0:00

The. Boston Marathon presented by Bank of

0:02

America has thousands of runners running for

0:04

thousands of reasons. I'm running to

0:06

raise money for chilies of a national.

0:08

celebrity. Athletes can keep running to. For

0:11

every mother, cats because all women

0:13

deserve access to quality maternity care.

0:15

For St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, every

0:17

kid with cancer could just wants to

0:19

be a kid again. A joint Bank

0:21

of America in supporting this year's winners give you

0:24

can it be of a.com such help because references

0:26

to charity organizations is not into wasn't by Bank

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of America corp. Covered twenty four. This

0:31

week on Underdogs, it's the men's tournament, and we're on

0:33

to the Sweet 16. We've got

0:35

a whole lot of chalk, a whole lot of

0:37

offense. And one viral tweet gone wrong. The crime

0:39

goes up both far and near

0:41

for Underdog. Underdog. Head

0:43

down, going on right now. Borrow,

0:45

up to short, five seconds left

0:47

in the game. Do you believe

0:50

in Marah Holmes? Yes! By

0:52

George! The dream is

0:54

alive! Underdogs. And

0:56

I guess there's only one thing left to do. Win

1:00

the whole fucking thing. It's

1:04

the Underdogs, back with you. A sweet

1:06

episode as we are heading into the

1:08

Sweet 16 for both the men's and

1:10

women's NCAA tournaments. I am

1:12

your host, Jordan Brenner. Joined as always

1:14

by the best co-host in the game,

1:16

Peter Keating. Hello, Peter. Hey,

1:19

Jordan, how's it going? I have to say, I'm a

1:21

little... Oh, there's chalk

1:23

in the air. I'm a little... It's a little dusty

1:25

for me, but things are going well. How about you?

1:27

Yeah, for a couple of guys who specialize in Underdogs,

1:29

you know, well, the men's side, we got off to

1:31

a good start in the first round, but then in

1:33

the second round, you're right, got very chalky. But I

1:36

will say this, you've heard me say it a million

1:38

times since we've known each other. The

1:40

best tournaments are exactly like this one, where you

1:42

get a few first-round upsets,

1:44

sort of whet the appetite, captivate

1:46

you, excite you. The second round

1:49

gives you a lot of near-upsets

1:51

with exciting games. We didn't fully

1:53

get that, but the Texas A&M

1:55

Houston game was close. And then

1:57

what you want is a largely chalky

1:59

suite. 2016 because the

2:01

matchups are delicious and it basically

2:03

guarantees that you've got good teams

2:05

going forward because honestly It's

2:08

a great story when you end up with

2:10

San Diego State in Florida Atlantic in the

2:12

Final Four But it's just not as intriguing

2:14

as a bunch of the big boys So

2:16

I'm I'm very excited about this men's tournament

2:18

and the women's tournament We really we disagree

2:20

a little bit about that every year because

2:22

every year I get so revved up for

2:24

these underdogs Then when they lose I'm like,

2:27

oh, what am I supposed to like turn around

2:29

and like really be psyched about the intricacies of

2:31

like Iowa State's offense like I don't

2:33

even know like half the time I don't even know who's playing

2:35

in the Elite Eight I think you're

2:37

right when it's San Diego State versus Florida

2:40

Atlantic and they're underdogs We didn't love but

2:42

if you remember when Butler and VC you

2:44

were in the Final Four I mean VC

2:46

you was our our models favorite team ever.

2:48

We were we were kind of excited then,

2:50

you know Yeah, but it's been like Peter

2:52

They're like kids in high school who were

2:54

born, you know during that that March Madness

2:56

run So times are changing we'll talk about

2:58

Marquette because they brought Shaka smart on TV

3:00

to say this is first time in the

3:03

sweet 16 Since that year and I

3:05

was like first of all, it's been that long and

3:07

second of all Shaka looks a little Shaka

3:09

Doesn't look as much older as I do but he

3:11

looks a little older So before

3:13

we move on to sort of look at the

3:15

sweet 16 matchups I want in the men's side

3:17

and then if you're if you're listening on the

3:19

podcast we're gonna do the women's side as well

3:22

there, but Let's

3:24

talk first If

3:26

you're totally unfamiliar what we do. We have

3:28

our slingshot model. We write about the athletic

3:30

we talked about it here We project upsets

3:33

where there's at least a 5 seed difference

3:35

So in the first

3:37

round, I think three of our top

3:39

five upsets on the board hit the

3:41

big one that didn't Was

3:43

New Mexico against Clemson, but what's interesting about this Peter

3:45

and it's something we talk about how we can share

3:47

the audience is That line

3:49

had moved to the point where New Mexico entered the game

3:51

as the favorite and even though we gave them about a

3:54

57% Chance to win that

3:56

was very much in line with the

3:58

market more people were taking New Mexico

4:00

over Clemson, again the books had them

4:02

favored. So in terms of leverage, it

4:05

didn't really do much for you to

4:07

pick them in the first place. When

4:11

we started doing this, there was no such thing as

4:13

somebody saying, if this team, when we pick an underdog,

4:16

no such thing as somebody writing in or calling

4:18

in to say, would this really be

4:20

an upset? Because they were all upset because what

4:23

we're doing is picking against bracket odds. And

4:25

if an 11 B to 6, it

4:27

was an upset. Last year, with the

4:30

spread of legalized sports betting and just

4:32

the spread of information in general, we

4:34

really started to notice that almost as

4:36

soon as we could pick what you

4:38

and I might call obvious

4:40

underdogs, like good teams that were just

4:42

really grossly misseated, as soon

4:45

as we could get the word out that these teams

4:47

were in the wrong spot in the bracket, betting

4:49

lines were already moving toward them,

4:52

sometimes in their favor outright,

4:54

sometimes including with New Mexico and

4:56

Clemson to the point where we

4:58

could no longer say this team

5:00

that looked like a terrific underdog

5:02

because of its seating was even

5:04

a good value to bet anymore.

5:07

That's what happened with New Mexico. And

5:10

what's funny is New Mexico, again, our top, most

5:13

likely upset, was the only one of the

5:16

four 11 seats that didn't win. Otherwise,

5:18

you had Oregon, you had Duquesne, and

5:20

Peter, whom

5:23

I'm forgetting. And

5:25

he stayed. Of course. He

5:27

stayed. Of course. Yeah. Jordan,

5:30

you have, everyone listening, everyone who ever

5:32

reads this has to get that when

5:34

we say there's a good chance of

5:36

an underdog winning, it's not like picking

5:38

Yukon. It's like picking a team. No,

5:40

seriously, the team has a 30, if

5:42

we're really lucky, 40 or 45% chance of winning,

5:47

combine that with the fact that stuff

5:49

happens. You have to understand, when we

5:51

say there's a really good underdog chance

5:54

of winning, at best we're talking 50-50,

5:56

and then there's a whole landscape of

5:58

upsets that are essentially accidents, we

6:00

wouldn't want them to go back

6:05

to work. No matter how hard anyone

6:07

works, including us full-time for months and

6:09

months, you can't make it completely predictable.

6:11

So when we're right about a trend,

6:13

it's interesting. We don't like

6:15

what we call schoolyard bullies. Teams

6:18

that dominate inferior conferences have a hard

6:20

time turning around and beating better teams.

6:23

And we saw that again this year with

6:25

Vermont crushed by Duke. But

6:27

guess who popped up as an underdog? Yale.

6:30

You have to say sometimes stuff just

6:32

happened. There's unexplainable upsets with Fairleigh Dickinson

6:34

last year, Yale this year. So

6:36

let's talk about that one for a second. That was the one our

6:38

model got most wrong, and then I want to talk about the one

6:40

we got most right. So that

6:43

was rough because again, we've been talking about

6:45

for a few weeks. Again, my wife demands

6:47

accountability on the show, so we're going to

6:49

be accountable. We've been talking for weeks about

6:52

how Yale wasn't even the

6:54

best killer in the Ivy League. That

6:56

was Cornell or Princeton, that Yale played

6:59

a much safer, less

7:01

risk-seeking game. Just they didn't have a

7:03

lot of statistical commonalities with typical

7:06

underdogs, which we've seen. And by contrast,

7:09

Auburn, and

7:11

this is not just in our model, Ken Palm,

7:13

lots of places, had them as not just a

7:15

top 10 team, but often a top five team,

7:17

great on both offense and defense. I

7:20

don't know how to put it any other way other

7:22

than you can predict all you want and you

7:24

can give a team a 5% chance of winning,

7:26

which we did. Sometimes the 5%

7:28

chance happens and a team just shits the bed. And

7:30

that's, I think, what happened with Auburn, right? Look,

7:35

Yale, something like the 90th best

7:37

team in the country, Auburn, top

7:39

five, according to analytics models, there

7:42

usually is no way a matchup

7:45

can counteract that gap, right? The bigger, stronger,

7:47

faster team comes out and blows the inferior

7:49

team off the court, despite

7:52

whatever intelligence granting,

7:54

I guess that Yale has

7:56

some intelligence or stylistic shrewdness.

8:00

The underdog has usually not in October

8:02

to come to camp. But retrospectively, you

8:04

can say that any time a team

8:06

keeps things very slow and any

8:09

time an over dog starts to

8:11

play terribly, the little

8:14

guy's got a chance. It happened with FDU last

8:16

year and it happened with Yale this year. Auburn

8:19

went 7 of 20 on 3s against Yale. The

8:24

20 is too low. The 7 is way too low.

8:26

They didn't shoot particularly well from anywhere. They shot 51%

8:28

from the field. If

8:31

I told you Auburn shot 51% from

8:34

the field, you would have thought they beat Yale on a

8:36

cakewalk. They have 14 turnovers. So that's what

8:38

I'm going to get. Weird

8:40

things can happen in a one game setting. Two

8:43

weird things happen. First of all, three

8:45

minutes into the game, Chad

8:48

Baker and Mazar gets tossed. Should

8:51

Auburn be able to beat Yale most nights without

8:53

him? Yes. But that makes a

8:56

difference. It throws off your continuity. It's an important defensive

8:58

player for them, etc. The second is

9:00

the 14 turnovers, which I can't explain because they

9:02

were not a high turnover team all season. Yale

9:04

didn't force the turnovers. I was watching that game.

9:08

It kind of drives me crazy because you

9:10

may remember I picked Auburn as my outside

9:12

the top three pick to win the national

9:14

championship. I do recall that. All

9:17

right. So weird things happen,

9:19

but I want to talk

9:21

about a weird thing that happened in our favor and then

9:24

offer a defense of John Calipari, which

9:26

you would expect from me. Oh my

9:28

goodness. We're the underdogs, Jordan. We're the

9:30

underdogs. Okay. So if

9:33

you've been asleep for the past two weeks, you

9:35

may have missed the fact that Oakland is a

9:38

14 seed, beat Kentucky as a three. What's cool

9:40

about this is, and we were really shocked when

9:42

we saw it for the first time, this game

9:44

started popping in our model and

9:47

we had to do like a second and third look. We gave it about

9:49

a 19 or 20% chance of occurring. The

9:53

money line only implied about a 12% chance. So

9:55

we said, look, this is if you're going to

9:57

take a shot in a bracket pool. You're

10:00

going to take a shot on a long shot bet, which I

10:02

actually did. There's leverage here. And

10:04

obviously we know it worked out.

10:07

Um, you know, when you've got a 47 year

10:10

old, you know, guy with a receiving hairline

10:12

hitting, you know, 10 threes

10:16

off screen, I, you know, I don't even know

10:18

what was happening there with Golky. Um, you know,

10:20

Townsend we knew is a very good player. Um,

10:24

I'm trying to think of who Golky's

10:27

hair line reminds me of. I Jay

10:29

Bill said it was Dan Aykroyd's character

10:31

in Tommy boy. That's pretty good. Yeah.

10:33

I kept thinking of Dracula actually. Um,

10:35

but, uh, that's the only thing I

10:37

could come up with, but Tommy

10:40

boy is pretty good. Right. And then again, it's just

10:42

a situation. Look, Kentucky

10:44

had its issues, but our model, and we talked

10:46

about this going in, said Kentucky was overseeded as

10:48

a three seed that we only thought they were

10:51

the 19th best team in the country. That there

10:53

were four seeds, namely Auburn and Duke in particular,

10:55

that deserved a three seed over them. Uh,

10:58

so just from

11:00

the start, Kentucky was probably a little bit

11:02

overrated, but I want to, you know, sorry,

11:04

let me, let me stop and say, is

11:07

there anything you learned from that Oakland upset that

11:09

we can apply going forward? Okay. Yeah. People might

11:11

be saying, you know, what are you so excited

11:13

about this for you guys gave it a 20%

11:15

chance of happening. It happened. You just said stuff

11:17

happens. This, this game is actually fascinating

11:20

to me for two big reasons.

11:22

One is like you just mentioned

11:24

with Koki. This game,

11:26

the way this game went was enough to

11:28

make me reconsider my, my opinion

11:31

until now backed by the data that

11:33

I've seen that experience

11:35

by itself. Doesn't really,

11:38

or time with a team by itself doesn't

11:40

really matter. Every year you have guys, uh,

11:43

pundits and analysts saying, look at this freshman point

11:45

guard. He's so great. You know, he brings so

11:48

much energy. Then they turn around with another matchup.

11:50

They say, uh, look at

11:52

these guys. They've been together five years. They're experienced guys

11:54

and you it's half six and one hand, half a

11:56

dozen, the other, but Jordan, we've seen it a couple

11:58

of times now, St. There are

12:00

other kind of deep underdogs coming out

12:03

of nowhere examples. Maybe

12:05

for a small program squad, that continuity,

12:07

that minutes of experience together matters. And

12:09

of course, in this matchup, they're facing

12:11

the archetype of the one and done

12:14

model, so much so that people in

12:16

Kentucky are now asking, has John Palacari

12:18

too and his cousin John Calipari,

12:22

the coach, have they ruined the

12:25

sport of basketball for Kentucky? They

12:28

might want him out because they're the other extreme.

12:30

So one thing I think we actually have to

12:32

reevaluate maybe because of this game is, what

12:34

is the role of that togetherness, the experience,

12:37

the extra year, the COVID year, all this

12:39

stuff coming together for one team being completely

12:41

absent for the overdog? So I

12:43

have a lot to say on the subject, and it's also going

12:45

to have to lead us into a discussion of the tweet. But

12:48

first, what I want to say is, I think

12:51

there are some signals that maybe there's

12:54

something going on with experience, but I

12:56

want to caution everyone from jumping

12:58

to conclusions. We've tried

13:00

to study this, the data just isn't,

13:03

there's not enough of a sample size

13:05

yet post COVID to draw true determinations,

13:07

but age

13:09

is one thing, experience is another thing.

13:12

So yes, and

13:15

we're writing an article about this right now, it's going to be out at

13:17

the athletic, you should read it, it's going to be good. Teams

13:21

are older right now for two

13:23

reasons. One, the COVID year basically

13:25

gave kids an extra year of eligibility, which is

13:28

how you have poor Mac Ryan

13:30

somehow still playing college basketball for North Carolina.

13:34

Secondly, NIL is

13:37

creating more incentive for

13:39

older players to stay in college, because in

13:42

some cases they can make a couple hundred

13:44

thousand dollars, rather than going, if they're

13:46

not much of an MBA prospect, going and trying to

13:48

play in the G league for less money, or Europe

13:51

or something like that. So the game has

13:53

gotten older, however, the

13:55

game has also become less

13:59

connected, there's less. continuity because of the transfer

14:01

portal. Because guys no longer have to sit

14:03

out a year, there's

14:05

annual free agency. And the

14:08

roster turnover on most teams is

14:10

shocking. You're turning over 70-80% of your roster in

14:12

a lot of cases. So what's happening, and I've

14:14

been talking to a couple coaches about this, this

14:17

is my theory again, we'll be writing about it,

14:19

scoring is up right now in

14:22

college basketball. And what you're seeing is

14:24

this, most coaches will tell you

14:26

that it is much harder to teach defense

14:28

than offense. It takes longer, takes longer. It's

14:30

not just about teaching a system, but it's

14:32

players getting comfortable with one another and knowing

14:34

where they are and help schemes and relating

14:36

to one another and so forth. So

14:38

what you have, whereas a lot of these

14:41

teams are running similar offenses, it's a lot

14:43

of ball screen stuff, a lot of dribble

14:45

handoffs, NBA pace and space. So

14:47

what you have is experienced,

14:51

developed offensive players who

14:53

are just better shooters at 22 than

14:56

they were at 19. Understand pick and rolls more

14:58

than they did at 19. Transferring

15:00

in, not having the defensive continuity,

15:02

so they're still being forced

15:04

to try to gel together, but the offense

15:06

is way ahead of the defense right now. And

15:09

so that's what you're seeing in these games. That's

15:12

how Texas A&M scores 58 points in a first

15:14

half. That's why scoring is up

15:16

all over the country. Coaches are

15:18

agreeing with this premise. And I think

15:20

you're seeing that when you take it

15:22

back to Kentucky, where you

15:24

really saw the issues for the M.L. season

15:27

was on defense and

15:29

they had some experienced players, but they didn't have a lot

15:31

of guys who played together. So it's fascinating

15:33

you say that because I said there were

15:35

two big things about this game that fascinated

15:37

me. One was the experience factor. The other

15:40

one, which you've now connected to this, the

15:42

Kentucky was one of the teams in the

15:44

upper, among the upper seas with the most

15:46

pronounced split between their offense on ranking and

15:48

defense. They were not a top 100 team

15:51

in defense. I wondered, should you

15:53

even qualify to be a three seed if you're

15:55

not a top 100 team in defense? Everything we're

15:57

saying would look a little better for Kentucky.

16:00

more sense if they had been a 4, 5 or 6

16:02

seed. So these are big changes in the game. I think

16:04

we should take a break though and explore when we come back. Buckeye

16:31

stepped in and made me look good and saved me over

16:33

$80,000 a year on transportation costs.

16:37

We are Buckeye Express Logistics Services.

16:39

614-272-6730. Or

16:43

online at buckeyexpresslogistics.com. means

16:57

going forward in the Sweet 16. I just want to

17:00

take a moment to think the right words fetch about

17:03

a tweet I

17:05

sent late last week that

17:07

kind of went viral but was really

17:10

misinterpreted by a lot of the not smartest people

17:12

in the world. So Jordan, people disagree

17:14

with you. Suddenly you call them morons. Yeah, that's

17:16

how it's going to go. Yeah, that's how it's

17:18

going to go. I think that's unfortunate. I

17:21

pointed out that the University of North

17:23

Carolina, a fine institution of higher learning,

17:25

has a starting 5 whose

17:28

age is almost identical to that of

17:30

the Oklahoma City Thunder, a professional basketball

17:32

team that is currently winning the Western

17:34

Conference. Seems

17:36

harmless enough to me, Jordan. It's remarkable. It's

17:38

just some numbers. Lou

17:40

Dort of the Thunder, who I believe has

17:43

been guarding other NBA teams' top perimeter players

17:45

since Dominique Wilkins was in the league, is

17:47

still only 24, whereas Cormack Ryan of

17:50

the Tar Heels will turn 26 later this calendar

17:52

year. But

17:55

I had a couple points. First of all,

17:57

the main point is, holy cow, that's amazing

17:59

what are doing to be

18:01

that good with that. It's a lineup that's basically the same age

18:03

as a college team. The

18:05

second point is I do think the

18:07

college game has gotten too old. I don't think 25 and 26

18:09

year olds should be

18:12

playing college basketball. But nowhere did

18:14

I say that North Carolina has

18:16

done anything wrong by playing

18:18

by the rules or that or

18:20

Mac Ryan has done anything wrong by getting another free

18:23

year of education. If this is the system that's fine.

18:25

How do you get to be 26 and still

18:28

playing on the NCAA? He's pursuing a

18:30

PhD in medieval studies. What's the longest

18:33

amount of time you can take to

18:35

maintain your eligibility? This is his third

18:37

school. He also, by the way, he

18:40

prepped a year out of high school and he went

18:42

to Stanford and played three years at Notre Dame. Back

18:45

up a minute. What does it matter that's his third

18:47

year? Is he been sitting out from year to year?

18:50

No, the COVID year gave everybody a fifth year to

18:52

play. Okay, so let's be fair about this, which is

18:55

that athletes got that extra year of eligibility because a

18:57

bunch of them had to spend a year in quarantine.

18:59

I mean, I personally think that's

19:01

an okay thing and the effects of

19:03

it will literally fade over time. Right?

19:05

Let's see what happens. Yes,

19:07

this will shrink. It should take

19:10

a year off these numbers, but you'd still

19:12

have poor Mac Ryan

19:14

at 24 playing. Anyway, my point

19:16

was it was not meant

19:18

to criticize him or his lovely program.

19:21

I do think there needs to be some thoughts about whether we want

19:23

18, 19 year olds playing against

19:25

grown men and what that means in terms of

19:27

the development and what college basketball is about. But

19:30

that's for another show where I reinvent the whole

19:32

game. Peter, in the

19:34

meantime, Yahoo stole my tweet,

19:37

passed it off as their own, made a

19:39

graphic. I hope our producer Sarah

19:41

shows that on the DraftKings

19:43

Network broadcast. How dare you, Yahoo? Yeah,

19:46

so whatever you think of Jordan's opinion, first of

19:48

all, I mean, cut it out

19:50

with the aggregators just copying stuff. That's ridiculous.

19:53

Give some credit where credit is due. Second

19:55

of all, look, this shows what

19:58

you're talking about, what you're talking about. in

20:00

terms of when the college game ages

20:03

and when there are players transferring and

20:05

with extra years of eligibility. What this

20:08

is doing is it's accentuating the split

20:10

between offense and defense among the very

20:12

best teams. Jordan, among the top teams,

20:14

there were way more top seeded teams.

20:16

There were way more teams with

20:20

big, high rankings in offense who are

20:22

meh or worse in defense than we

20:24

have seen before. I think it's because,

20:26

like you're saying, it's easy to assemble

20:29

offenses on the fly than defensive cohesiveness.

20:31

And that's what makes one matchup

20:33

in particular in the Sweet Sixteen so

20:36

interesting. You've got the number one offense

20:38

in the country, Illinois. They're

20:41

92nd in defense, according to kenpom.com, against

20:43

Iowa State, which has the number

20:46

one defense in the country and

20:48

ranks 49th in offense. So just

20:50

the classic irresistible force, immovable object

20:52

game. And it's largely a toss

20:54

up. How excited are you for

20:56

this one, Peter? And do you

20:58

have any insight into who's gonna

21:00

win? I'm super excited because we

21:02

often say, in studying underdogs, oh,

21:04

they grow up so fast. Sometimes

21:06

underdogs are just small programs that

21:09

maintain excellence in their niche forever. But

21:12

often, they're good underdogs

21:14

on their way from being bad teams to

21:16

good teams, right? Because in that middle stage,

21:18

you can still be an underdog, but you

21:20

still can be pretty good and scare at

21:22

better teams. We caught Iowa State like

21:25

that two years ago, right? When they're on their

21:27

way from, I mean, bottoming out

21:29

to where few programs had been before, going two

21:31

and 22, and now they're

21:33

one of the five or 10 or four or five best teams

21:35

in the country. Right when they

21:37

were on the ascent, we caught them as

21:39

a fun underdog. What they've kept since then

21:41

is this uncanny ability to turn the other

21:44

teams, to turn the other, to turn

21:46

the ball over for the other team. I mean, to

21:48

course other teams into mistakes. And I think that's the

21:50

key in this matchup. You can be as good an

21:52

offensive as you want, but when you get disrupted in

21:54

ways that you don't understand, we find those teams often

21:56

don't do as well as we think they will in

21:59

match-ups against great defenses. You said it. This is

22:01

the most interesting piece of this game is the

22:03

turnover battle Iowa State second

22:06

in the country forcing turnovers, Illinois

22:08

third worst in the country in

22:10

four turnovers, so Illinois

22:12

good guards good handle will they be

22:14

able to handle Iowa State's pressure and

22:16

not give them extra possessions if

22:20

so, I think Illinois wins, but if they Get

22:24

taken out of their rhythm offensively if they do turn

22:26

the ball over They're not going to get it back

22:28

to the other end that would be the difference for

22:30

Iowa State right This is this is like look in

22:32

statistical terms like if I say to you Here's

22:35

a batter in baseball who's hitting

22:38

320. Here's a pitcher who's giving up a

22:40

batting average of 320 What

22:42

do you think that batter will hit against that pitcher?

22:45

Stinkively you might say you'll hit 320 but no no no

22:47

no no if one team is way better than average and

22:49

the other team is Way worse than average at the same

22:51

thing they're matching up on you're going to get an extreme

22:53

result I think that ball is going to be flying all

22:55

over the place I don't think Illinois is going to be

22:57

able to keep their hand, but Illinois doesn't turn it over

22:59

a lot themselves So it's really much

23:02

more about Can they

23:04

you know again? How will they handle out because

23:06

they're not going to turn Iowa State over right?

23:09

It's just a question of can they handle Iowa State's

23:11

pressure and that remains to be seen Peter there We

23:13

have one game that that Counts

23:16

as a bracket breaker game. It's 11th

23:18

seeded NC State against second seeded Marquette

23:21

It's the only one that our model is applicable

23:23

for and we've been on NC State for a

23:26

while And we've been warning you about Marquette for

23:28

a while, and they almost lost to Colorado So

23:30

there's some warning signs going off here look Marquette

23:33

almost didn't make it past Western, Kentucky

23:35

Right they beat Colorado by an

23:38

unimpressive four points They just don't

23:40

hit the boards at either end

23:42

now I was just praising

23:44

Shaka smart before he's put together another great

23:46

team a team that does turn opponents over

23:48

But there are big warning signs about how

23:50

they could be vulnerable NC State Look,

23:53

we have not found that recent performance

23:55

matters all that much But

23:58

in cases where there's kind of what you have to say

24:00

a fundamentally different team if

24:07

Kolek was out for Marquette, we'd say, well that

24:09

makes a big difference. Well, look, when

24:12

Burns had a double-double in the last

24:14

NC State game and they said that's

24:16

his second double-double of the season, I was like,

24:18

wait, what? I thought for watching

24:20

NC State in the tournament, he had like

24:22

20 double-doubles. I'm exaggerating, but I thought he

24:24

was a double-double of the team. But no,

24:26

the offense didn't go flow through this guy

24:28

who's been unstoppable all year the way it

24:30

has in the past three or four games.

24:32

NC State's doing a better job getting the

24:34

ball inside to him and doing a better

24:36

job shutting down opponents on the perimeter. I

24:38

think they're a few points stronger than everyone

24:40

thinks. So look, our model likes NC

24:44

State a little bit better than the historical average.

24:46

Usually 11 seeds win only 16% of the time

24:50

against two seeds. Our model thinks

24:52

there's about a 20-22% chance of this happening.

24:56

But Jordan, to go on the other other

24:58

hand, betting markets already making

25:01

NC State, giving NC State implied odds of

25:04

30% of winning this game. So is their

25:06

value there? No, but NC State's a dangerous

25:08

underdog. That's what I'm seeing. Well,

25:10

speaking of dangerous underdogs, real quick before we have to

25:12

go, I'm looking again, a very chalky bracket where it's

25:15

ones and twos and a lot of threes.

25:20

Is there anyone standing out sort of under the

25:22

radar who might be able to make a final

25:24

four run? I'm eyeing Gonzaga who looked really good

25:27

in both their first two games and we know

25:29

Purdue is just

25:31

waiting to collapse. I think that could

25:33

be an upset we see in the

25:35

Sweet 16. Anything else standing out to

25:37

you? Absolutely, Gonzaga. They're playing at a

25:39

very high level all year. The

25:41

only reason we are they're outside

25:44

the top three seeds is because they were under

25:46

seeded. I like Houston

25:48

to win it all. I have all year. Wow,

25:50

real underdog there, PK. Well, you know, everyone loves

25:53

Yukon so much that I'm going to call anyone other

25:55

than Yukon and Underdog, number one and number two. If

25:58

you didn't collapse... After

26:00

what Texas A&M did to Houston, you

26:03

can stand in there and beat anybody.

26:05

There's a completely non-statistical take, but that

26:07

was an impressive guddy overtime. There are

26:09

no players left. And let me just

26:12

say before I tease our

26:14

Instagram, as our producer, Sarah, would like us

26:16

to do, the Duke

26:18

Houston game should be fascinating. I want you

26:20

to pay attention to how tightly the game is called. Houston

26:23

is physical and strong, but you saw

26:25

against Texas A&M when they were officiated

26:27

for that. They had four guys foul

26:29

out. Houston's going to try

26:32

to punk Duke on the perimeter. Duke has

26:34

young perimeter players other than Jeremy Roch. They're not

26:36

as physically strong. If they

26:38

call fouls, Duke has a great chance to win

26:40

this game. If they don't, it could be a

26:42

Houston blowout. But Duke is playing at a high

26:44

level right now. It's just a question of the

26:46

physicality of this matchup. And speaking of

26:49

physicality, I'm going to get slapped across the

26:51

face. If I don't tell you

26:53

guys to please check out our

26:55

new Instagram account, it

26:58

is Underdog's show. Sarah

27:01

McCrory, our producer, is posting great clips

27:03

there, which is hard

27:05

to do when the clips come from us. So

27:08

check it out. We have seized

27:10

control of our social media and given it to our

27:13

producer, Sarah, who's doing a hell of a job. If

27:15

you don't like us, reward her, please. So check it out. I'm

27:27

Bill Subs. You need to not go

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