list of their
• 5:31
  upcoming events. All right, guys, let's kick it
• 5:33
  off with the men's basketball team.
• 5:35
  We have a full team assembled before May 10th.
• 5:41
  Kind of crazy to think about. It's nuts.
• 5:45
  I mean, it, it's it's something we're not used to over the past
• 5:50
  few seasons. Obviously, since the portal was
• 5:52
  the portal, this is the first staff that's really embraced it,
• 5:57
  going full steam ahead, getting the players that they identify
• 6:02
  that they target and you know, there's going to be some misses.
• 6:06
  But they were not hesitant to just go right back in and fill
• 6:10
  the roster as quickly as quickly as possible.
• 6:12
  And it's, it might pay dividends down the road to actually
• 6:16
  assemble A-Team, get practicing, get going with a full, you know,
• 6:20
  full 1213 man roster. Yeah, it's, it's definitely like
• 6:26
  a change of pace. I think it's been an interesting
• 6:30
  process, you know, especially as we've seen the types of players
• 6:35
  that Coach Alexander is bringing in.
• 6:38
  I'm sure we're going to get into the nitty gritty of it.
• 6:40
  But to to have an idea of what your team's going to look like
• 6:44
  so early on at least provides maybe a glimmer of hope or at
• 6:50
  least a glimmer of, you know, what you want this program to
• 6:52
  be. You know who we anticipate the
• 6:56
  type of players that he might be recruiting into the future.
• 7:00
  And again, as you said, like building a program, hopefully
• 7:03
  with guys that want to stay in the program and believe in the
• 7:07
  mission and believe in what he's trying to build.
• 7:11
  So it's very exciting. It's scary because you just
• 7:15
  don't know like what how it's going to turn out obviously in
• 7:18
  the end. But November can't get here soon
• 7:22
  enough, can it? It really can't.
• 7:26
  And but to to Matt's point, I mean, I know we're going to deep
• 7:29
  dive into this roster and who's on it and what they what they
• 7:32
  bring to the table, but it's a different strategy.
• 7:36
  And it's very similar to what, you know, the previous staff had
• 7:42
  done their first year where, you know, it's not necessarily the
• 7:46
  highly heralded guys that they're throwing a giant bag at
• 7:50
  and, you know, trying to get that big name to get the, the
• 7:53
  brand recognition out there that we have a star player or
• 7:57
  whatnot. But it's guys that they have a
• 7:59
  vision. They're they're shooters or
• 8:02
  they're tall or they're this, that and 3rd to, to get a
• 8:05
  cohesive unit. So like Matt said, it's all
• 8:08
  going to be, you know, it's going to be proven on the court,
• 8:13
  but it seems as if this staff has a vision.
• 8:18
  They definitely have a vision and I think what a lot of people
• 8:21
  were saying when Casey Alexander was hired was of the guys that
• 8:25
  you could retain from the previous roster, the previous,
• 8:29
  the previous personnel that we had going on with, you know,
• 8:33
  Abdi Bashir, PJ Haggerty, some of these guys that still had
• 8:36
  some eligibility remaining. Andre Kostich was a name that
• 8:40
  was thrown out there as if you could keep this guy based on all
• 8:43
  the flashes we saw with his European tape, with the ceiling
• 8:48
  that we thought he had coming in as a highly touted recruit and a
• 8:51
  guy that was on some NBA draft boards as a second rounder at
• 8:55
  some point last year. Andre Kostich was a guy that was
• 8:59
  on those lists. We thought there was a lot of
• 9:00
  potential there and he is the only holdover from the previous
• 9:04
  roster. So when you think about Kostich
• 9:07
  and his fit on this roster and his fit in Casey Alexander's
• 9:11
  system and style doing things, what what do you what do you
• 9:15
  expect for him for, for next year or or future years?
• 9:18
  If he's if he's here for longer than just one season, which I
• 9:21
  think everyone thinks Casey Alexander's trying to build
• 9:24
  towards more of a roster retention model.
• 9:28
  I mean, an expectation in the first, it's it's very hard
• 9:32
  because I think this is a team that's built very heavily on
• 9:37
  potential. And a good portion of these
• 9:41
  players are guys that were highly, highly ranked, guys from
• 9:45
  high school who may have struggled at a high major, maybe
• 9:51
  not have gotten a lot of time at a high major.
• 9:54
  And so you're you're putting a lot of eggs in the basket of
• 9:57
  being able to pull out the best abilities of each of these
• 10:01
  players. And when you look at it from the
• 10:05
  Belmont perspective and the guys that eventually left Belmont and
• 10:08
  went to these high major schools, Casey Alexander finds
• 10:14
  guys who maybe a little bit lower ranked, builds him up,
• 10:19
  gets him into a position where, you know, they go off to
• 10:23
  Tennessee like Jacoby Gillespie. Obviously a lot of his guys this
• 10:27
  season are playing across high major schools, not K State, but
• 10:35
  you could tell that he had a vision and what he was doing
• 10:37
  there, right? So now moving up to a high
• 10:41
  major, he has the ability to really kind of play up the fact
• 10:44
  that, hey, he's, you know, looking at guys that, you know,
• 10:48
  had this potential, like had people believing they were, you
• 10:51
  know, this type of rank, this type of player and just
• 10:55
  constructing the team and constructing A mindset behind
• 11:00
  pulling out the best in these people.
• 11:02
  So my expectation for this season is I, I mean, you can't
• 11:08
  really get worse than this season.
• 11:11
  You would assume. I mean, maybe, maybe, but I, I
• 11:15
  don't necessarily think this team is going to be as bad as
• 11:18
  this team that we just saw this season.
• 11:21
  But can they be competitive? Can they be competitive in the
• 11:24
  Big 12? The non conference schedule is
• 11:27
  going to be a lot more difficult this season than we've seen in
• 11:30
  in a good while. Obviously the players are a
• 11:35
  tournament. You play Seton Hall on the road,
• 11:38
  you get Creighton at home, like they have a lot of opportunities
• 11:41
  to kind of show their medal early in the season.
• 11:45
  So if he is able to really get this group fully together to
• 11:50
  start non conference play, you might be able to steal a game or
• 11:54
  two that you weren't necessarily expecting to win and go into Big
• 11:57
  12 play with the idea of this is how you want this team to to to
• 12:01
  look so. Yeah.
• 12:04
  I mean, there there's a lot of players that, you know, we're
• 12:06
  going to talk about individually, but Kostich
• 12:09
  specifically in his role on this team, like Matt laid out where I
• 12:13
  think you're laying out roster spots solely for potential.
• 12:18
  And Kostich last year in Tang system and that that previous
• 12:23
  coaching staff system wasn't necessarily his best fit where,
• 12:28
  you know, he wasn't a primary ball handler.
• 12:31
  He was kind of just a spot 3 point shooter, if we're being
• 12:36
  honest. And he was decent from three,
• 12:41
  but as a larger guard who had, you know, a lot of his
• 12:46
  highlight, a lot of his tape was ball handling.
• 12:50
  We'd never put him in that position.
• 12:52
  And I think an emotion offense like what Casey Alexander's
• 12:56
  going to bring to the table where it's not necessarily a
• 13:00
  lead guard that's just pounding the ball into the the court and
• 13:04
  trying to get things movement. There's going to be a lot of
• 13:07
  movement off the ball, a lot of slashing, a lot of getting the
• 13:12
  ball off of a couple screens and then dribbling to the to the
• 13:16
  basket or passing it out for a a whole lot of threes.
• 13:20
  I think we're going to be shooting this season.
• 13:24
  I think Andre Costas fits into that kind of perfectly.
• 13:28
  Now it's whether you can bring it out of him where he's more
• 13:32
  comfortable in doing that then necessarily what he had his
• 13:37
  first experience in his first year at college.
• 13:40
  So I have a lot of faith that he can do that.
• 13:43
  And there's going to be a lot of opportunity for him to do that
• 13:46
  because like we'll talk about not necessarily heavy on point
• 13:51
  guard, lot of lead guard experience, all of those things.
• 13:56
  It's open. It's it's maybe even
• 14:00
  positionless basketball to, to say, I mean, I know there's a
• 14:05
  lot of height on this team that Matt, Matt's talked about a lot
• 14:08
  of size and there's a lot of shooting.
• 14:11
  There's a lot of ability to switch the rotations up because
• 14:17
  and obviously we don't know who's the the lead 8, the the
• 14:20
  first eight guys off the bench are from all intents and
• 14:24
  purposes, outside of maybe two guys.
• 14:28
  Every one of them it seems like could have a potential to maybe
• 14:32
  even start. I don't even know who the
• 14:35
  starters are going to be. So I got to, I have to think
• 14:39
  that there might be up to 11 guys that are going to play on
• 14:42
  this on this team at throughout the season.
• 14:46
  So there's going to be time. There's going to be opportunity.
• 14:50
  Now who's going to seize it? So before we before we get into
• 14:54
  some of the guys that that we brought into the program, I want
• 14:57
  to focus first on how much stock do you put into the fact that
• 15:02
  Casey Alexander wasn't able to bring any of his Belmont guys
• 15:05
  over? But we are still bringing in
• 15:08
  some of the high school recruits.
• 15:09
  I think there's 122 guys that were high school commits.
• 15:13
  You know, one of them is Jalen Alexander, right?
• 15:16
  And then Devin Hutcherson, I believe are the 2 high school
• 15:20
  commits, so he is able to retain the high school commitments And,
• 15:23
  and by all accounts, sounds like those two dudes are, are studs.
• 15:28
  But what do you, what do you put any stock into that that he
• 15:31
  wasn't able to get, you know, any of those dudes from from
• 15:34
  that Belmont roster to come over?
• 15:36
  A ton of stock. I mean, he's never going to come
• 15:39
  out bluntly and admit like I whiffed and I wanted these three
• 15:43
  or four guys. I mean, there's always going to
• 15:46
  be reports that he was trying to get this.
• 15:49
  He was these guys were on campus or whatever.
• 15:53
  It's obvious that there's at least two guys that he wanted
• 15:58
  specifically and he just was not able to bring them in.
• 16:01
  Whether it was prestige from another school, the bag was
• 16:05
  thrown at him, who knows. And I from every interview that
• 16:09
  I've listened to Casey Alexander, he isn't, he's got
• 16:13
  the temperament of he's not going to just go out and admit
• 16:17
  that he was wrong or that he failed and that that that's fine
• 16:22
  for now. It's fine for now.
• 16:25
  But maybe in the long haul he he's been on the record saying
• 16:31
  if you go after this guy and you don't get him, it changes how
• 16:36
  you go after the other players. So maybe he and, and the speed
• 16:41
  and the speed in which he assembled this roster made me
• 16:46
  think that he put his eggs into those baskets and said, hey,
• 16:52
  we're going to have this roster filled up in this amount of
• 16:55
  time. Are you in or you're not?
• 16:58
  And there was no waiting. So I mean, I'm, I'm all for it
• 17:02
  that he wanted to get some of those guys and maybe those would
• 17:05
  have been great fits, but maybe they wouldn't have.
• 17:06
  I don't know. But they're not on the roster.
• 17:09
  So I, I'm not too stressed about it.
• 17:11
  But if, if the success comes, it's it's a non issue.
• 17:15
  But if the success is not there and we see it's always going to
• 17:18
  be a little bit of sour grapes on my end that he was not able
• 17:22
  to retain that. And will that hold over into
• 17:25
  future seasons? I don't know if it will, but
• 17:28
  it's definitely something that I'm not going to forget.
• 17:31
  So yeah, especially with the retention model that he
• 17:35
  proclaimed. That is a little spooky.
• 17:39
  I mean, I think I, I, I was disappointed definitely that you
• 17:43
  can't get one, one guy, you know, I do think the high school
• 17:49
  recruits are especially Alexander has the potential to
• 17:53
  be playing Night 1 and getting time.
• 17:57
  I mean, what people have been saying about him, he has the
• 18:01
  potential to, to get some meaningful time, which is good.
• 18:06
  But here's the way that I look at it.
• 18:08
  And I think the transfer portal kind of shifts a lot of this
• 18:11
  because the portal has just turned into an absolute like
• 18:15
  cluster. And that's being like very nice
• 18:19
  about it. And you put your name out there
• 18:22
  and instantly you're going to find schools that are willing to
• 18:27
  overpay for shooters like and big guys.
• 18:31
  Those are really like two major major like fines for schools.
• 18:37
  And admittingly for Casey Alexander, like his offense, lot
• 18:41
  of shooters. And you have a big guy in
• 18:45
  Charnowski who is considered potentially as ANBA draft guy
• 18:50
  next year. So it's it's disappointing.
• 18:56
  But I also can understand the fact that here's your budget,
• 19:00
  here's what you want to try and build here.
• 19:02
  You know that you have to bring in 12 guys, 12 new guys.
• 19:10
  Are we willing to overpay for one of my players or is there
• 19:14
  somebody out there who I think can do that job of what that
• 19:17
  player has brought me for less money or maybe less years, you
• 19:23
  know, getting a freshman or sophomore that can fit Tyler
• 19:27
  Lumblade, you know, who's a fifth year senior.
• 19:31
  So I I was disappointed, but I do look at what he's brought in
• 19:35
  and I think the most disappointing one out of the
• 19:38
  group was Charnowski and Charnowski.
• 19:41
  And I don't think we necessarily had a big chance with that
• 19:44
  anyway. So which it is what it does, but
• 19:49
  you know, he's I, I feel like again, he's brought, he's
• 19:52
  brought an idea to what he wants to build this program to be.
• 19:56
  And the one thing that I will say is because it's been kind of
• 19:58
  talked about like the budget, like the NIL budget and all this
• 20:01
  type of stuff. If he comes out there and shows,
• 20:04
  hey, like he, he has a good first season.
• 20:07
  Let's say he makes the NCAA tournament, you know, 76 teams
• 20:09
  now let's say he makes the NCAA tournament.
• 20:12
  I think people have a little bit of buyer's remorse past couple
• 20:15
  years and. There's you haven't, you know,
• 20:19
  this mindset of, I don't know, you know, some donors maybe
• 20:22
  weren't necessarily super happy with Alexander, Casey, Alexander
• 20:26
  being hired. Like some of this thing, if he
• 20:28
  starts winning, he's going to be in a position now consistently
• 20:33
  of, OK, I need some more money, I need this, this is what I can
• 20:37
  do. Yeah, I've, I've, I've heard
• 20:39
  that argument. It's not even really an
• 20:42
  argument. I mean, it's just an opinion,
• 20:43
  but like it, I've heard that side of it.
• 20:46
  And I've also lived in the world, like a real world where
• 20:49
  it's not necessarily basketball. And I know donors is a different
• 20:53
  beast, but if you've worked for any kind of company that you've
• 20:56
  proved that you can do less with, you know, more with less,
• 21:02
  a lot of people are just going to say, hey, do it again.
• 21:05
  I'm not going to pay you money when I can see that you can do
• 21:07
  this on less money. I'm just not going to give you
• 21:10
  another $1,000,000 to do it when you could do it with less.
• 21:13
  So I mean, in the world of capitalism, some would say
• 21:18
  that's exactly what's going to happen.
• 21:20
  That you, you might come to me and ask, say, hey, can I get
• 21:24
  some more money to do this? But you just prove that you can.
• 21:27
  You can get to that field of 76 on a lesser budget.
• 21:32
  Why would we do that when we can just keep Moneyball in this
• 21:35
  thing until the end of time? And now we're the Oakland A's.
• 21:40
  Well, how how many World Series did they win with Billy, Billy
• 21:46
  Dean or whatever? Yeah, none.
• 21:49
  OK, we're getting into some of the actual player edition, so
• 21:52
  guys that came from different schools, not just high school
• 21:54
  editions, because we do have a full roster now looking at the
• 21:59
  list and I'll just go from top to bottom at least as as how on
• 22:03
  three has it has it set up here? So we got Andre Kostich,
• 22:07
  obviously Papa and Jai coming over from Xavier, Teemo Malavitz
• 22:13
  from Miami, Montana Wheeler from Bradley.
• 22:17
  Isaiah Abraham, who was I think the highest high school recruit
• 22:21
  of this group, was originally recruited to UConn, then goes to
• 22:25
  Georgetown and Ed Cooley and ends up AK State.
• 22:29
  Isaiah Abraham. Matt Gilhoole comes over from
• 22:32
  LSUA. Lot of white dudes here.
• 22:34
  JT Rock from Iowa State to New Mexico to K State, Jayden Chute
• 22:40
  from Duke to Virginia Tech to K State.
• 22:43
  Again, another guy that was a highly sought after blue blood
• 22:46
  recruit out of high school, Brandon Rechstiner from Colorado
• 22:51
  State but originally started at Virginia Tech Bit what's?
• 22:56
  Who's the wrestler again? Big Papa Punk baby.
• 23:00
  One of the best heel turns of all time, turning on his own
• 23:05
  brother to become Big Papa Punk. Oh my God, crazy one of If you
• 23:12
  haven't seen that heel turn, look it up.
• 23:16
  No, I won't, but thanks. Just just leave the pump.
• 23:23
  That's Lindsay's the last second to last year from Oregon, and
• 23:27
  last but certainly probably least Brock Weiss, who went,
• 23:32
  who's in his fourth. School.
• 23:34
  Started at Creighton, ended up at North Texas, then Murray
• 23:38
  State, then K State. He's surprisingly he's 89 in
• 23:43
  transfer portal rankings. By the way, he's ranked ahead of
• 23:46
  Isaiah Abraham, so makes sense of that for me.
• 23:50
  But that's that's the roster. So I don't want to get into
• 23:53
  every single one of these players that would take 3 hours
• 23:56
  to do. Who would you say is the most
• 23:58
  exciting addition out of the crop of players we brought in
• 24:00
  from the portal? Oh man.
• 24:05
  I, I can, I give two, I mean, I, I want to say like who I think
• 24:10
  is the most exciting that's going to have an instant impact.
• 24:13
  And then I think for potential wise, I think there's another.
• 24:17
  OK. Save the second one for later
• 24:18
  because my next question is who's flying under the radar?
• 24:21
  For you, OK, OK. So I think obviously for me, who
• 24:24
  I think is going to have the biggest impact is Montana
• 24:28
  Wheeler. I think he's a guy that can
• 24:32
  distribute, that has lead guard capability.
• 24:36
  He's smaller. I think that's going to draw a
• 24:38
  lot of comparisons to former K State Wildcats of yesteryear
• 24:44
  that have had huge impacts and you know, Sky's the limit kind
• 24:49
  of ability and he's going to have a lot of lot big shoes to
• 24:57
  fill, little shoes to fill. He's a little fella.
• 25:00
  He's 57, but I think he has the ability to get to the basket.
• 25:05
  I don't think a lot of the guys on this roster have that off the
• 25:10
  dribble kind of get to the basket and finish kind of
• 25:14
  ability. And I think when you have that
• 25:17
  in this system with the amount of shooters that are going to be
• 25:20
  on the court at the exact same time with the giant plotting big
• 25:26
  guys that we, you know, one of two of the guys are going to be,
• 25:30
  you know, potential finishers at the rim.
• 25:32
  Having a guy that can get to the basket and finish at the basket
• 25:36
  and is versatile in terms of passing and shooting and all
• 25:43
  that he's. My number one, Wow, you're #1
• 25:49
  huh? You're gonna ask for.
• 25:53
  OK, I, I'm gonna say Jaden Shut is my number one.
• 26:00
  I like, I like his tape. I like his, you know, I like the
• 26:05
  highlights that I've seen from him.
• 26:08
  He looks like a guy that I mean, that's, he's a 65 shooting
• 26:12
  guards. So he's got some size there.
• 26:16
  I think a guy who started at Duke, he had some success at
• 26:20
  Virginia Tech. Now he's coming into, you know,
• 26:23
  he's going to be a a senior. I I think he has the ability to
• 26:29
  really lead this team this upcoming season.
• 26:34
  So he's somebody that I think when we picked him up instantly
• 26:39
  I was like, you know what, I think this guy has some really
• 26:42
  good potential to be one of the leaders in a team that is
• 26:45
  rebuilding a new style of program.
• 26:49
  And you know, he's a again, a four-star guy out of high school
• 26:53
  that was recruited by Duke. I mean, again, you look at the
• 26:56
  potential of these guys, you know, it wasn't necessarily a
• 26:59
  four-star guy that went to, you know, Wake Forest or something
• 27:04
  like that. It's a four-star guy that went
• 27:06
  to Duke. Like there was obviously
• 27:08
  something there, you know, and you look at, again, a lot of
• 27:11
  these guys and where they started.
• 27:13
  So for me, he's in, he's an exciting one that I really like
• 27:18
  because I just think he will have the ability to, you know,
• 27:21
  lead this team. I like his, what he does on
• 27:24
  offense. It'll be interesting to see on
• 27:27
  the defensive end. Like I think we could probably
• 27:29
  say that with a good portion of these players, like how the
• 27:31
  defence is going to look. But I give me Jayden, I think
• 27:37
  he's he's got some really good potential here as a senior.
• 27:40
  I think for me it's, it's probably Rex Steiner just
• 27:43
  because he, he, I think he had one of the highest average point
• 27:47
  average points per game averages coming into this season.
• 27:50
  So he's he's at least done it at a pretty decent level of
• 27:53
  Colorado State. And I, I like Mountain West.
• 27:55
  I think it's a good conference. At least it was before it died
• 28:00
  and became whatever it's turning into with half of those teams
• 28:02
  leaving for the pack 9, I guess is what I'm going to call it.
• 28:07
  But Rex Steiner, he had offers from Georgia Tech, Tennessee.
• 28:10
  Obviously Tennessee is, is a highly touted program with Rick
• 28:13
  Barnes and he typically goes after good talent, has a good
• 28:17
  identification of that talent. So I, I like Rex Steiner.
• 28:21
  I just, I, I think he'll be an instant impact kind of guy and a
• 28:24
  guy that we can, we can easily lean on early on to, to at least
• 28:28
  be a point getter because we're going to need that in, in Casey
• 28:31
  Alexander's system. So who's flying under the radar
• 28:34
  for you, too? For me, I, I know you just
• 28:37
  mentioned that he was a four-star out of high school and
• 28:40
  all this stuff, but Isaiah Abraham's he for me, it's
• 28:44
  because the athleticism is something that with coaches that
• 28:51
  come from this level, they don't really necessarily garner the
• 28:55
  best athletes on the court and in in recruiting at that.
• 29:01
  I think Isaiah Abraham is one of those guys that's a twitchy
• 29:05
  athlete, crazy, crazy bounce, especially off his 2nd jump
• 29:10
  because he doesn't necessarily make a ton of baskets and I
• 29:13
  don't think he's going to that's going to be his main role.
• 29:16
  I think he can work on, you know, getting to the basket, his
• 29:19
  corner 3. Those are things that can come
• 29:21
  later and and it really just be cherry on top if he can do those
• 29:26
  things, but as a lockdown defender guarding the best
• 29:30
  player on the court because he has such versatile size, I think
• 29:34
  he can guard the the the outside and he can even shift down to
• 29:38
  the inside. He's 6-8 with a crazy bounce.
• 29:42
  Those are the things that you need to have, especially in
• 29:45
  spaced out things like spaced out offenses, he's going to be
• 29:50
  able to garner offensive rebounds, gather him in
• 29:53
  defensive rebounding. We're going to have to have it.
• 29:56
  So I think for him, if he finds that role where he's the athlete
• 30:00
  that can get snatched 5-6 rebounds a game, maybe not even
• 30:05
  that, that's kind of a lot. But you know, somewhere he's the
• 30:08
  second leading rebounder on the team, the third leading
• 30:11
  rebounder on the team. That is going to be pivotal,
• 30:15
  pivotal for, you know. Just being able to play defense
• 30:19
  because I'm not a lot of these guys, like Matt said, really
• 30:22
  want to play defense and it's he's got to be able to take that
• 30:26
  lead spot and I think he's flying on the radar because not
• 30:29
  a lot of people realize how athletic he is.
• 30:33
  My guy, I think for this upcoming season is going to be
• 30:35
  Timo Malovich, however you pronounce his last name.
• 30:39
  I feel like that's it just based off how I look at it.
• 30:42
  But you have a 6-7 guy, he's got some handles.
• 30:47
  He was 40% shooting on the offensive end last season at
• 30:51
  Miami. He's a guy who came in under the
• 30:53
  radar, really had no idea that K State was recruiting this guy.
• 30:58
  And ultimately, again, a guy who comes over was playing Euro
• 31:02
  basketball somewhere obviously to Andre Kostich.
• 31:06
  But I, I like for his size what he could potentially bring at
• 31:10
  the small forward position. I also think, you know, you
• 31:13
  could potentially play him at power forward if you're wanting
• 31:16
  a little bit of a smaller line up, but he's a guy that can also
• 31:19
  handle the ball. You could potentially see some
• 31:21
  sets with him, you know, playing at the point or at least kind of
• 31:25
  moving the offense around. So he's an interesting player to
• 31:28
  me, especially with his size and, and potentially what he
• 31:31
  could provide taking out, you know, obviously with recent
• 31:36
  history with Andre Kostich and kind of how he transitioned over
• 31:39
  to Big 12 play and being AK State.
• 31:43
  This is a guy who has already played one year of college
• 31:45
  basketball in the United States. I think it's going to be a
• 31:48
  little bit less of a transition doing that and going to be more
• 31:52
  of a focus on improving and finding what he needs to be
• 31:55
  doing better in this season. So I he's kind of my under the
• 31:59
  radar guy because number 1, he was under the radar from a
• 32:02
  recruiting perspective, but two, I don't feel like a lot of
• 32:05
  people are talking much about him.
• 32:07
  But in reality, I think he has some really good skill and
• 32:10
  somebody on the offensive end that can make things happen and
• 32:14
  might be a guy who could be surprised, you know, playing a
• 32:18
  little bit of point forward in this offense.
• 32:21
  Yeah, I my answer is going to be a little bit silly.
• 32:27
  I, I really want to see JT Rock succeed.
• 32:32
  And I think it's mostly because he started his career at Iowa
• 32:34
  State and he's a skinny, lanky white kid from South Dakota.
• 32:38
  And I just want TJ Otzelberger to, you know, be kind of wishing
• 32:43
  that JT Rock was, was on his team again and that he would
• 32:46
  have never left by the time it's all said and done.
• 32:48
  I'm, I'm, I just, I saw that guy come in.
• 32:52
  I'm like, this is, this is just, this is the team we're building,
• 32:56
  isn't it? And I'm like, whatever, let's go
• 32:59
  for it. We're just going to get 7 foot
• 33:02
  tall white kids from South Dakota.
• 33:03
  Let's let's just do it. That's just that's how it's
• 33:05
  going. I mean, if he if he can
• 33:08
  transform his body because he is technically a young, I think
• 33:12
  he's a junior. I think he's reclassified,
• 33:14
  right? Yeah, he reclassified.
• 33:16
  He's a young junior, technically supposed to be only a second
• 33:19
  year of college. So give me give me a guy that's
• 33:23
  maybe still developing in a into a 7 foot frame that's got some
• 33:28
  skill that can shoot it, stretch, stretch out to the
• 33:31
  three-point line. I mean, he's and he's got one of
• 33:34
  those now. You know, I'm all about the
• 33:38
  vibes and I'm all about the aura.
• 33:40
  All of those things. Whatever the young kids are
• 33:42
  saying now, the aesthetics is what I would call it.
• 33:44
  But white guy headband playing Sinner, he is going to drive a
• 33:52
  ton of people absolutely nuts when they see him on the court
• 33:56
  and he's dropping a random 11 points and seven rebounds and
• 34:01
  it's like the most ugly. I don't I don't know if you guys
• 34:06
  watched any of NBA or anything but is. 7 foot one Alex Caruso
• 34:11
  No Well. I.
• 34:12
  Mean please give me one of those.
• 34:14
  But I mean, just like a Shane Goon from the Houston Rockets,
• 34:19
  that guy drives me nuts when he when you look at the Bosco and
• 34:22
  he's got 23 and 16. How what are you doing?
• 34:27
  You're and if he can give me like half of that in in a
• 34:31
  college game, I mean that I will boat, I will tote that guy into
• 34:37
  the rafters if I have to, if he can get this team to a winning
• 34:41
  thing and he's averaging 11 points and six rebounds.
• 34:44
  Just think about the guys that that we embrace.
• 34:46
  It's always like the Doreen Bucas that they become the fan
• 34:49
  favorite. So I'm hoping for the best for
• 34:52
  JT Rock. Before we get into spring
• 34:54
  football storylines, I do want to give a quick shout out to
• 34:58
  Heartland Beef Connection. This episode is sponsored by
• 35:01
  Heartland Beef Connection. We are not talking about grocery
• 35:04
  store beef. We are talking about Heartland
• 35:07
  Beef Connection, connecting Kansas and Midwest families
• 35:10
  directly with local ranchers. No middle men, no industrial
• 35:15
  processing, no mass produced beef.
• 35:17
  None of that smells like money that you drive past in western
• 35:20
  Kansas. A lot of these ranchers are
• 35:22
  located in Kansas, of course, but plenty of them are case
• 35:25
  Staters as well. Same values, same work ethic,
• 35:28
  just doing it on the land instead of the football field or
• 35:31
  the basketball court. Paul, Friend of the program,
• 35:34
  started Heartland Beef Connection to help support
• 35:36
  Midwest ranchers by connecting them directly with families who
• 35:40
  are looking to buy quarter, half, or whole beef shares.
• 35:43
  You know where your beef comes from, how it was raised, and who
• 35:46
  raised it. And here's the part the people
• 35:47
  don't expect. Not only does this beef taste
• 35:50
  better, it actually is cheaper per pound than grocery store
• 35:53
  beef when you buy direct. Better quality, more
• 35:56
  transparency, and you're not paying for middle men.
• 35:59
  If you care about supporting Kansas agriculture, keeping
• 36:02
  money local, and eating beef that actually tastes the way
• 36:05
  beef should, this is the way to do it.
• 36:07
  Here's the best part, Because you're listening to Cocaine
• 36:09
  Willy, you can get $25 off the Heartland Beef Connection match
• 36:13
  fee when you mention the pod or use promo code CW25CW25 S Check
• 36:21
  out Heartland Beef Connection at heartlandbeef.net.
• 36:24
  Real beef, real ranchers, better beef for your money.
• 36:28
  Chef and Matt, what's the best What's the best beef dish you've
• 36:32
  had lately? Tonight I did a steak salad with
• 36:35
  Pharaoh and blue cheese. Oh man, my, I was up in New York
• 36:40
  last week and one of my best friends from high school, he
• 36:44
  grilled us some excellent Wagyu beef.
• 36:50
  Rib eye and London broil made it really good.
• 36:59
  And then there was another thing I can't remember but that was a
• 37:02
  great beef. Did not need a $0.50 Heinz 57
• 37:06
  with it. You should never eat, but you
• 37:09
  put you put Pines 57 or A1 on a steak near me, I'm slapping you.
• 37:15
  No, I wouldn't do that. But I haven't really had any
• 37:19
  quality beef in it. And This is why I need to get
• 37:22
  the the Heartland beef connection 'cause I need some
• 37:24
  more quality beef in my life. But you know, I've been, I've
• 37:29
  been craving some things fried in tallow.
• 37:32
  I mean, I don't know what they're what Heartland Beef
• 37:35
  Connections status on selling me tallow is, but I don't know if
• 37:39
  that's come with your connection, but God, give me
• 37:42
  some something fried and tallow. I'm there for it, brother, I'm
• 37:46
  there. I just go to my go to my local
• 37:49
  butcher. I get Wagyu beef trimmings.
• 37:52
  It's like 4 bucks for 2 lbs of beef fat and you just melt it
• 37:56
  down on the grill baby. It's great.
• 37:59
  All right, so, so before we move into football, what would you
• 38:03
  what's your final letter grade that you would put on the roster
• 38:07
  as it is fully assembled with the addition of of Ned's boy,
• 38:11
  the Stark boy? OK, so I think before listening
• 38:18
  to Casey Alexander talk and him talk about the roster and all
• 38:22
  those things, I was thinking C minus maybe D plus I was not too
• 38:29
  enthused with the roster. I mean, I'll be honest, it's
• 38:32
  going to be fun and it's going to be different, which is always
• 38:36
  better. And I had and like I've learned
• 38:41
  after the first few seasons with Tang, no expectations going in
• 38:45
  this season. So I really don't have a lot
• 38:48
  invested. I mean invested, but I'm not
• 38:50
  like my heart's not going to be broken if they're no good.
• 38:52
  But I was not impressed with the roster before I listening to
• 38:59
  talk. But after listening to talk, I
• 39:00
  think I'm going to go C plus maybe even a low BI think the
• 39:08
  vision is there. I think the vision is there.
• 39:11
  And if, I mean, if we lean into it, lean into that and we Chuck
• 39:16
  up a bunch of threes and we start hitting them things and
• 39:19
  and we be the scrappy white guys on the court, I am all for that.
• 39:25
  And I think that would be a successful run.
• 39:27
  I don't know how well we'll do when we have to go against
• 39:30
  Arizona or Houston or, you know, some massive monster squad that
• 39:36
  might bully us. But in the aggregate, I think we
• 39:43
  could be pretty good. And if, if that's if the success
• 39:46
  is there, obviously I'm I, I got to change my grade.
• 39:49
  But I right now with the roster, with how Casey Alexander talked
• 39:53
  about him, I'm going to go C plus low B.
• 39:57
  I'm going to go B minus. I think why this is not higher
• 40:05
  is because I think we are really lacking a lead guard here.
• 40:10
  I think we're lacking a lead guard.
• 40:14
  I think when you're in a position where you don't know
• 40:16
  who the lead guard is because you have a lot of guards, I for
• 40:22
  me, in my opinion, that's a problem.
• 40:26
  Now the solution is going to find itself out pretty quick.
• 40:30
  You're going to see who's going to be the lead guard.
• 40:32
  But I think having somebody who, you know, that's coming in true
• 40:35
  point would have been helpful and would have raised my grade.
• 40:41
  I don't necessarily think this team is not exciting.
• 40:45
  I think I am somebody who banks a lot on potential when you look
• 40:52
  at players, because I feel like from AK State perspective, it it
• 40:58
  it kind of feels like the opposite of what we typically
• 41:01
  deal with. You know, we have guys who maybe
• 41:05
  aren't necessarily highly regarded that come in and play
• 41:07
  well. I think we're really playing up
• 41:09
  to this. OK, you have 4 stars in high
• 41:12
  school, you didn't have a lot of time at your first stop.
• 41:15
  Let's do this. Let's make this happen.
• 41:17
  Which makes it more exciting for me because it's a high risk,
• 41:21
  high reward situation. Like if this these guys click,
• 41:27
  then you're playing with potential.
• 41:30
  You know, you have three guys who you know are four stars and
• 41:34
  above that are probably going to start next year.
• 41:36
  But I do think this team is missing a lead guard, a lead
• 41:39
  point. Montana Wheeler, maybe that's
• 41:44
  the guy. Yes, when we brought him in, it
• 41:50
  gave me a little hope because it's like, OK, we got a true
• 41:52
  point, but I don't know if he's a lead in the Big 12.
• 41:57
  Maybe he is. So that's, I think AB minus
• 42:01
  because I like a lot of the potential and I'm going to
• 42:05
  strive to rate something higher because I believe in that.
• 42:09
  But it's just coaching that to what you want it to be.
• 42:12
  That's going to be what's going to be the key for the year.
• 42:14
  So I'm going to say B minus. My thing with the the lead guard
• 42:18
  thing and I, I agree, I think maybe in crunch time when it's
• 42:23
  when it's down to the end of the game, it's all that part of the
• 42:28
  basketball game is always different than, you know, the
• 42:30
  first, you know, 3636 minutes, 37 minutes of a basketball game.
• 42:38
  But do you necessarily need it with how Casey Alexander runs
• 42:43
  his offense? I mean, that's not even he's
• 42:46
  admitted it multiple times where it's really not set plays.
• 42:49
  It's kind of just chemistry on the court and it's not run
• 42:53
  through a certain player. Maybe it's even the four that
• 42:57
  has the ball and they're they're playing off of each other with a
• 43:00
  lot of emotion. Do you need a lead guard to do
• 43:03
  that? That I don't know if you do.
• 43:05
  And, and, and if you don't, and if Casey Alexander is running it
• 43:10
  with guys that are cohesive on the court and you have 3 guards
• 43:15
  out there that are all moving and doing all those things.
• 43:18
  Maybe you don't need somebody that pounds it on the on the
• 43:22
  court for, you know, 20 of the seconds on the shot clock and
• 43:26
  then finally tries to get things going.
• 43:29
  Very similar to PJ Haggerty. I don't know if you need that, I
• 43:33
  don't know. Man, if you look at if you look
• 43:36
  at top teams in college basketball, they all have a lead
• 43:42
  guard. They do.
• 43:44
  I mean I. OK, what do you mean by that?
• 43:47
  Then what is the? Lead having, having a lead point
• 43:51
  guard, having a guy who moves the offense around.
• 43:58
  Who was Arizona's lead guard? Brad Jayden, Bradley.
• 44:02
  But he wasn't the point guard. Though yes, he was, he was a
• 44:06
  combo guard. No, no, he was the main point
• 44:09
  guard for Arizona. Come on, He was, you know, you
• 44:14
  look at Michigan, Eliot Cadeau like, you know, he I.
• 44:17
  Didn't even know his name. Oh my God, you got to watch the
• 44:20
  basketball. I mean, a lead guard doesn't
• 44:23
  have to be a guy who's sworn 22 points a game, but he's a guy,
• 44:26
  you know, he's a guy who can efficiently distribute, move the
• 44:30
  ball around, get get when you're 10 seconds in the shot clock
• 44:34
  resetting, getting things ready like that is what I, I turn to
• 44:38
  be a lead guard. And I believe, in my opinion,
• 44:43
  the best teams in college basketball employ somebody who
• 44:48
  does that. And maybe it is Montana Wheeler
• 44:52
  just moving up to Big 12 play. This is where he, you know, has
• 44:55
  the ability to strive and do that.
• 44:57
  Maybe it's pedigree. Yeah, I I mean, maybe it is.
• 45:02
  But, you know, I would that that's a position that I think
• 45:05
  right now is a position of weakness.
• 45:07
  If you look at the standard starting five.
• 45:11
  And maybe that will change depending on how you know the
• 45:14
  first game is going to look and who's going to actually be
• 45:16
  starting. I, I also the lead guard thing
• 45:21
  was a big thing for me too. Like through this whole process,
• 45:24
  I'm like, who are we going to get?
• 45:25
  Are we going to get anybody? Are we just going to rely on the
• 45:27
  high school talent and Montana Wheeler and just hope for the
• 45:29
  best? But again, I, I trust that he
• 45:33
  has more of a plan in place than the previous staff did, because
• 45:37
  they certainly didn't have a plan for anything other than
• 45:40
  let's throw a bunch of money at a problem and see if that fixes
• 45:43
  it with any kind of solution. But it's like you need a
• 45:48
  specific type of screw to screw in a screw hole, and then you
• 45:52
  buy a screw that's 5 sizes too big, like that's not going to
• 45:55
  fix your problem even though you spent ten extra dollars on this
• 45:58
  big fancy screw. So yeah, I feel like that's what
• 46:02
  the previous staff did. And we I feel like we'd at least
• 46:05
  constructed a roster of size. Like we've got a lot of size and
• 46:10
  it's a wide range of size. So we can match up.
• 46:13
  I feel like at least size wise match up with a lot of the
• 46:15
  competition we're going to go up against in the Big 12.
• 46:18
  That was the thing that was such a big glaring flaw for me with
• 46:21
  the previous rosters. We didn't seemingly have anybody
• 46:24
  who can match up with a team like Arizona on the court with,
• 46:27
  with a lot of size and a lot of length.
• 46:30
  So I, I, I would give this probably AC plus, had they had
• 46:35
  they gotten a lead point guard with a little bit more of a
• 46:38
  proven track record of experience playing, whether
• 46:41
  that's at the mid major level or or high major, it probably would
• 46:44
  have been mid major or low major, but I would have taken
• 46:47
  that and that would have probably raised my grade to like
• 46:49
  AB plus. But again, there's more of a
• 46:52
  more of a plan in place. That's that's for certain.
• 46:55
  All right. Any other thoughts on hoops
• 46:57
  before we jump into spring football?
• 47:00
  One last thing, and I promise I'm done.
• 47:03
  This is a question that hasn't been asked.
• 47:05
  I haven't heard it anywhere. What is his, what is Casey out?
• 47:10
  He he wants to do the retention model.
• 47:12
  How what is his plan for high school recruiting?
• 47:18
  Is it local? Is it, is he is he just going
• 47:22
  Tennessee based? I mean, what, where is he going
• 47:25
  to get these guys from? Where is his high school
• 47:28
  recruiting grounds from? And what's his plan for the
• 47:33
  Kansas City, KS, you know, Missouri area, where where is he
• 47:38
  recruiting from? That's the only thing I'm
• 47:40
  wondering. I.
• 47:42
  Mean, I think local, right? I think this is a pretty good
• 47:47
  recruiting ground for for basketball talent.
• 47:50
  Kansas and if you get down to Texas a little bit, obviously
• 47:55
  like Oklahoma in that area. Maybe he does use Tennessee, you
• 47:59
  know, maybe he does use that as a familiar background, you know,
• 48:03
  trying to pull guys that, you know, maybe you have guys that
• 48:09
  want to play a Tennessee that, you know, can't get a sniff on
• 48:13
  Rick Barnes, you know, radar because he's, I mean, he does a
• 48:17
  great job with recruiting the transfer portal and whatnot.
• 48:21
  I, I think it is hard to tell right now because we're pretty
• 48:26
  limited in the sample size at this point of, hey, he picked up
• 48:30
  two guys that he recruited at Belmont to come to K State.
• 48:34
  I think as these coaches, you know, are doing recruiting trips
• 48:37
  and the like and we get a little bit more info.
• 48:40
  You know, I, I would bet during the summer we're going to hear a
• 48:42
  little bit more, especially with, you know, some of the
• 48:46
  different basketball circuits going on.
• 48:48
  I do, I care where high school recruits come from?
• 48:51
  No, I really don't. I I guess I'm more of the fit
• 48:58
  type of deal. I, I don't know, I just feel
• 49:01
  like from a local perspective, you know, who are some of the
• 49:04
  local players that looking at us aside, like what local players
• 49:10
  is KU been looking at recently? You know, like, I think a lot of
• 49:14
  a lot of teams are looking for fit and not necessarily how
• 49:18
  close a player lives or, you know, that type of distance.
• 49:23
  Maybe that's just me. Maybe I need to because we
• 49:26
  haven't been recruiting high schoolers really.
• 49:27
  You know, it's hard to kind of get a good sense of it, but I
• 49:32
  feel like he he's we're not going to really know until the
• 49:37
  summertime. You get into the fall where you
• 49:38
  hear some names of guys that are maybe going to come and visit to
• 49:42
  really get a good mindset and that.
• 49:45
  Yeah, the only thing that I can say to that is, I mean,
• 49:47
  obviously local recruiting is not necessarily the thing that
• 49:50
  it is in football. But when you have that mindset,
• 49:54
  you miss out on guys like what's the kid that went to Illinois?
• 49:57
  Like no one recruited him. And I mean, he don't doesn't
• 50:02
  matter the fit at that point. He is amazing at basketball and
• 50:06
  you just completely let completely let him go and he's
• 50:09
  in your backyard. You don't even give him a try.
• 50:11
  And I'm assuming that there's probably guys like that, not
• 50:15
  every class, but every other class that you just don't even
• 50:19
  sniff. And if he doesn't have the, you
• 50:22
  know, the, I don't even know honest, I don't even know what
• 50:27
  to call it, but just does he have the drive to recruit
• 50:32
  locally in this area? Because I think it would be
• 50:34
  almost a layup if because Kansas doesn't do that.
• 50:38
  Like you said, Kansas doesn't recruit locally if they don't
• 50:40
  have to because especially they go down to get from anywhere.
• 50:45
  And it I think that would be maybe a leg up on for the state
• 50:50
  if he can finally get in there and start tapping into the
• 50:53
  talent that comes out of Kansas City and all the the places near
• 50:56
  Manhattan. So that's the only thing I'm
• 50:58
  wondering. I don't know if anybody's ever
• 51:00
  asked that. Yeah, just looking at his
• 51:03
  previous Belmont rosters kind of all over the place.
• 51:06
  There's a lot of guys from east of the Mississippi is probably
• 51:10
  the best way to say it. But Illinois, Indiana,
• 51:14
  Tennessee, Ohio, Georgia, there's a lot of guys kind of
• 51:18
  mixed in there from a lot of different places.
• 51:21
  But what my, my hope would be, I see a decent amount of Illinois
• 51:26
  guys like that, that that Missouri Valley Conference
• 51:29
  footprint definitely extends into Illinois, Chicago, East
• 51:32
  Saint Louis, kind of that area. Hopefully you can have some
• 51:37
  battles even with a guy like Brad Underwood who's trying to
• 51:39
  recruit local talent in the state of Illinois and, and bring
• 51:42
  some of those guys in. So yeah, I, I don't really know.
• 51:46
  Waggler by. The way, yeah.
• 51:50
  Yeah, there's also a kid on the I don't, I don't know what I'm
• 51:54
  looking at here, but looking at the the Belmont roster from last
• 51:58
  year, I'm going to share this tab because it's, I don't know
• 52:02
  what the story is here, but there's a kid named Bryce
• 52:04
  Bradley who looks way too young to be on a college basketball
• 52:07
  court. So.
• 52:09
  I don't know if that's like make a wish kid or what, but.
• 52:13
  Wow. Well.
• 52:17
  I'm going to refrain. He probably still has a better
• 52:21
  three-point percentage than Chef could ever put out.
• 52:24
  Beautiful bio anyway. Spring football.
• 52:27
  Let's do spring football. Yes.
• 52:32
  No, it is Yes, it's a make a wish situation.
• 52:35
  So. Good.
• 52:35
  Good for my God. Good.
• 52:37
  For Bryce Bradley, he looks like a really cute kid.
• 52:39
  OK, spring football story storylines.
• 52:45
  There are a lot of position battles.
• 52:46
  We got a lot of guys that came in completely different roster
• 52:51
  this year than last year. It's not totally different, but
• 52:54
  at a lot of positions we we had a lot of needs going into the
• 52:57
  portal and, and I feel like coach Klein and the team did a
• 52:59
  really good job of of filling a lot of those gaps with guys like
• 53:03
  Wendell Gregory and Makai Mason. But backup quarterback was
• 53:07
  obviously a position battle to watch and will continue to be a
• 53:11
  position battle to watch because we have the Shake and Blake
• 53:13
  package last year with Blake Barnett getting a bunch of snaps
• 53:17
  that he just ran the ball with and they didn't have him throw
• 53:20
  the ball. But we saw Blake Barnett throw a
• 53:23
  pass in a highlight to gosh, who?
• 53:25
  Who is Who did he throw it to that made that insane circus
• 53:29
  catch that was tweeting out the highlights.
• 53:32
  Thinking with Larry Porter. Oh yeah, OK.
• 53:36
  What that was a that was a dime of a ball.
• 53:39
  So I don't know what Matt Wells was doing last year, but yeah,
• 53:43
  backup quarterback, obviously a lot of positions that fill on
• 53:47
  the offensive line, defensive line wide receiver.
• 53:50
  Fred Berg is leaving the program, I guess, and his dad's
• 53:53
  picking fights with people on Facebook.
• 53:55
  What what were you looking at in spring football?
• 53:58
  What were some of the storylines that were most intriguing you
• 54:00
  and and how do you feel about the outlook for fall as a result
• 54:04
  of what you followed this spring?
• 54:07
  I think it's interesting what's going to happen with the
• 54:09
  defense. Obviously, we don't necessarily
• 54:12
  know exactly what the look is. I mean, we're assuming that it's
• 54:16
  going to be like a four to five situation.
• 54:19
  Like I just like I'm kind of like a necessarily like a large
• 54:22
  425. We don't know.
• 54:24
  That's the thing. Like we've been in the system of
• 54:26
  this three down set for so long. I don't know if we're if we
• 54:30
  leave that it sounds like from what Pete coach Peterson has
• 54:34
  said multiple times, it's going to be multiple.
• 54:36
  There's going to be different looks, but I got to assume that
• 54:39
  they just lean into what they know and it's still going to be
• 54:42
  a 425 kind of system. Wendell Gregory out on the edge
• 54:48
  like those, those guys are going to be pivotal.
• 54:51
  But the back end is really where I'm looking because I think
• 54:55
  there's a lot of safeties that were brought in and some
• 55:00
  safeties that were on the roster currently that people have
• 55:03
  really high hopes for. But they've got to prove it.
• 55:05
  And there's a lot of prove it on the back end.
• 55:08
  And we've said that multiple times.
• 55:11
  I don't remember the last time that we got to say, hey, we have
• 55:15
  a solid secondary that has nothing to prove.
• 55:19
  We got a lot of returners and they are they're firing on all
• 55:22
  cylinders because it's been a while since we've been able to
• 55:24
  say that. So that's what I'm really
• 55:27
  looking at because I think that's going to be, I think the
• 55:31
  offense is going to have a chance to, the head coaches are
• 55:35
  offensive coordinator for God's sake.
• 55:37
  Like he's going to be the play caller.
• 55:38
  I think they're going to be leaps and bounds ahead of where
• 55:42
  maybe maybe not because of the offensive line, but I'm sure
• 55:45
  somebody's going to talk about that.
• 55:46
  But I think the defense will have the most room to grow and
• 55:53
  the most to prove because I think they're going to be the
• 55:55
  second. Like people are going to be
• 55:57
  talking about them second and maybe they'll be talking about
• 55:59
  them first because they're not good.
• 56:00
  I don't know. But I think there is a lot to
• 56:03
  prove, especially in that back and a lot of guys, and I like a
• 56:07
  lot of them. I like a lot of them.
• 56:10
  I mean, Adrian, what is the name?
• 56:13
  Maddox from Georgia and he was on the field for George a lot.
• 56:17
  I mean, he half of his snap, he got 1/2 of the snaps.
• 56:20
  He was, he was there and then he was like, you know what, I'm
• 56:23
  going to take this red shirt and I'm going to get up out of there
• 56:25
  because I I want to be the full time starter.
• 56:27
  And if he thinks he's a full time starter here, he signed for
• 56:30
  a reason. Maybe he's maybe he's BJ paying
• 56:35
  his replacement. And then you, you've got, what's
• 56:39
  his name, the guy we got from Virginia.
• 56:42
  Pravard. Oh yeah.
• 56:44
  Jason Pravard. Yeah.
• 56:47
  Is he the truth? Is he not the truth?
• 56:49
  He's going to be playing. That game I watched, that game
• 56:53
  that they played against Florida State, he looked like the truth
• 56:55
  there. That's what I'm saying.
• 56:58
  There's a lot of prove it. Can he prove it here?
• 57:02
  Can he continue that? And if he can, we're going to be
• 57:05
  really good. But if they can't, then we're
• 57:07
  going to be really bad. It's it's the, the dichotomy of
• 57:10
  it is so fun. Chef's packing this team to go
• 57:14
  like 12 and O. It's going to be really funny.
• 57:17
  Not yet. It's going to happen though.
• 57:21
  You know, I think for me the some of the spring maybe
• 57:26
  superlatives for me were how the wide receiver position was going
• 57:30
  to be looked at. We brought in some really good
• 57:33
  talent there, a lot of potential wide receiver and now we're
• 57:39
  hearing some pretty good stuff about that.
• 57:41
  I, I do think the defense is going to be, it's going to be a
• 57:45
  unit that I think is going to struggle in the beginning and
• 57:48
  get better over the year. So offensively, I think they're
• 57:54
  going to have to be pretty good. And early on in the season, you
• 58:00
  know, thankfully the three games are very manageable home games
• 58:07
  to get this team ready. Because I think I think
• 58:11
  offensively they're going to have to lead, lead the team.
• 58:14
  But I think that's a unit that's going to have to lead and score
• 58:18
  a good number of points and let the defense come come together
• 58:21
  and get it situated. And I say that just because on
• 58:24
  the offensive side, you hear obviously a lot of positives
• 58:27
  about Avery Johnson. That's no surprise.
• 58:29
  I don't, I think you put any coaching staff in there and
• 58:32
  they're going to say a lot of positive things about your
• 58:35
  incumbent quarterback who's a senior, even if he wasn't.
• 58:39
  I take a lot of that with a grain of salt.
• 58:41
  But you are hearing a lot of good things at the running back
• 58:43
  position and you're hearing a lot of good things at wide
• 58:45
  receiver and you're hearing a lot of good things with tight
• 58:48
  ends and like Lincoln Cure and you're hearing some things about
• 58:52
  the offensive line. It makes me think the offense
• 58:56
  has a potential to be really good.
• 58:58
  I I mean, what is really good 35A game, 38 a game, How many
• 59:04
  points do we average a game last year?
• 59:06
  I don't even know. It wasn't, it wasn't that high,
• 59:08
  right? But I think I'm, I'm thinking in
• 59:11
  the first three games of the season, they're going to have to
• 59:14
  average 3538 a game. You take the first game out of
• 59:19
  the equation, that means you got to score 38 against Washington
• 59:21
  State, 38 against Tulane. They should be able to do that.
• 59:26
  But I, I don't know. I just, I, I have a lot of
• 59:30
  positive thinking about the offense because I do think
• 59:32
  they've brought in a lot of good potential skill players to
• 59:34
  really help Avery Johnson. And if truth, the truth is
• 59:39
  coming out about letting Avery do his thing, run the ball, you
• 59:45
  know, trying to him be more dynamic like, I guess I have to
• 59:49
  believe the hype. I mean, I, I don't know, you
• 59:52
  know, he said a lot of good things in Ireland that made me
• 59:54
  think this offense was going to be scoring 50A game.
• 59:57
  But I, I, I do, I do truly believe that that's a unit that
• 1:00:03
  is going to be really the kingpin for the beginning of the
• 1:00:06
  season. And then the defense has the
• 1:00:07
  potential to get better because I do like some, I like guys on
• 1:00:11
  the defensive line. I think from the line backing
• 1:00:14
  position, you have some really good talent there and you have
• 1:00:16
  some good talent at the other positions.
• 1:00:18
  It's just clicking and coming together because our toughest
• 1:00:23
  games you're going to be playing against.
• 1:00:24
  Well, we don't play Arizona this year, do we?
• 1:00:28
  No. You have Houston, Connor Wegman,
• 1:00:31
  great quarterback great. I said, did I say great?
• 1:00:37
  I said good quarterback. Did I say great?
• 1:00:38
  I. Think you said great?
• 1:00:39
  Oh, I did. Very good quarterback.
• 1:00:43
  Semantics. It's semantics.
• 1:00:45
  I mean, I knew what you meant. You know, but.
• 1:00:51
  I mean the schedule like I mean, we could, we could go down that
• 1:00:54
  path if you want, but I mean the, the, the schedule is
• 1:00:57
  workable. Like it's more, it's more than
• 1:00:59
  workable. But we say that about the Big 12
• 1:01:02
  all the time. It it and I know it's not the
• 1:01:04
  normal Big 12 like from like Four Seasons ago or whatever,
• 1:01:07
  where it's just like the last place team is always the first
• 1:01:10
  place team. Maybe those days are done.
• 1:01:13
  But you know, with the Texas Tech news and all, and all those
• 1:01:16
  things, it it, it does feel open.
• 1:01:21
  We do play Arizona. We do.
• 1:01:22
  You know, I was just going to say.
• 1:01:25
  I don't. We got them at home though.
• 1:01:27
  Yeah, we do, yeah. Yes, but it does feel open.
• 1:01:30
  It does it. Feels open.
• 1:01:32
  It feels open. I I just.
• 1:01:34
  Sad. The the offense, I don't know if
• 1:01:37
  I don't know if they'll be any better.
• 1:01:39
  I don't know if I I would assume they would running back.
• 1:01:44
  Running back looks solid. I mean, that's the thing about
• 1:01:47
  this. I don't know.
• 1:01:49
  I know we did the body by true thing for a couple seasons and
• 1:01:54
  Coach Klein is coming here and maybe it's the recruiting, maybe
• 1:01:58
  it's what he brought in from from other places and what he
• 1:02:01
  identifies. But physically this team seems a
• 1:02:05
  lot more ready to go. I mean, from a receiver aspect
• 1:02:11
  of it, Jason Brown was he was incredible, but he didn't look
• 1:02:16
  like the receivers we have now and and tight in.
• 1:02:21
  I think if Lincoln cure takes the step that we think he can,
• 1:02:26
  he can take, he's should be the best tight end that we have.
• 1:02:31
  No, no offense to Garrett Oakley, no offense to will Anzio
• 1:02:34
  even. I think they should platoon even
• 1:02:36
  still, Avery Johnson, physically bigger Joe Jackson if and and
• 1:02:43
  the the running back as a whole. They all look insane.
• 1:02:48
  And then you got a guy who I think is going to be I'm taking
• 1:02:52
  my I'm picking all my chips and I'm putting on a flyer.
• 1:02:56
  It's going to be Derek Sally Junior.
• 1:02:59
  Oh. Yeah.
• 1:03:00
  Yeah, he is absolutely insane looking.
• 1:03:04
  He looks like a like a receiver we haven't had.
• 1:03:09
  I don't know. Chris Harper.
• 1:03:12
  I mean, he's bigger than Chris Harper.
• 1:03:14
  I mean, maybe not weight wise, but taller than Chris Harper.
• 1:03:17
  He's like, he's like Terry. He's like.
• 1:03:21
  Sebastian Taylor, No. Well, Oh yeah, Sebastian Taylor
• 1:03:24
  was, He was a great God. He was built.
• 1:03:28
  He was built, but he couldn't play receiver that was.
• 1:03:30
  The problem? This guy, I mean, I'm, I'm
• 1:03:34
  putting all my chips on a flyer and it's going to be Derek Saley
• 1:03:36
  Junior. That dude is nuts.
• 1:03:39
  I, I am willing to bet he's, I'm I'm going to put my money that
• 1:03:42
  he's going to be receiver one. Wow, Larry.
• 1:03:45
  Larry Porter was making the most insane catches.
• 1:03:48
  Yeah, I mean, but he's not physically imposing like this
• 1:03:51
  guy. I mean, if we run a, if we run a
• 1:03:54
  set out there, let's just say we run a 2 tight end, 2 wide
• 1:03:57
  receiver set. It's just, you know, a little 22
• 1:04:01
  personnel. And then let's say it's Lincoln
• 1:04:06
  Cure and Garrett Oakley with Jeron Tibbs and Derrick Salley
• 1:04:11
  that I mean, who's stopping that?
• 1:04:14
  I am going 12. Are they route runners?
• 1:04:16
  I mean honestly, like what? What is our biggest issue then
• 1:04:20
  getting separation? Like having guys that
• 1:04:23
  consistently, consistently get separation.
• 1:04:28
  Do you have guys that are good route runners that can separate
• 1:04:31
  a little bit or do you have a possession receiver you get you
• 1:04:34
  get a guy who's imposing and can make contested catches that move
• 1:04:41
  the chains, you know, a six yard catch or something like that.
• 1:04:44
  I, I think, I think what Colin Klein is going to do, what I
• 1:04:49
  think I saw from him in spring, what I saw from him at Texas
• 1:04:52
  Tech, what I saw from him at K State in his his stint as OC
• 1:04:56
  here, he is going to use quarterback run.
• 1:05:00
  He's going to run the ball and he is going to RPO the fuck out
• 1:05:05
  of everybody in the Big 12. He is going to make Avery
• 1:05:09
  Johnson a threat to run on every play.
• 1:05:12
  It's going to look like read option every play and he's going
• 1:05:15
  to run post routes, he's going to run slants, he's going to run
• 1:05:17
  out routes off of this. Every play is going to be an
• 1:05:22
  RPI. Am convinced that every play is
• 1:05:24
  going to be an RPO because I saw Marcel Reed run a damn RPO on
• 1:05:29
  every play. Now, mind you, they've lost some
• 1:05:31
  games because it was Marcel Reed and maybe we lose some games
• 1:05:35
  because it's Avery Johnson having to make the read every
• 1:05:38
  time. Maybe, but Colin Klein is going
• 1:05:41
  to get his quarterback and he's going to say, you read this,
• 1:05:44
  this one position and you're going to you're running the
• 1:05:48
  show. And I think Avery Johnson is
• 1:05:50
  going to have giant human beings that run really fast and catch a
• 1:05:55
  lot of balls up high. I I would have loved Jace Brown
• 1:05:59
  to stay and run this offense. I honestly would have loved him
• 1:06:02
  to be here. But when you got guys that big
• 1:06:06
  like Jeron Tibbs and Derek, Sally Junior and Lincoln Cure, I
• 1:06:10
  am going to take it. I love it.
• 1:06:14
  I love it. And then we're going to RPO
• 1:06:16
  teams to death. Now it's the offensive line for
• 1:06:19
  the offense for me that is going to I, I just gloated and glazed
• 1:06:25
  the entire skill position for everybody on offense.
• 1:06:28
  But offensive line, they're going to have to get their shit
• 1:06:30
  together. I don't know who it's going to
• 1:06:32
  be because it's a lot of I don't know.
• 1:06:36
  Every single one, every position is an.
• 1:06:38
  I don't know for me. We can say this though, Avery
• 1:06:41
  Johnson is probably been surrounded with the best talent
• 1:06:45
  he's going to have in his four year career.
• 1:06:47
  K State from. Last year, though.
• 1:06:53
  Yeah, but that doesn't matter. I mean, I'm just, I what I'm
• 1:06:57
  saying is there aren't any excuses.
• 1:07:00
  Like they're legitimately no excuses.
• 1:07:03
  He's got his OC back, he's got the weapons.
• 1:07:07
  There's no excuses. There's really like no excuse
• 1:07:10
  and you know he's going to break a lot of records this year just
• 1:07:14
  from like a, a career perspective.
• 1:07:18
  But in reality, like what is your when you get to game #12
• 1:07:25
  what is what is Avery Johnson's career case stake in a look like
• 1:07:29
  if this team goes 8 and four, let's say this team goes 8 and
• 1:07:33
  four. Now we probably when Colin Klein
• 1:07:37
  was hired and you saw these guys left, you'd be like, oh man, 8
• 1:07:41
  and four, like be. Nice.
• 1:07:42
  That's pretty good. Be nice.
• 1:07:45
  But you do see like some of the guys he's brought in and I just
• 1:07:49
  keep looking at the schedule. I think it's like it's a very
• 1:07:53
  attainable schedule, like if Avery has a average year with
• 1:08:00
  these guys. If he has an average year with
• 1:08:03
  these guys, I'll be disappointed.
• 1:08:05
  I'll be honest. I just, he needs to make, he
• 1:08:08
  needs to take the step offensive line needs to get it together.
• 1:08:11
  I mean, that's going to be a glaring weakness.
• 1:08:13
  And I, I'm sure I will buy in by the end of fall camp.
• 1:08:17
  Who's going to be and all this stuff.
• 1:08:19
  I, I, I will be there. This is like the opposite of the
• 1:08:22
  basketball. I am going to be bought in with
• 1:08:24
  no matter who's out there. I think they're going to be able
• 1:08:26
  to dominate. But like you said, the
• 1:08:29
  schedule's there. He's got all the things if he
• 1:08:33
  goes 8:00 and 4:00 this season and has, you know, good numbers,
• 1:08:37
  not nothing earth shattering. And I don't want him to
• 1:08:40
  necessarily have to have earth shattering numbers.
• 1:08:42
  But if he does go 8 and four with all this, he's going to be
• 1:08:45
  Josh Freeman. He's going to be Josh Freeman.
• 1:08:49
  He's got the talent, he's got all the pedigree, He's got all
• 1:08:52
  that. He never won shit.
• 1:08:54
  That's what it's going to be. And they he's going to have the
• 1:08:57
  numbers. He's going to have that he'll be
• 1:08:58
  Josh Freeman. But if he wins, if he wins, if
• 1:09:04
  he wins the Big 12 title, there's no argument that he's
• 1:09:09
  third best. There's probably not.
• 1:09:14
  There's no argument that he's not top three anymore.
• 1:09:16
  I don't even know if he has to win a Big 12 title if he got
• 1:09:19
  this team. I I think if this team got to
• 1:09:21
  the Big 12 Championship game. You don't think he has to win
• 1:09:24
  it? I don't think he has to win it.
• 1:09:28
  I mean, it would be fun if we make it to the big toilet.
• 1:09:30
  I mean, we had a really good season.
• 1:09:32
  We just need some visual improvement.
• 1:09:33
  I think just on some of the fundamental pieces of like his
• 1:09:36
  game like that helps. I think like from a decision
• 1:09:40
  making perspective, I think the coaching staff did truly hold
• 1:09:43
  him back a little bit last season.
• 1:09:45
  And I think now you have an opportunity where he understands
• 1:09:48
  now you have freedom of movement, so to speak, right?
• 1:09:52
  Like I do, I think he's. I know.
• 1:09:55
  What you're saying, I know what you're saying.
• 1:09:58
  Well, I I think with as much as one of the big things that
• 1:10:02
  people talked about last year was his unwillingness to
• 1:10:08
  sometimes play football. Like really, you know?
• 1:10:12
  Lay it out. There, lay it out there and.
• 1:10:16
  If we. If we have some visual, like
• 1:10:19
  there's some visual cues that we've, we're seeing some
• 1:10:23
  improvement there. That's like a good first step.
• 1:10:26
  Right, like you want to, you want to see him truck a guy like
• 1:10:28
  Arch Manning gets? I mean.
• 1:10:30
  I don't know if he'll ever truck a guy, but like layout head
• 1:10:34
  first for a first down like even a couple of seasons ago when we
• 1:10:41
  a couple of seasons ago, this is where it really got me.
• 1:10:44
  This is where I knew like he would, and I don't want to ever
• 1:10:47
  say never, but this is where I knew that he had the potential
• 1:10:52
  of not putting it out there. It was the Colorado game.
• 1:10:57
  It was a great game for Colorado.
• 1:10:58
  I mean a great game that he had against Colorado at a incredible
• 1:11:02
  game. But the one where he goes to the
• 1:11:05
  the corner of the end zone on a run and like almost blows his
• 1:11:08
  knee up because he's kind of like trying to get down.
• 1:11:11
  He doesn't want to get all the way into the end zone.
• 1:11:14
  That was like, and he really wasn't laying it out there.
• 1:11:17
  He was kind of kind of going a little soft in there and mind
• 1:11:21
  you, he was probably 180 lbs and he had the the rib thing and all
• 1:11:25
  that going on. But man, oh man, if he does like
• 1:11:30
  the visual, I get it. I get what you're saying because
• 1:11:32
  the numbers statistically are somewhat pretty good.
• 1:11:36
  Like, I mean, I don't not really much statistically he can
• 1:11:40
  improve it. But look, the the decision
• 1:11:42
  making is not necessarily a mental like reading the defense.
• 1:11:45
  It's I've got to make the decision that I want to lay it
• 1:11:49
  out there and I get that man. I if he shows it, if he shows
• 1:11:54
  the nuts and he drops the nuts this season, I'll be, I'll be
• 1:11:59
  thoroughly pleased and I think we'll go a lot better than 8:00
• 1:12:01
  and 4:00. If God knows there's there's
• 1:12:04
  hours and hours and days worth of footage of his head coach
• 1:12:07
  doing that shit 13 years ago. Sure.
• 1:12:10
  Yeah. I so so I'm curious how much of
• 1:12:13
  that I mean, because that that Colorado season, that was the
• 1:12:16
  Connor Riley OC year Co OC year with Matt Wells, Matt Wells
• 1:12:21
  quarterback coach. I wonder how much of this is
• 1:12:24
  like, was Matt Wells coaching that into him over the last two
• 1:12:27
  years? And I, I don't know.
• 1:12:29
  I don't know. I'm curious to see how that
• 1:12:31
  mentality shifts. And if he goes out there and
• 1:12:34
  games, you know, the first few games of the season and he's
• 1:12:37
  total gamer and it's night and day and you feel that confidence
• 1:12:41
  kind of exuding from him that we maybe haven't really like we've
• 1:12:44
  seen from Avery. I, I kind of want to see that
• 1:12:48
  like you, you know, when you see an athlete on the field, that's
• 1:12:51
  that exudes confidence. And I don't know that we've
• 1:12:53
  really seen that from him. I know we've had this discussion
• 1:12:57
  before in the past, but. I yeah, I mean, this it, it, it
• 1:13:01
  a lot of it's going to center around Avery, and rightfully so.
• 1:13:06
  He's probably the highest paid, probably the highest paid staff
• 1:13:11
  member of the football team at this point, But he's got a lot
• 1:13:17
  to prove that I mean that that's the the facts of it.
• 1:13:21
  And I think, like you said, he's got, he's got the guy that in
• 1:13:26
  that bleeds toughness, that it spews toughness out.
• 1:13:29
  Mind you, he's he looks like he's a vegan now.
• 1:13:32
  But Colin Klein is the embodiment of toughness and
• 1:13:36
  badassery when it comes to K State football.
• 1:13:39
  So if, if you're going to learn and you're going to, you're
• 1:13:42
  going to, that's what you need to prove.
• 1:13:45
  You got nobody better at your as it to show it to you than your
• 1:13:49
  head coach. So I, I'm pumped for this
• 1:13:51
  season. I think we're going to be really
• 1:13:53
  good. It's just there's some focal
• 1:13:55
  points of this team that need iron out.
• 1:13:57
  But I I'm almost dead set by the fall.
• 1:13:59
  I will be there. He says 12 live in physicality.
• 1:14:03
  Like he's picking 12 and now I know it, I see it.
• 1:14:08
  I I'm having a hard time keeping these Gators on the ground,
• 1:14:11
  baby. I see it.
• 1:14:14
  I'm pumped up, dude. I pumped Chef.
• 1:14:17
  Chef's living in physicality. The last topic I had for tonight
• 1:14:21
  was just college sports in general.
• 1:14:22
  The NCAA field is expanding by 8 teams.
• 1:14:26
  Fuck that. As of today and and immediately
• 1:14:29
  starting next year. 12 team. 12 teams. 12.
• 1:14:34
  Teams, yeah. You didn't say.
• 1:14:36
  Well, no. No, it's from 68.
• 1:14:38
  It's it's field of 68, the yeah, the play on, the play on.
• 1:14:43
  Really, really hard, isn't it? The play The play in expanded
• 1:14:47
  already. Yeah.
• 1:14:49
  We got we got the play in turn, we didn't used to have that and
• 1:14:52
  then we went and now we've just expanded that, which I don't
• 1:14:55
  mind. I mean, I think because what are
• 1:15:00
  what are they really? I I think you're about to go
• 1:15:02
  over it, Bob, I think you were about to go over what entails of
• 1:15:05
  these news, you know, 8 teams, but I would imagine that it's
• 1:15:10
  just every 16 seed is not. Every 16 seed is going is going
• 1:15:22
  to be playing with against other 16 seeds and playing games as
• 1:15:28
  well as elevens and 12. And it's a plate, yeah.
• 1:15:33
  You know, we got a little bit of that chef, we got a little bit.
• 1:15:37
  You are right, but we can't hear you so.
• 1:15:40
  No, but the like think about these NIT teams that that played
• 1:15:44
  in the NIT this year, Auburn, who I didn't think belonged in
• 1:15:47
  the field of correct 68 at that point because they were what sub
• 1:15:52
  500? They were sub 500 and SEC play,
• 1:15:56
  they have maybe 1 marquee went on there.
• 1:15:58
  I don't know, like those types of teams I don't think deserve
• 1:16:01
  to be in the tournament, but I don't know a team like New
• 1:16:04
  Mexico was in the NIT. They were, you know, one seed or
• 1:16:08
  something in the NIT. So I don't know it's it.
• 1:16:11
  It'll be cool to see some of those teams get a chance,
• 1:16:14
  especially if there is a lot of controversy about them in the
• 1:16:19
  past, like Miami of Ohio could have very easily been left out
• 1:16:22
  of the out of the bubble this year and then on the wrong side
• 1:16:24
  of the bubble. But seeing them make it in, you
• 1:16:27
  know, whatever. I don't know.
• 1:16:28
  There are a lot of teams over the course K state in 2006 and
• 1:16:33
  Huggins first year should have probably would have would have
• 1:16:37
  been in in this format. And there's probably a couple
• 1:16:40
  Tang teams that would have been in in this format and maybe
• 1:16:42
  Bruce teams as well. But yeah, I don't I don't love
• 1:16:47
  it. I think it was the perfect size
• 1:16:49
  at 60. 4. But I.
• 1:16:53
  Ultimately, what I think if you expand the tournament, you want
• 1:16:59
  to provide, like I think the biggest knock on it is there are
• 1:17:03
  mid majors that we feel like deserve to get into the NCAA
• 1:17:06
  tournament over high major teams and how we would love to see it
• 1:17:11
  perceived as more access to some of these mid major schools to
• 1:17:15
  get the opportunity to play in the tournament.
• 1:17:17
  That's not necessarily going to be the case.
• 1:17:21
  Honestly, I think I, I mean, I, I probably have a opinion that
• 1:17:26
  is different than a lot of people, but I think for like low
• 1:17:30
  major teams in like what not you need to be rewarding like your
• 1:17:34
  conference champion as the NCA tournament, like they should be
• 1:17:37
  getting bid to the NCA tournament.
• 1:17:39
  I think I think it should be regular season conference
• 1:17:41
  champion. Well, correct, sorry I might
• 1:17:44
  have said that wrong. I I think the regular season.
• 1:17:46
  Conference champion. I was just.
• 1:17:48
  The regular season conference champion should be the one
• 1:17:51
  getting bid. But I, I don't know.
• 1:17:56
  I mean, now Tuesday and Wednesday are, I guess it's
• 1:17:59
  going to be a little more exciting because you're going to
• 1:18:00
  get more games. I mean, I just, I don't know, I
• 1:18:05
  don't feel like it was necessary to expand it as much as they
• 1:18:09
  did. I think the unfortunate thing is
• 1:18:12
  you have 16 seeds that are not going to be playing against each
• 1:18:14
  other. I mean, obviously recent years,
• 1:18:17
  look in the past, what, five years, seven years, you got 216
• 1:18:21
  seeds that have beaten one. That may not necessarily have
• 1:18:25
  been the case. You know, that's not necessarily
• 1:18:29
  the case moving forward because you're going to have some teams
• 1:18:31
  that are going to lose. So I don't know, I, I, I don't
• 1:18:34
  necessarily agree with that aspect of it, but it is what it
• 1:18:37
  is. You know, we're going to get
• 1:18:39
  more games, so. I, I don't know what's been
• 1:18:43
  said, but you know, the, I don't know how I feel about it, to be
• 1:18:48
  honest with you. It's just more playing
• 1:18:50
  basketball is, you know, half of these teams don't really ever do
• 1:18:54
  much. But it's it's rewarding teams
• 1:19:01
  for good seasons. I don't know if it reward it.
• 1:19:04
  It's not rewarding the best of the best teams, which is really
• 1:19:08
  what it all comes down to. I mean, we're letting more good
• 1:19:12
  teams in, but we're not letting the best.
• 1:19:14
  It's not exclusive, which is, you know, it's an argument both
• 1:19:20
  ways. I don't know if necessarily
• 1:19:22
  exclusive exclusivity is the best always because there's
• 1:19:26
  always, you don't necessarily always want the whining like oh,
• 1:19:30
  we we could have been there. We could have been that.
• 1:19:33
  But you know, it irons itself out because usually the ones in
• 1:19:38
  the 2 seeds are there at the end.
• 1:19:40
  So it doesn't doesn't ever really matter.
• 1:19:42
  I don't know, it's just more basketball like Matt said.
• 1:19:46
  There there is always a play in team that makes it to the Sweet
• 1:19:49
  16. I feel like it that that or at
• 1:19:51
  least wins their first their first round matchup after the
• 1:19:54
  play in and I think this year was Texas right then maybe 16.
• 1:19:59
  So there's always there's always one that makes it and it's
• 1:20:02
  always was NC State a couple years ago when they had that big
• 1:20:05
  dude they were playing they were playing DJ Burns.
• 1:20:08
  Yeah, that's right. That's right.
• 1:20:10
  Yeah. So we've we've seen it play out
• 1:20:12
  like. It's not to say that these teams
• 1:20:15
  aren't going to aren't going to go deep every time, but I you
• 1:20:19
  know, it does give a couple extra opportunities I.
• 1:20:21
  Guess do you want a chef? A chef special with the iron,
• 1:20:29
  You know, just straight shake up college athletics.
• 1:20:35
  OK, how many conferences are there?
• 1:20:38
  Too many. Way too many, but that that's
• 1:20:41
  never nevertheless a. 2929 auto bids.
• 1:20:44
  Like you, I love the idea. So there's 44 at I.
• 1:20:48
  Love what Matt said. I love Matt saying that the
• 1:20:57
  regular season champion should be in OR.
• 1:20:59
  I think that's what you both agreed on.
• 1:21:01
  I agree. I think either this sets the
• 1:21:04
  table for the like, like in football, maybe potentially the
• 1:21:11
  conference championship games just disappearing or everybody's
• 1:21:17
  A2 bid league because that wouldn't that number equal out?
• 1:21:21
  Like if the regular season champion and the conference the
• 1:21:26
  postseason champion, wouldn't that equal out to everybody gets
• 1:21:30
  2 bids at least and that iron out math and that.
• 1:21:34
  Would be 88 and well, no, it's 44 at larges, so it's 44, so 76
• 1:21:43
  -, 44. Oh, there's 44 at larges.
• 1:21:46
  There's 44 at larges. The reason why I'm thinking
• 1:21:51
  about this is so your low major teams that are going to be 16
• 1:21:55
  seeds as well as there's going to be two games of 15 seeds, 32
• 1:22:00
  conferences. These low major schools should
• 1:22:03
  want their best team playing in the NCAA tournament because now
• 1:22:09
  you're not guaranteed to be playing a one seed.
• 1:22:11
  Now you're playing in a play in in the tournament.
• 1:22:15
  And so for lower bid leagues, I feel like you want a team that
• 1:22:20
  has sustained success playing in the NCAA tournament, because if
• 1:22:25
  you're a 15 seed or 16, you're not guaranteed to be playing and
• 1:22:29
  getting eyeballs against a number one seed like you could
• 1:22:33
  have been in previous years. So I, I don't, you know, these
• 1:22:39
  conference championships, like these tournaments, they make
• 1:22:42
  obviously money for conferences, right?
• 1:22:44
  But I wonder if there's going to be a little bit of thought
• 1:22:47
  process now of, hey, we might want to might want to get our
• 1:22:52
  best team who won the conference outright in the regular season
• 1:22:57
  to be the one representing our school because we want to try
• 1:23:00
  and get to play that one seed or two seed in a non playing game.
• 1:23:06
  Yeah. So Chef, if there are third, if
• 1:23:08
  there are 44 at largest, then there's 32 conference champions
• 1:23:12
  now at this point. So you could double up, you
• 1:23:15
  could have here, here's this, you could do the regular season
• 1:23:20
  champion and the conference tournament champion.
• 1:23:22
  If they are different, if they're the same, then you do
• 1:23:27
  first place and 2nd place. I would, I would be down.
• 1:23:30
  OK, maybe it's limited to I, I I just don't know where the
• 1:23:35
  threshold is because because then you're the at larges are
• 1:23:40
  the at larges aren't. Are they all designated for the
• 1:23:44
  power 5, the power four? I have to work on this a little
• 1:23:49
  bit. Yeah, because if every if 32
• 1:23:53
  conference champions got like let's say for example 32
• 1:23:59
  conference like 32 regular season champions and there's 32
• 1:24:03
  conference tournament champions, the power power conference
• 1:24:08
  schools are not taking that. Yeah, they're not taking.
• 1:24:10
  That is not giving you, that is not giving you the best group of
• 1:24:15
  schools because there's like Purdue would have been out.
• 1:24:20
  Yeah. Then there's 12 at large, Yeah.
• 1:24:22
  Like, like these schools, Yeah, they're not giving that up.
• 1:24:27
  So building you need to sit on the toilet and think.
• 1:24:30
  Think a little harder on this one.
• 1:24:32
  Limited to the power fives, that's 10 auto bids.
• 1:24:37
  I mean, I've got, I've got some things working in my brain, but
• 1:24:42
  obviously I'm not smart enough to get them down right now on
• 1:24:45
  the fly. But I will think of something.
• 1:24:49
  Wow, I I have faith in you. My my brain is now is now fried.
• 1:24:55
  I don't have anything anything else to to chat.
• 1:24:57
  Through. It's been fun.
• 1:24:58
  It's been fun. Welcome back baby Season 5.
• 1:25:02
  Let me get back. We got more to come.
• 1:25:06
  Yeah, lots more to come. Probably going to be like maybe
• 1:25:09
  once a month or something like that till we really ramp things
• 1:25:13
  up for for spring ball. But I appreciate everybody who's
• 1:25:16
  listening or watching this as always.
• 1:25:19
  I will real quick. I've just got one thing I need
• 1:25:23
  to do and I need to open up my true because I forgot what it
• 1:25:28
  was because it's been so long, but that's going to do it for us
• 1:25:32
  today. Once again, we want to give a
• 1:25:34
  shout out to our sponsors, Auntie Maze Parlor and Heartland
• 1:25:37
  Beef Connection. Visit www.auntiemaze.com for
• 1:25:41
  full list of their upcoming events.
• 1:25:43
  If you're stopping by, be sure to tell them cocaine really sent
• 1:25:46
  you. Additionally, visit
• 1:25:48
  heartlandbeef.net and use promo code CW25.
• 1:25:52
  That's CW25 for $25 off your match fee at Heartland Beef
• 1:25:57
  Connection. We also have our merch store up
• 1:25:59
  at cocainewilly.com where you can buy our Wildcat Country
• 1:26:02
  Let's Ride merch, so be sure to check that out as well.
• 1:26:05
  Finally, we're the K State representative on the College
• 1:26:07
  Huddle, the largest community of fan driven content in the
• 1:26:10
  nation. Check them out at the College
• 1:26:12
  huddle.com and follow them on social media at College Huddle.
• 1:26:15
  Last but not least, you can follow our show at Cocaine Willy
• 1:26:18
  on social media, or you can follow us individually.
• 1:26:21
  I'm at Rolesby, Chef is at chef Andre Napier and Fireball.
• 1:26:25
  Matt is at Matt Marchesini, Chef.
• 1:26:28
  Cocaine's a hell of a drug, baby.
• 1:26:31
  We are all coke and no joke Wildcat country.
• 1:26:36
  Let's. Go.
• 1:26:39
  Let's go.