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.
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Xavier is Xavier and get this UD arena is 47 miles away from the Cintas center where Xavier plays its home games. That's going to be obviously a Xavier home game and Texas has a lottery pick in Trey Johnson and it's Texas. Yeah. So I think, you know, the brands in this first four in terms of the marquee games are second to none. And I And I've said this, guys, time and time again.
The three of us haven't really schmoozed about this, but I want to put it out there right now. You guys know how I feel about NCAA tournament expansion. I've said for a long time that Jeff Goldblum said in The Lost World in 1997 that taking dinosaurs off this island was the worst idea in the history of long said history of bad ideas. Expanding the tournament will be worse than that.
But I do think this. I think if you're good enough to get an automatic qualifier to the NCAA tournament, you deserve to partake in the Thursday and Friday of the first week. I think if we made that shift and moved all AQs to Thursday, Friday, and then put the last eight at-large teams in the first four...
it would reward these programs again at the lower level and give them the NCAA tournament experience of Thursday, Friday, and also spruce up the way we start the tournament with maybe four bigger games instead of two.
It's very possible that we could have flip-flopped Iowa State and Wisconsin if that information was made privy to the committee before the selection went out. I remember it was 25 years ago now. Cincinnati had the best team in the country with Kenyon Martin in 2000. And Kenyon Martin broke his leg in the Conference USA tournament that year.
And Cincinnati, which had been dominant all year long, number one team consensus in the country, was dropped to the two line. And it was ridiculous. And Bob Huggins said it at the time. But they were evaluating Cincinnati without Kenyon Martin, who wound up being the number one player in the NBA draft. So I totally agree with you on that, Kat.
All right, guys, well, let's start right now on the top left of your bracket, which is the region of depth, the South region. Now, why is it the region of depth? I'm looking right now at these teams at the top, Auburn, Michigan State, Texas A&M, really deep rotations on all of these teams. All of these teams can really go into their bench. That's why I like it to be the region of depth.
I obviously got Auburn coming out of the top. I am going to take Creighton to beat Louisville at Rupp Arena, the Ryan Kalkbrenner factor. He's kind of like, I haven't really watched a hockey game in probably 30 years. Wasn't Martin Brodeur that famous goalie for the Devils in the 90s? Yeah, he's kind of like the Martin Brodeur of the Big East.
He's kind of like the goalie because he's so good defensively. Then I am going to take Michigan to beat UC San Diego.
Diego who's going to be a trendy upset pick and here's an upset I'm going to take Yale under James Jones a program that beat Auburn last year to pick off Texas A&M and a 13-4 game in Denver remember Yale beat Auburn last year beat Baylor in 2016 and then I think when you look at the next part of the bracket in this region of depth this is tailor-made for Ole Miss this is tailor-made for Chris Beard
to really, really go on a run right here. I felt all season long that Ole Miss reminded me of some of the teams that Chris Beard had at Texas Tech. I've got Ole Miss beating the winner of San Diego State Carolina and then beating a vulnerable Iowa State team without Keyshawn Gilbert. Ole Miss to the Sweet 16. I'm going to take Marquette to beat New Mexico and Michigan State to beat Marquette.
So in the Sweet 16 here, I'm going to give you Auburn against Michigan. and I've got Ole Miss against Michigan State. I've got Auburn against Michigan State in a regional final, and I've got Tom Izzo getting back to the Final Four.
I think he's the most underrated coach in America. It amazes me that James Jones has not gotten a bigger job. He has won the Ivy League multiple times in the last couple years, as I mentioned. won a game against Auburn last year in the NCAA tournament, won a game against Baylor in 2016. But I think we could see this Yale team be a factor. But guys, here's the interesting thing.
When you look at the amazing job that Yale has done, only lost one game this year in the Ivy League. When you think about Yale and you think about the dynamic right now for this team that, again, is going into the NCAA tournament as a trendy, trendy upset pick potentially. Yale is in a scenario, okay, where it lost Danny Wolfe to Michigan and it lost Matt Noling to USC.
And it is still in the scenario that it's in right now where it made the NCAA tournament. That is a credit to the head coach. A couple of names you want to keep your eye out for. for Yale right now as you're getting ready to think about the NCAA tournament against Texas A&M. Nick Townsend, obviously a very, very burly forward inside. He's going to have to hold his own on the glass.
And then John Poulakidis, a dynamite, dynamite lefty shooter, can come off screens. He had 25 against Cornell in the title game. And also Bez Embang, along with Casey Simmons. Cat, you might remember from the Big Ten, started his career at Northwestern before he transferred to New Haven.
Yeah, no, I think PFT, what it does is it reiterates to me that we don't have a dominant team this year in college basketball. And what I mean by that is. Last year, UConn was so removed from the pack because it was a two-year run that we may never see again in our lifetimes in terms of the level of dominance. 12 NCAA tournament wins by an average of 21.7 points per game.
But we do not have a team this year like UConn. We do not have a figure this year like Zach Eady at Purdue last year, the only player since Ralph Sampson in the 1980s to win, obviously, National Player of the Year awards in back-to-back seasons. So I think Auburn's a little bit vulnerable right now.
I do think it's a big advantage for the Tigers to be playing in Atlanta, which isn't that far from the Auburn campus, potentially in the Sweet 16. But if Louisville does beat Creighton, in the first round, Auburn will have a pseudo-road game there at Rupp Arena, which is something to monitor.
This is the region of prestige because four coaches in this region, Dan Hurley, Rick Pitino, John Calipari, and Bill Selp have won national titles. Also, Florida, the one seed in this region, has won multiple national titles in the last 20 years. So there's brand name power in this region. I got Florida over Norfolk State. I got UConn over Oklahoma, both coaches in that game.
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