Jon Rothstein
speaker
140 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Jon Rothstein’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
42!
Where are we going to see you? Crazy schedule. I'm with you guys tonight, which is awesome. It's a tradition unlike any other. I'm going to fly out to Ohio in the morning. I'll be doing the first four games with Spear Adidas and Jim Spanarkle on Tuesday and Wednesday. I think from the...
The big games in the first four, it's the best first four in the history of the first four with Carolina, San Diego State, and Xavier against Texas. And then we are going to go, after we do Wednesday's broadcast, up to Cleveland, and we're going to do those games. So that's Michigan State against Bryant, New Mexico against Marquette.
That's a great matchup between Donovan Dent and Cam Jones, the two great guards. And then we're also going to do Alabama, Robert Morris, and St. Mary's Vanderbilt. So pumped to be in the great state of Ohio here coming up this week.
This is one of the biggest miscarriage of justices that I've seen in all my years covering college basketball. And when you think right now about what the criteria is to get teams into the NCAA tournament, at the end of the day, what is always going to usurp everything is who did you play, where did you play them, and did you win? North Carolina was one in 12 against quad one opponents.
That is just a fact of life. And then when you look at some of the teams that were left out of the bracket, the two that I'm looking at specifically is West Virginia and Indiana. And remember with North Carolina's resume, Carolina also had a quad three defeat on its resume, which Indiana who was left out of the tournament in favor of North Carolina did not have.
And if you're looking at big wins right now, North Carolina had won against the field. It had the win against UCLA in the CBS Sports Classic. Let's look at what Indiana had. And again, remember the Hoosiers had no quad three and four losses.
Indiana won a road game at Michigan State in East Lansing, who is a two seed right now, okay, in the South region, which I've named the region of depth because of the depth that exists with the Spartans, Auburn, Texas A&M, and other programs in that region. And Indiana also beat Purdue at home.
I don't understand how Carolina can get in over Indiana if Indiana won a game at Michigan State and beat Purdue and doesn't have a quad three or four loss, and Carolina does. But what about West Virginia? The miscarriage of justice continues. West Virginia went to Allen Fieldhouse and beat Kansas. West Virginia beat Iowa State at home with three seed.
and West Virginia on a neutral court beat Arizona State and beat Gonzaga. This is one of the biggest miscarriage of justices that I have seen in nearly 20 years covering college basketball on the national level. Now, I will say this. Because North Carolina... does not deserve to be in the NCAA tournament that has no bearing on what the Tar Heels can do when they get into the NCAA tournament.
And I'll give you a perfect example. 14 years ago, I did not believe that VCU deserved to be into the NCAA tournament. VCU then started in the first four and went all the way to the final four under Shaka Smart. And VCU in the regular season that year averaged 8.3, made three-point shots a game, and then made 12 in the NCAA tournament.
So what Carolina does moving forward has no bearing on whether or not the Tar Heels deserve to be in the field. But my heart breaks for West Virginia. It breaks for Indiana that North Carolina got this opportunity instead of them.
He was very, very clear that he was not involved in, obviously, what was going on in the room when North Carolina was brought up. But you guys know this as well as I do. It always helps to help out your friends. And when you're in a situation like this, where the committee chair is from North Carolina, it's obviously going to influence the other committee members.
I understand he can leave the premises when a resume of the Tar Heels is going to be brought to the table, but I'm sorry. This, again, is the biggest miscarriage of justice that I have seen in nearly 20 years covering college basketball at the national level. My heart breaks for Darren DeVries in West Virginia. My heart breaks for Indiana and its fan base.
But again, North Carolina is going to get an opportunity here in the first four to do some major things in this bracket if it can beat San Diego State coming up here on Tuesday night.
Yeah, it feels like in a lot of areas of the bracket, we did not have a compass and there was no rhyme or reason in a lot of things that were going on. I thought for certain that Gonzaga would have been better than an eight after it beat St. Mary's in Las Vegas last week in the WCC tournament. But I'm with you, Kat. I think there's a lot of different things that really stood out here.
Another thing that stood out to me, and I wasn't surprised about this, I felt with the way that the selection committee had treated the Mountain West last year by putting two teams into the first four in Dayton, that Boise State was vulnerable by not winning the automatic qualifier on Saturday, and that's what came to fruition.
Xavier had a pristine resume in quad three and four, and Xavier also, we have to remember – lost two games in December without Zach Fremantle in the lineup, who was a 17-7 guy at UConn in overtime and also by a basket at home against Marquette. As you guys know as well as I do, and we had heard this when we spoke to Bubba Cunningham, I believe on Friday,
Player availability matters in the NCAA tournament when you're evaluating teams. If Xavier obviously is going to have Zach Freeman on the NCAA tournament, which it will, it's going to be a much more formidable team. I think that is one of the biggest reasons why the Musketeers are going to hook up here with Texas in the first four on Wednesday.
And you guys know I've been doing the first four now for a number of years. We have never had brands like this in the big games in the first four in terms of you know, games on back-to-back nights, North Carolina and San Diego state have appeared in two of the last three national title games.
Showing 1–20 of 140 · page 1 of 7
Next →