Wrapped up the ACC Tournament, now on to the NCAA Tournament!

This is the best of the Adam Gold Show Podcast. Brought to you by Coach Pete at Capital Financial Advisory Group.

Visit us at CapitalFinancialUSA.com. We'll bring in Mike Taccorsi of the Sporting News, who joins us on the Adam Gold Show. I did bring up the barbecue discussion to Mike, just so you know, because I'm curious now what he thinks. Oh, so Mike is originally from Pittsburgh, so he puts fries on sandwiches. And calls it gravy. I don't know. I haven't gotten into that. I have never heard Mike say yins, though, so I'm not sure. I know Mike has family here in the Triangle. Do you or they have a preference Eastern or North Carolina barbecue?

I get confused, and now I'm confused again, even though we just talked about it. What is the one that has the mustard and vinegar? No, mustard is South Carolina.

Those people should be, I don't know. I'm not even going to... I've already disparaged it enough. No, keep mustard away from barbecue. Yes.

Also vinegar. Okay, then you're a Western North Carolina guy. So I am a Western person, absolutely. Now I am a Memphis person above all. I've been there for four years and put on way too many pounds eating that stuff.

It is the best to me and will always be so. Okay. Pit barbecue is different from, you know, people throwing a half a hog in the ground and cooking it slow over the course of an entire day.

They're two completely different, I was going to say animals, but actually, yes. All right, so let's talk about the tournament first. I want to make this clear. If you didn't get in, you didn't get screwed. There's no team that gets left out that gets screwed, in my opinion, because what you've done is you've given the committee a reason to exclude you. You could have always done more.

Now, with that said, I do raise my eyebrows at certain decisions. The ACC did get five. I will forever say that Pit and Wake are both better than Virginia, who did get in the field. And I respect Virginia's start.

They had a great start to the season, then went through a rough patch, then started to win a lot of games. But man, especially Pit, I think Pit's better than Virginia. I also think Wake's better than Virginia.

But do you have any problems with the brackets? Well, first of all, that you think Pit is better than Virginia is a worthy opinion, but it doesn't have anything to do with the process. Right.

Now, if you say that you... It does in football. Well, but football is dumb and doesn't have a real championship or doesn't until this year. And for all we know, basically, they're going to have their first ever and last ever real championship.

So enjoy it. But basketball has a real championship every year. Because every single team, Chicago State accepted, but I believe they're joining a conference next year. So every single team has the opportunity to earn their way into this field. And don't tell me it can't happen because it happened at NC State.

So there's that. If you believe that Virginia's resume is inferior to Pit's and Wake's, then you kind of have to demonstrate how. Now, I didn't think that Virginia had an NCAA tournament resume based on the available positions.

With a broader bubble, which we had on Tuesday, but didn't by Sunday, I had them in. They were the one team that I missed out of the 68. By the end of Selection Sunday, they're the one team I missed. I had Oklahoma in instead of them. I never thought that Pit was going to get in based on the fact that they had poor quality losses like Missouri at home.

You lose games like that, they have consequences, especially when you schedule so few high-end games that can help you. And I hear all this complaint about the ACC and what the Big 12 did and all that. And at the end of the day, you have to be able to look at your league and say, Louisville's a mess.

They're going to kill us. Notre Dame's in transition. Mike is a great coach, but he's not a miracle worker. And you look through your league and you see this, and Syracuse is in transition.

They are not likely to be great. Boston College has never gotten off the deck, no matter how hard they fought, and they have fought hard. So at Georgia Tech in transition, you had, what, three new coaches in the league and one who was floundering? That's a lot to deal with. And so you've got to say, our league isn't going to help us.

We have to help ourselves. The Big 12 didn't have to say that. They were coming off the strongest, most balanced league in the history of college basketball. They had 10 teams that were nearly NCAA tournament-worthy last year out of 10. So they knew they were in for another rough ride. And some of the teams should have scheduled better. And a team like you, for what little they did, didn't get that done.

And I could have easily seen TCU miss this field. But it frustrates me, Adam, when I hear coaches complain about the process, but at the same time say they don't know the process. That's like me saying, I'm a basketball analyst, studio analyst for the Big Ten Network, but I don't know what a pick and roll is. Can you explain it to me?

Or no, not even better than that, not asking you to explain it to me because it's too hard to ask the question. Coaches have been doing this forever. They did it in the early days of the BCS. Well, I don't understand the formula. Like, you don't have to understand the formula other than schedule good teams and beat them.

That's the only formula you ever needed to know, but because they made these grandiose statements about it's too complicated, then they went and they dumbed down the formula to its own detriment when a system like that needed more data, not less data. Here's the thing, I talk about the Big Twelve a lot because of how for a while we thought nine teams were going to get in. And I don't disagree with you about Oklahoma based on the strength of the Big Twelve, at least the perceived strength of the Big Twelve. I anticipated them getting in as well.

But reputation is not supposed to matter. And because it's not just the fact that what they have six teams had non-conference schedule strengths in the three hundreds. And by the way, Pitts was there as well, but there were like three others in the two hundreds. So it's not like the league extended themselves outside of conference play. Only two of them were in the one were better than a hundred.

Kansas who had the best at 60 and Baylor who had second best at 94. So Adam Golden Studio with my man coach Peter Ruder, Capital Financial Advisory Group. You have a 401k, but you're changing jobs. You're taking that 401k with you.

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Investment Advisory Services offered by Capital Financial Advisory Group, a North Carolina registered investment advisor. It seemed to me it was a strategy to make the league to guarantee that that every league game would be better. I was texting back and forth. I'm trying to remember who it was. It might have been Jerry Palm, who I believe you quoted in a story that you wrote for Sporting News Dotcom about how like Iowa State played like 18 quad one games. There's no way they played 18 games that are worthy of quad one unless the system is sort of rigged in that in their favor. And I'm not saying that they didn't play a good.

I'm not saying that the big 12 is not good, but no league is that good. And if there are, they won leagues or that good, though there are. Was it this year? Were they this year?

I don't think so. I don't think they were that great. But what I will say is that the simplistic response to what happened this year is let's go schedule 300 and we'll be great.

Well, that's fine. But Louisville is going to lose those games and that's going to hurt you. The 2024 Louisville or 2023 especially, they're going to lose those games. That's going to hurt you.

When when the Big Ten was getting nine or eight in the previous three years, they were not doing that. So the idea that you can gain this is, I think, a little bit speculative and it's dangerous. You're you're supposing you can do it because somebody got away with it.

But you also could find out that it doesn't work and it costs you. So if the agency wants to go do this, go do it. No, I don't want them to do it.

I don't. But I don't want other teams to do it either. They decide that's fine because my point about scheduling has always been this.

You schedule to what you think your team needs to get ready for the league and for March. You do it. You're right. Your choice.

But when you do, there will be consequences to that. To the decision, either if you schedule too hard and you grind your team into hamburger or you schedule too soft and your team gets bored or you schedule too soft. And the committee says that's a seed line or that's two seed lines.

Now, the consequences may not be great, but they exist. And that's what that's what each team has to decide for itself. But when the SEC got better in basketball, they did not get better by scheduling three hundreds. Right. They got better by scheduling more challenging games. And it has completely revolutionized their league.

I agree. I think the SEC is a very good league. Will it matter, Mike, to Corsi of the Sporting News, will it matter to the narrative if the ACC has another like they had the last three years run in March where, hey, how did that team get to a Final Four Miami? How did that team get to a Sweet 16 when they probably should admit shouldn't have been in the field? Syracuse. Will it matter to the narrative?

Because three years in a row, that stuff has happened and it has been conveniently forgotten. Well, I think that look, if Clemson winds up in the Elite Eight, like call me, you know, I mean, because, you know, Clemson just got done losing the Boston College by twenty five. So I if North Carolina and Duke make the Sweet 16, say, you know, they're North Carolina and Duke and they are sure to get there. They should get like the the there's going to be a lot of conversation about the Mountain West getting six teams. And then a lot of them are going to lose, if not all in before we get to the regional round, because they're seated to do that. Right.

I always say, Adam, if somebody doesn't lose the games, we'll be playing forever. That's what they're there for. And so, you know, they needed nearly every Mountain West team except San Diego State into a loss. Why they did that, I don't know. I don't understand how you can elevate San Diego State with a mediocre resume to a five and punish right. Nevada with a much stronger resume all the way down to a 10. That the disparity there doesn't make any sense because they're basically playing in the same swimming pool.

So how does one get wet and the other doesn't? I don't understand that. And if you are if you are you saying like six Mountain West conference teams made it and obviously New Mexico gets in because they won the tournament. Correct. They won the correct. They wouldn't have gotten in otherwise.

Yes. Right. So New Mexico State, they didn't steal one of their own bids, which is somewhat curious since theoretically that should happen, but it didn't.

It didn't happen in the case either. Virginia was still allowed to play in the first four, even though NC State stole a bid from somebody. But if if all of your teams are scheduled in the same general area, aren't they basically saying that the league and these teams were good, but there weren't that good? It's like the whole notion that that leagues don't get bids, teams do. It misses me from this standpoint is that more than half of your schedule are league games. Sure. So are isn't that isn't that a contradiction right off the bounce that leagues do get bids? To an extent, please. Like I said, the pool you're in will help you get bid.

We will help you get a bid. If you're playing difficult games every night, it'll either help you or hurt you. If you're not quite good enough, it's going to hurt you. It's going to punish you. You're going to.

Oh, my goodness. Here comes another game. It's a struggle to win.

Oh, there's another L. That happens in leagues and in some other leagues. It helps to have teams like, oh, gosh, Louisville come to town. We're really struggling.

This is going to help so much. So it all makes a difference in how and how you are evaluated, without a doubt. But they don't say, well, you finished fourth in your league and so you have to go because we're putting fifth in. And they don't say, well, we've already got six Mountain West teams.

We can't put a seventh in. They don't do that. Correct. That I 100 percent agree with. But it's I think it's a it's it's inaccurate to say that leagues don't get teams because you play so many more games against your league.

All right. Let me just close on this with Mike to Corsi of the Sporting News. We this is not a prediction of what will happen is Connecticut as I think they are clearly the best team in the country. I don't think there is a team that has as much as Connecticut as again doesn't guarantee anything they could lose to anybody.

Maybe not anybody, but there's no guarantee that they even get to the second week because basketball is this way. But do you see Connecticut as the clear favorite as well? Yeah, I I'm trying to think of the last time that I looked at the field and saw as big a disparity between Connecticut and the rest of the field. And I don't want to invoke 1991 Vegas because I think that sounds like I'm putting them in that category and they're not in that category.

Right. But it's more the year than it is the team. OK. UConn is the one team that I look at of all the teams in this field. And I say they have everything that a typical champion has the only one out of everybody. And I mean, like you can look at the one line, the two line of Tennessee is not that far off, but they're so inconsistent offensively.

But the rest of them just don't have what you usually have. Arizona's point guard, Kyle and Boswell think he's going to be a good player. He's not there yet. And maybe he becomes that player this month.

But it's going to he's going to have to hustle because he wasn't that last week. And so that's what that's what I see when I look at UConn. There are just certain qualities that every champion has. And the most obvious ones are a few, you know, at least one NBA first round draft pick on their team rim protection from a from a shot blocker, a top 20 offense and defense, a point guard who knows, preferably who's a pro, but at the end or maybe a high school five star.

But at least knows his way around the backcourt at a high level in the way that Tristan Newton does for UConn now. And you have to have all of these things and a few others. If you don't, you look like you might win it.

You're rolling through this thing and eventually you run into a wall. It happens every year to somebody. Yeah, here's why UConn will probably win it. Ron Polillo, the late Ron Polillo, Arnold Horshak is a University of Connecticut grad.

And really, that's all the analysis anybody needs. That is Mike DeCorcy of the Sporting News at TSN. Mike on Twitter. Mike, thank you so much for have for hanging out. Appreciate it. Thanks, Adam.