All right, let's bring in Luke Tkach of the News & Observer. He joins us every Friday, and we got a lot to talk about, sir. Shall we start with the the fact that there are enough people, including the commissioner of the ACC, that think expanding the NCAA men's basketball tournament is a good idea?
What are they doing? Yeah, I think it's one of those deals where you hear enough people talk about it. You don't have to be an athletic director or commissioner or a university president to realize that this is starting to become sort of a fait accompli.
You know, I think the question is, and this is what I wrote this week after talking to Phillips about it, is can they do this in a way that doesn't ruin it? And I think maybe you can sort of do an expanded first four at multiple sites that gets you to 72 teams. Once you get to 96 teams or 128 teams, now you're talking another weekend. And look, the Masters isn't moving, right? So now we're talking about moving conference tournaments. We're talking about changing the schedule.
That's a pretty heavy lift, but they're doing it with the college football playoff. And that worries me because I think 96 teams does tinker with what makes the tournament special. I think you can accommodate 72 and be okay. You know, the 64 to 68, I wasn't thrilled with it.
I'm still not thrilled with it, but I get it. I think 72 would kind of be the same. You start adding a whole round and I think you're gonna mess with the golden goose a little bit. And look, I said this point blank to Phillips. Have you considered, have you even thought about what a 96 team bracket looks like on an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper?
And you kill the whole thing. Like, my mom is not a huge college basketball fan, but she has a bracket. She watches the NCAA tournament. She cares about how Iowa State is playing on Thursday night. That's not gonna happen if she's not filling out that bracket.
And yes, people do them online now. But they also like to print them out and follow them and they like to fill out the bracket on selection Sunday and blah blah blah. That, as much as gambling, is what drives the NCAA tournament. And you cannot kill that.
You can't. Or you've absolutely advocated your responsibility. The other question is, Adam, as you know, do Turner and CBS want more inventory? If they don't, this is all moot. So, but the fact that this many people are talking about it leads me to believe that we've gone from possible to inevitable. It's just a question of minimizing the damage. Yeah, we stopped, you know, it's funny, with football, we stopped even fighting, even people like me, who have been adamantly opposed to expanding the college football playoff.
We got to a point where, all right, let's just do it in the least intrusive way possible because we know it's inevitable because it means so much more money. I don't know, and this is where I get to at the NCAA tournament, because I've been saying for a while that, actually, out of fairness, and not fairness to teams that otherwise would not make the tournament, but out of fairness to, like, number one seeds, or number five or six seeds that await the winner of those first four games, and we could even have a conversation about, maybe we should move those first four games and stop punishing the fives and six seeds by having them play somebody who's already played an NCAA tournament game, rather than maybe we put those against the 12 seeds, like, make them battle it out and then play another 12 seeds, something like that. But, I've always thought that we should have the same, you know, two 16s in every bracket, and the same two 12s or two 11s in every bracket, so have two play-in games in each bracket, so it's more uniform, and I don't know how many teams that adds, is that number four? If that adds four instead of first four, we would have, like, an early eight in terms of games. And the other thing, Adam, if you do that, like, look at Notre Dame last year, they played in Dayton, they had to fly to San Diego. That makes no sense. Like, you make Notre Dame fly from South Bend to Dayton to San Diego, why not just have these games where the teams are gonna be rather than playing them all in Dayton?
So, if you expand that a little bit, maybe you can inject some logic into this, but I think when you get beyond that, then yes, then you are starting to mess with the Golden Goose, and I think that would be a huge mistake. Yeah, but we can't punish Dayton. Dayton loves those games.
Like, I understand what you're saying, it would be better for the teams involved to not have them fly across the country. Maybe Dayton is all, Dayton's kind of centrally located, maybe Dayton's always a site, and maybe, I don't know, Ogden, Utah, which used to be a normal NCAA tournament early round site. Maybe Ogden, Utah is another first four. Dayton and Ogden, you really have it out for these teams. Isn't it bad enough they have to play an extra game? I'm just looking, I'm just, I'm looking out for the people of Ogden.
That is aggressive. You don't understand, I have many fans in Ogden, Utah. Let's make them play in Buffalo and Flagstaff. On the campus of Northern Arizona, that would be fantastic.
Alright, I was trying to think about, similarly, anyway, please continue. We can go to Missoula, right? Would you play it, play for... Ah, that sounds great. We can argue about this all day. Luke Tkach of the NNO is joining us here. Alright, are you going to Syracuse, or are you going to Duke Carolina? No, I gotta stay local for this one, for the Victory Bell. It's, I would argue, and maybe I'm just wrong here, I would argue it's actually the bigger game of the two. Because State lost to Clemson, and because Clemson has beaten State and Wake, it feels to me like the Atlantic Division train has left the station, maybe from Syracuse. So, I feel like the Coastal Division actually probably, this game probably has more leverage on that than the State of Syracuse game does in the Atlantic. Also, I think Duke can win. I'm not saying Duke will win. I think Duke can win, and I think that makes this a pretty interesting game, because I think North Carolina went into the season with that as a W, marked on the board in Sharpie, mentally.
And now, I think it's very much up in the air. Wally Wade will be full. There'll be a lot of people there, you know, and I think that's going to be a good environment and a really good test to see just how far A, Duke has come, because they've obviously come a long way, and B, the UNC defense, whether or not what happened in the second half against Miami was an improvement, a trend, or merely a fluke. And they're going to have to play well against Duke's offense. Duke is legit offensively. I think this is a good test for UNC's defense.
I agree with you. The way I look at this game, I just don't know. Even a decent defense is going to have a hard time stopping North Carolina, and Duke's got enough injury issues really on both sides of the ball. I think Duke will score. I think Duke will get into the mid to high 30s, but I have a hard time closing my eyes and seeing them keeping Carolina out of the 40s.
So they're going to have to get some turnovers. We were our guest picker in the NNO this week. You and I disagreed on a couple games, but we did not disagree on this one. We both took Carolina. Which did we disagree on?
Let's see. You had State and I had Syracuse. We both had Clemson. We both had Central. By the way, NC Central may be the most dominant program in their league in the state. We talked about best program and best team in all that junk.
Central may be the most dominant program in the league. Sorry, we both had East Carolina. You had Michigan. I took Penn State. You had Tennessee.
I took Vama. Oh, you're probably going to be right. I'm not very good at this. But why did you take Syracuse? I'm serious.
I make no bones about it. Why did you take Syracuse? I think Syracuse is pretty good on defense. I think they're going to be able to control time of possession. And NC State's offense, without them in leery, I'm not expecting into play. I don't think they're going to be explosive enough to score enough points the way that Syracuse is going to control time of possession, if that makes sense. I think Syracuse is just going to grind this one out. And unless Jack Chambers has a much bigger grasp of the playbook than you saw against Florida State, I just don't think NC State's going to be able to score enough points. And Sean Tucker's a really good running back. This is a game where it just feels like Syracuse has been good at home.
The win over Virginia hasn't exactly been flattered by Virginia's play, but the win over Purdue, I think, has been flattered by Purdue's play. So I think Syracuse at home, it definitely replays and is capable of doing anything. That's a different equation, but I'm sort of operating from the assumption that he won't. I can't imagine he's going to play. I think that if State can get to 20, I think that's enough. Could be, yeah.
I'm not sure they will, but that's why we differ. Jillio was in studio yesterday and I tried to get him to convince me that State could get to 20. He did a halfway decent job of that. He also said that Dave Doran has, other than the record against Pitt, his record against Syracuse is as good as it is, better than it is against anybody else. Alright, can the Carolina Panthers, Luke DeCock, experience a post-Matt Rule bump and scare the obviously broken Los Angeles Rams? Yeah, it's just, it's tough with a new staff going across the country, road game. It's ironic, you know, for all of us who just sort of assumed that Rule was getting fired at some point. I do think David Tepper might have chosen the absolute worst week to fire him.
He's had so many opportunities and he chooses the week before they have to fly across country and all that. So I don't know that there is, I mean, it's possible that PJ Walker may give them better quarterback play than Baker Mayfield has. I mean, Lord knows you or I could at this point.
That's a low bar. But for the most part, I just don't know how much there is there because the defense has been good. The offensive line has been good. The rest of the offense, and really just Mayfield when we get down to it, has been so bad that when you combine that with a team that doesn't have a lot of vision or leadership from the top, or didn't have a lot of vision or leadership from the top, it was pretty fatal. Now, maybe Steve Wilkes can, you know, get some effort, rally these guys. I mean, he's a likable guy.
He's probably deserved a shot long before this. I'm sure that as an interim coach, you won't get a fair shot, but I don't see a Panthers bump there. If anything, it probably is a get right game for the Rams, but I'm also just so down on the Panthers after watching them lose. I'm going to downgrade the Giants game from winnable to not winnable the way the Giants have played since, but the other games have predominantly been winnable, and they just found ways to lose them, and that's just a sign of a bad team today. Well, I mean, I think the Giants game was winnable because they were winning it. But I also don't think the Giants are great. I mean, I just don't think the Giants are great. I know the Giants have a good record. 4-1 is very good, and they did beat the Packers, although the Packers are, I think, leaving a lot of doubts in people's minds that the Packers are that good at this point. I think the Packers are good. I don't think the Packers are great, and they're good on the Giants. I think the Giants are incredibly well coached. I think that is absolutely unquestioned.
It does. Here's the thing about Matt Rule, and I will argue this forever. I think if the theory that a coach who is known as a builder needs time, I think is a sound theory. But if we were paying even moderately close attention last year, we all knew that this was going to end poorly, and it should not have even came to year three. They should have made the move after last year and started fresh, and the reluctance to admit your failure, to admit a mistake, and then going not all in because they didn't go all in on Baker Mayfield. They didn't really give up much, other than here's more hope.
No, but they went for another chance solution to Band-Aid things, and that's the problem. My confidence in the owner getting this right is at an all-time low. Zero. We'll just leave it at that. Like Blutarsky's grade point average.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through college, son. All right, Canes. Canes are in San Jose.
I don't know what to make San Jose. They lost both games in Europe to the National Predators, who might actually be good. Going to be an emotional day for Brent Burns, though.
Yeah, 100%. I don't know that the Sharks are any good. I mean, I think there's a reason Brent Burns is here and not there, among many reasons, but it's going to be a big game for him. I like kind of not exactly burnishing my credentials as an NHL scout. I liked what I saw from Burns in the opener, even though he didn't have that big sort of moment.
If he plays like that, her games are going to be really good. I mean, obviously, most of the attention Wednesday night was on Martin Aches. And look, we get on Martin Aches. You and I and everybody else have gotten on Martin Aches over the last two years because he's capable of doing that, if not every night.
A good chunk of nights. You know, the goal that he ended up scoring, he made that goal with his pressure and the puck comes back to him and he scores. So that to me is a positive sign that it's funny. I wouldn't say I noticed it at the time.
Maybe you did. I didn't that the new guys were like maybe a half step behind in some cases, but in talking with them, they were all like, man, you know, this is hard to play that way. This is what this team does is is not as easy as it looks and it's it's it's hard to do it as it is to play against and I thought that was kind of interesting because it suggests that even after the second two periods were pretty good that there's just such a higher feeling for this team as it as it gets its legs under it.
I think we'll see that in San Jose. I think there's a lot of guys who are going to play better than they did the opener and there are a lot of guys who played well in the opener that you can expect to continue to do that. Yeah, guys who played well, here's the one thing about nature's if nature's doesn't take shifts off.
That might be all Martin nature's needs to do because there's enough flash where if he basically treated every shift like that and I'm not saying that's easy to do that's hard to do. But if he does that then he's going to end up with so many more opportunities than he had before this and by the way, the the guys who I thought really played well, I thought the fourth line was great. I thought step on and Martinook were super noticeable all night long created a bunch of chances. And if you believe in natural stat trick at all, they led the team in high danger chances individually not just created as a line but individually they had great scoring chances.
And then I thought Jalen Chatfield was great in the game. He was moving. He was moving and that's what he does. And it's not that anyone on the hurricane defenses slow, but Sheffield has speed and he's learning how to use it at this level. And as he does, it's going to be interesting to see how the game develops. You know, I don't know that he's the long term solution in that position because there's a lot to like about him and what he brings and you know, you can't teach speed.
So I will say we want to talk about the fourth line very briefly. I don't ever remember a player basically being told there's no room for you here. Go find another job coming back on a PTO winning his old job back and beating out one of the franchise's top prospects in that event for that job in the process.
I don't remember that happening anywhere with their stuff and just did this summer here. I thought he was their best forward in the preseason. He was great. Yep.
He was younger than he did last year. Yeah, and he's got good beard game as I noticed before the opener Luke to cock you have you have potential for good beard game as well. I'll talk to you next Friday. I'm sure I'll see you soon. Thank you so much, ma'am. All right. Take care, bud.
Whisper: medium.en / 2022-12-04 17:10:36 / 2022-12-04 17:17:59 / 7
