March 20, 2025 • 35 mins
On today’s episode, Jason shares his picks for the Thursday slate of NCAA Tournament games. Later, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay coach and FOX Sports Radio host Doug Gottlieb swings by to discuss his first season pulling double-duty as a basketball coach and radio host, how to navigate the NCAA transfer portal, the NIL era in college sports, which teams he thinks can make some noise in the tournament and much more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is straight Fire with Jason McIntyre.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
What is up straight Fire, Faan, It's me Jason McIntyre.
Straight Fire for Thursday, March twentieth, It's ear ladies and gentlemen,
March Madness. It officially kicks off about what twelve fifteen
Eastern nine to fifteen Pacific Today. It is a glorious Thursday,
ladies and gentlemen. Fortunately, Colin Cowherd was able to get
(00:35):
us off today and tomorrow, so your boy will be
watching all of the games, consuming all of the content,
panicking about all of the brackets. Oh my gosh, I'm
so excited. It is going to be so much fun.
This is actually a monster day. I will tell you
about the cow cutout, well what I can reveal, at
(00:57):
least that went down last night. I've got so many bracks.
I'm in a million bracket contest. It's just so fun.
You get invited to all of them, You're like, oh,
twenty bucks, what's a big deal. It's just so fun.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Guys.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I love this so much, and I know not everybody
loves it as much as me, and that's fine. And
some of you will check out after the first two
days or three and I'm all in. This weekend's going
to be spectacular. I have basically nothing planned except watched basketball. However,
big one tonight for the Great Foxes. We are back
in the championship, a rematch against the team we played
(01:29):
last year. We led the entire game and then blew
it in the end, lost by two on two free throws.
They never led until the final ten seconds. We should
have won the game. We had Richard Jefferson last season.
We don't have him this season. He's obviously announcing NBA games.
We're just as good. I don't know the other team
got better. They got this young guy from who played
at the University of San Francisco. I think he was
(01:50):
like top fifteen all time for them three point shooting.
He's like twenty five. Good player. And then they got
this other guy who played briefly at Sienna. His dad
was a college basketball coach. I'm not going to say
his name because I didn't ask. If I could say it,
you would know him. Coached at a prominent school in
south of the Mason Dixon line. I'll say in the
acc super nice guy and he's pretty good. So listen,
(02:11):
they're good. We beat him twice this season, but they
didn't have their horse, the big guy, and the other
time they were missing their other guard. I'm buddies with
both those guys fired up. Unfortunately, I cannot play. I'm
still injured with this leg injury. I thought it would
be a one week thing. Clearly it's gonna be like three.
I think it's just a deep calf bruise. Like if
(02:33):
you stand up straight and try to do a a
calf raise with both legs, you can do it easy.
I can do it, no problem. If I stand on
my left leg, I can do it easy, no problem.
But I stand on my right leg and try to
do a single leg calf raise, and I cannot do
it because it's just immensely painful and the calf is
bruised and injured, and the muscles just haven't healed yet.
So I am icing, I'm heating. I can't play. I mean, listen.
(02:55):
I tried to play in other games that weren't as
high profile as this, or there was bad players on
the court and I could hide on them for a
minute or two and that was fine, but that was
all I could do. This team doesn't have any players
you can hide on, so it's a tough one. We're underdogs.
I'll just say that. But let me quickly before our
guest today, Doug Gottlieb, the Fox Sports radio host also
(03:17):
the coach of Green Bay. Obviously, Doug under a lot
of stress this season his first year coaching Division one,
and it didn't go great. They won four games, they
lost a million games in a row. He talks about that,
the transfer portal, life, adjusting to being a head coach.
It's fun. I think you guys will like it. There's
nobody else in the country who's juggling a radio host
job as well as college basketball coaching. And now he's recruiting.
(03:41):
He's recruiting D two, D three, try to find anybody
to bolster the roster. I think you'll like it. Nice
chat with Doug this week leading up to the tournament.
I will offer bets that I have on the tournament
a lot, not a billion, but a lot. But really quickly.
On the Calcutta so you guys know the story. A
few years ago, got in with a group and we
(04:04):
had Kansas. They went all the way. It was awesome.
Since then, have not cleaned up in this I think
I want a little bit in one and then lost
in two. This one was a little stressful because you know,
we have our group, we got our we got our guys,
we got our budget, and we're trying to addhere to
the budget. And Texas Tech was a team I was
(04:25):
extremely bullish on. One of the guys in our group
is Preston who comes on the podcast. He is not
in America right now, so he couldn't really participate, but
he's in our group, but he couldn't participate on the call.
He liked Texas Tech a lot, and the number just
keeps going up. They were one of the first teams
off the board. It's like, we can't twenty two thousand
(04:45):
on Texas Tech. How are we going to get Florida
or Duke, you know, So we punted on Texas Tech,
and then a couple of the other guys, like Michigan State.
I wasn't as bullish. We missed out on Michigan State.
Saint John's I didn't like him. A couple of theirs did,
same story. And you know, we're probably a third of
the way through. We have the thirteen through sixteen seeds
in like the Midwest, which were cheap, but we got
(05:06):
them on a steel which is fine, and you do
get bonus points. If you're the biggest first round loser
you lose by fifty to Houston or whatever, you get
a percentage of the pot, which is great. And so
we just start deciding, geez, we keep missing out on
all these Tennessee we couldn't get them. Maybe we just
go all in on Duke. You know, everybody kind of agreed, like, yeah,
(05:28):
they're the best team in net rating college BASKETBA in
the last twenty years. Cooper flags should be healthy. Even
if they don't have them in the first round, they
should be fine. Second round they should still be fine.
Without them. They won't be easy, but they should be good.
And then after that Flag comes back and hopefully they're good,
and we decide to go all in on Duke, and
the bidding war got crazy. It exceeded our budget, that's
(05:49):
all I'll say. And you know, we were all a
bunch of us were together and we finally we get
them at our number, and we're just like kind of
sweating it and cheering. We all just erupted. We got Duke.
We got Yeah, let's go. So I am a massive
Cooper Flag fan Duke fan for the next three weeks,
John Shire, you're the man. You got this. I love Proctor.
(06:12):
I don't know how to say Kenneppole's first name, it's
his initials are KK. He's a nice player. I don't
think he's like a lottery pick. I see him on
some lists for that. But I am going to be
a massive Duke fan as I root for the Blue Devils.
So we essentially got Duke, which exceeded our budget by himself,
and then we got McNee State. Now they actually play
I believe today. Yeah, McNee State again and waite Wade.
(06:38):
Will Wade, the former coach at LSU, he's at McNee
state now. If you remember fran Frachilla earlier this week
said McNeice can push Clemson. Now we like Clemson. Actually
we tried to get them, couldn't. And Pran Fachella, if
you go back and listen, he's like, listen, Will Wade
knows what he's doing now. He has accepted the job.
I think I saw a report or he's going to
(07:00):
accept the job one of those at NC State, which
is you know, obviously not ideal that he's going to
be leaving. He's already got one foot out the door.
Is he looking at the portal? Do they get blown out?
I mean, I don't know. They're playing today three point
fifteen on True TV, and I don't know, Like, how
(07:22):
do your kids react to that? Or are they like, hey,
we're all in, let's do let's go, let's do this.
He's a damn good coach. Obviously got fired from LSU
because of the whatever the violations were, but he's a
damn good coach. We know that ex's and o's. Now
does he go out with the bang or is he
checked out and the players are pissed? Like I don't know,
(07:42):
or is this a Hey, guys, I'm leaving and I
probably want some of you to come with me, So
show me what you got, go in the portal and
come join me next year. Like I have no idea
what to expect from McNee state. My guess is they
don't deliver. But anyways, we got them, and then we
got the thirteen through sixteen. I believe it is in
(08:06):
the hold on, hold on, hold on. I think it's
the West. I'm sorry, Yes, in the West, So the
thirteen through sixteen in the West, Norfolk State. We expect
Florida wax them Omaha we expect Saint John's to crush them.
Those are two teams that should win by thirty five plus,
and there's a chance that we get the biggest blow
out there, and then the others are UNC Wilmington. I
(08:27):
don't think they have any shot at all against Texas
Tech Grand Canyon, which showed well last year. I don't
necessarily think they're going to push Maryland. So that's all
we got. It's the Duke Show, and if Duke goes
down in Mississipi State or Baylor, I'm probably gonna go
dark for a little while, and you guys won't hear
from me. I don't think I don't. I'm not really
worried about Arizona Oregon in the Sweet sixteen. Alabama could
(08:51):
be a problem, but is Alabama gonna get there? Some
of my brackets I have VCU. I'm not worried about Wisconsin.
I'm not really worried about Saint Mary's. This Duke team
is a juggernaut, so then they would probably meet Houston
in the final four, perhaps Tennessee. It's gonna be a
tough game. It's a rematch used to a while revenge.
I just think Duke's a better squad side there. The
(09:11):
only teams that really fear me or worry me for
Duke are Florida and Auburn, and they wouldn't face them
until the championship. So if we win the championship, if
they get to the championship and lose, then we break even,
maybe win a little bit more if they win the title.
You know, drinks on me, guys, next time you see me.
All right, quickly picks for Thursday games. The dumbest play
(09:35):
that I have is the biggest one Georgia plus six
plus six and a half against Gonzaga. Just fading the narrative.
I think Zag is good. I don't think they're great.
I'm on Houston minus twenty nine. Dumb bet a four
fun pizza money parlay Yale to win on the money line,
UCSD to win on the money line. You guys know,
(09:56):
I'm loaded up on UCSD. That's actually bigger than Georgia.
Go Triton's I'm on Louisville minus two small play on
high point plus eight. I really don't recommend that bet.
In hindsight, Perdue is going to wax him. Unless the
Braden Smith transfer stuff is legit, then maybe he's checked out,
and Purdue just you know, falls apart. I'm on Drake
(10:16):
plus six and a half against Missouri. I have a
silly parlay for fun Houston and Florida both to cover
twenty nine and twenty eight and a half respectively, and
then I did three totals in the early games. Historically
I've done this. I just take the under in the
three the first three games of the day because they're
in the middle of the day, it's the early in
(10:38):
the tournament. Jitters galore. So I'm on Montana Wisconsin under
one fifty two, Creighton Louisville under one forty five and
a half, and High Point Perdue under one fifty four
and a half, which, again that's a silly play and
Perdue there's a chance Purdue wins that game by twenty five.
And you're like, Jay, what are you doing? But I
don't think Purdue is very good. I think they're kind
of checked out on the season, and I think high
(10:59):
points max effort, and I think it's an interesting game
to say the least. All Right, without further ado, let's
get to our guest, and that's Fox Sports Radio Slash
Green Bay College basketball head coach Doug Gottlieb.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
the nation. Catch all of our shows at Foxsports Radio
dot com and within the iHeartRadio app. Search FSR to
listen live. You know a guy, Jason likes to think
he knows everything when it comes to sports.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I know what sports fans want.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
But for everything he doesn't. He knows a guy who does.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Let's just say I.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Know a guy who knows a guy who knows another guy.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
All right, let's welcome back to straight fire. This time
he's a college basketball coach, not just a radio host.
And that's Doug Gottlieb, Fox Sports Radio's finest. Also the
head coach at Green Bay. You know, it was his
first season there, a little tough one. Hey, it happens.
But he's a college basketball coach, which is pretty cool
and we're happy to have you. Doug.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
How's life, man, that's good, man, really good.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Obviously, you get to this time of year is fun
but kind of weird. I've been doing the college basketball
analyst work for twenty three straight years.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
I'd been on some sort of bracket show, and.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Instead I'm trying to figure out my own team and
who we're bringing in and what the portal is gonna
look like. Well, kind of keeping a curious eye on
the NCAA tournament as well.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah, no, no, definitely. I've done a lot of stuff with
you on college basketball, love sparring back and forth. But
I do want to ask about the portal because Doug,
I saw a crazy story that like some teams are
turning down the NIT allegedly because they'd rather focused on
the transfer portal. What's it like now that the portal
is happening. You're part of it, You're a big part.
You're hammering it hard. What's it like behind the scenes?
(12:55):
You just work in the phones? Talk to me?
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Well, what they're it's it's not that they want to
work the portal. It's like, I don't know how you.
I don't know how you play in these non NCAA
tournament deals when you know you have some of them.
The coaches have been fired. You know, most teams are
gonna lose, you know, a couple to half to Sometimes
(13:20):
they'll recycle their entire team, right or or they'll cycle
through an entire new team.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
So you, yeah, who.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Knows if you look at those tournaments, who's going to
play for these teams when half the guys are already
in the portal. I don't I don't really get that one.
So that's gonna be that's super interesting to me. But
what's it like, Uh, it's interesting, you know, because there's
a there's a multitude of layers. The first thing is
(13:50):
you got to throughout the season, you have to constantly
evaluate and recruit your players that you want to retain,
you know, because the most the expression in college sports
is the most important recruits are the ones you have
on campus. There is no substitute for continuity. And I
(14:13):
understand that teams like Saint John's got they just wiped
out the roster last year, brought it mostly they ones.
There are guys in places, especially when you have a
lot of money, that that works. But we feel like
for our level we were by the end of the year,
you know, we lost the nation's leading score ten games in.
By the end of the year, we were starting four
freshmen and nineteen year old sophomore. And we think, you know,
(14:36):
retention is the key that we want to build continuity now.
We need we need the guys that we bring in
outside of our high school signing class to be guys
ready to compete to start to kind of level up
all of our retaining returning talent. So what's it like, Well,
first you have to evaluate your own team. You have
(14:57):
to also evaluate, Okay, who do we want to remain
in this culture? And for us it was kind of easy,
right we lost twenty two consecutive game chasing and if
you if you keep coming to practice, you keep coming
to work, you keep having a great attitude, like that's glue,
that's those are guys. I said it all the time
that guys, you can make through this.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
You can make through anything.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
And the ones that we want to keep, the ones
we are keeping are guys that we felt like really
showed resolve and a commitment to each other, to our
program and to constantly getting better and fighting through it.
But by the end of the year, we were playing
really good basketball.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
So that's the first thing you have to do.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Then you know that some people call it the dark portal,
you know where it's like the portal or the pre
portal where you know a lot of these people that
are going in and you have to be reasonable about it.
Like a kid pops up on your Twitter feed is
from one of these things.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Is he's going into portal? Okay, well, the numbers are great,
how do I evaluate that versus can I get him?
Do I want them? How much does it cost? Right?
And then the balance of.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
A player who looks great to somebody else, but does
he want to come to Green Bay? And I have
a player who may not be as good as that
kid on paper, but I've coached him and he knows
our system and he's going to improve because he's going
to stay here all spring and all summer. And by
the time we get to you know, November third next
(16:28):
year and we open hup the season at Northwestern like,
he's ready to go.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
So that's that's the second part to it.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
And then you know, when coaches get fired or coaches leave,
now all of a sudden, all their players become available
in the portal, So you have to have a working
sense of what you have coming back, what you want
to go after.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
And then then the last part is.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
You know, there's a whole group of players and I
don't know the numbers.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
If you graduate and you have and you have more years,
you don't have to in the portal. You're a graduating player,
there's no poh.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
You just it's a free for all.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Yeah, coo.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
But there's also there's also a there's also no time
limit to it. Like the portal has a month long
it's open for a month. It doesn't mean that you
have to select a guy from the portal within that month,
but in terms of entrance into the portal, it has
to take place during that time unless a coach leaves.
That's what happened in our place, right where Sundance Wicks left.
I think it was May fourteenth, and then May fifteenth
(17:27):
I got the job, So all of my players had
thirty days to decide if they wanted to get in
the portal. But the point is that there's a recent
ruling where if you spent a year during the last
four years playing Anaia basketball, junior college basketball, or college
(17:48):
basketball in Canada, you can get you get an extra year.
So there's a whole group of guys that aren't in
don't have to be in the portal that you could
actually have conversations with the recruit or recruiting Division two kids.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, I was going to ask about that.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Yeah, you're seeing the success of Division two kids that
are older at places like Drake and you're like, hey,
for our level, there's not a huge difference, especially when
you have, you know, a twenty three, twenty four year
old and I'm trying to play with eighteen year olds.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Yeah, so what's it like. It's there's a lot of
stuff going on.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
So like in the NFL, you got a salary cap expert,
do you need a portal expert who just knows all
the ins and outs? Is there anybody of that level?
I mean, this is portals relatively new.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
That's well, that's what the gms are supposed to be
at these schools. You know, Adrian Organowski's doing that. Obviously,
there's at Saint Bonaventure. There's there's other guys that are
out there doing it for my school. That's that's part
of what happens at a lower mid major level where
I'm the GM and the head coach.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
So time have the whole budget, and the whole.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Budget means who I play, and how much we make
in guarantees, what we have from the state, what we have.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
In the the Phoenix Fund.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Next year, nil comes in house because we opted in,
which is a new NCAA ruling most people are opting in,
which means you can pay the kids in out from
your actual school budget, how much I pay assistant coaches,
how much I get paid, how much we spent on travel,
what else is there, you know, and there's all other things.
There's also an analytics company that we use called HDI,
(19:24):
and HDI we use them for scouting reports self scout
as well, but we also use them for portal reports
where you get a name and you run it through
HDI and they give you the number, and the number
is an analytics evaluation on that kid, and that kind
of gives you a sense of where they are in
terms of financial value as well as value at your
(19:45):
level and roster.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
So there's a lot of different parts to it, but
that's all part of.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Being kind of the quasi GM, and I've had to
learn sort of on the fly.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Son.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
That's fun, I mean frustrating, but fun. It's fun if
you're winning, obviously, it's frustrating if you're losing, but you
know you.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Got it the winning and losing honestly, Like, don't get
me wrong, in the regular season, like that matters to everything, right,
that's everything, But it doesn't effect It really has sort
of limited effect on most things because you know so
many of these schools. It's it's one year to the next,
(20:20):
like you can flip it or you can improve again.
My view of what we want to do in Green Vegas,
we want to bring back as many kid of lower
high major and high level mid major and quality mid
major kids. There's only four Division one schools. Wisconsin, they
take the best of the best. Marquette, they take the
best the best. Iowa State does a great job of
(20:41):
coming to recruit in the state. Milwaukee has done a
lot of junior colleges and kids from the South hasn't
recruited in state all that well or all that often.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
They've done a lot.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Bart Lundy's done a tremendous job and in twenty games,
but he doesn't really so for us, you know, the
school was so down two years ago that there's just
bad mojo and they missed out on some kids and
many of us ping this this year.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Like you go back through games, like if he's a kid.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
From Wisconsin, he probably had twenty five against us, because
they come in like so mad that we don't hear them,
like I wasn't there, dude, Not my fault. So one
of our focus is is that we want we want
to build a fence and make sure that we have
two airports, you know, within thirty minutes of Green Bay,
Green Bay and Appleton, and we want we want to
bring those boys home. So location matters to us, style
(21:31):
of play matters to us. But in terms of being
the general manager, you got to manage all these things,
and you've got to understand the portal. You got to
deal with agents, So you can't talk to players now,
but you can talk to agents, and agents won't share
with you necessarily who's in or who's out, but they
can kind of get a sense of what you're looking for.
(21:51):
And right now, everybody's overvalued. You know, every whatever they
ask for, it's like two three x of what they're
actually going to get. Yeah, but that's kind of what's
current going on lastcap. So to go back to your
question about the N I T and the Crown all
these other things, like.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
It's really hard and yeah, remember.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Every time you're playing a game, all you're doing is
advertising for the kids on your team.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Yeah that they can for everybody else, Like, oh, he's
gonna go in the portal, let me watch him play,
see if I like him?
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, I saw that.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
It's gotta be very difficult.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
the nation. Catch all of our shows at foxsports Radio
dot com and within the iHeartRadio app. Search FSR to
listen live.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Because in college football, some teams are scrapping the spring
game because they're like, why would I put on tape
that Look at this guy is gonna pop and then
he you know, he becomes a target in the portal.
Let me ask Green Bay. I've never been to the
town where the school's located. It seems like it's an
awesome setup. I know you had some reporters pop into town.
You know, obviously you guys were a hot story this year.
(22:55):
Is that a draw you think to the school that
maybe has been underplayed in recent years? Which part just
the location location, Green.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Bay, Wisconsin is awesome.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Everybody knows it for the Packers, nobody knows where it
is and nobody knows how big it is or how
safe it is. I believe this year was like twelve,
but for the last five years, I think four of them,
it's been called the place to live in the United
States the summer. It's you know where you live is
(23:29):
the Only problem with Manhattan Beach is that everybody comes
to Manhattan Beach in the summer. You got a bunch
of you have a bunch of tourists to come to town.
The summer in Green Bay, weatherwise is similar, very limited community.
It's beautiful. I live right in the water. It's inexpensive
and people, you know, one's home on summer weekends either
playing golf or you're.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Out in the water.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
I live on the gateway to Door County. Door County
is the Cape Cotton Midwest. People from chicag Go and
from Milwaukee. They all own these cottages, and it sounds
cottages are really nice in these little towns in Door County,
which is that little Finger in Wisconsin.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
You know, if you look at Wisconsin, little Finger at
Door County. Okay, So it's cool.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
It's only one hundred thousand people. Takes the most it'll
take you to drive anywhere is fifteen minutes. The town
is overbuilt road wise, you know for football games.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
Watch you come out for the NFL draft too. We
got the NFL Draft in April twenty.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Another draw for you guys, So let me quickly go
back the draw.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Yes, it's great and all the attention we've gotten is fantastic.
You know, it's not all positive this year because we
we weren't winning, but as we flip it, we know
we're going to use that to our benefit.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
the nation. Catch all of our shows at Foxsports Radio
dot com and within the iHeartRadio app search FSR to
listen live.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Let me jump to the tournament and just the D
two D three, so you see. San Diego has been
an incredible story and I'm sure you know a lot
of people are loving them against Michigan, and I gave
them out last week as a team to watch in
the tournament. I'm on them against Michigan. I'm just curious.
You said the level is not that difference between low
division one and Division two, and I don't disagree, but
(25:17):
I'm just curious when they have to step up in
class to face of Michigan. Do you think a school
like UC San Diego has a shot?
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
What's amazing about UC San Diego is, I don't know
if you know this. Their best player transferred last year
at the end of the year as a grand senior
to USC. Barely plays at USC like they've lost their
best player. I think the last three years, two years
ago to Boise State last year. And yet they do
a great job. You know, California Division twos have been
(25:46):
kind of undercovered, under the radar, and they've done an
amazing job. Now they've been they've gone through the transition
phase and everybody who's anybody's watched UC San Diego and like,
well that'll work, you know, sort of a model five
Princeton style. They run some of the Princeton stuff. They're
really well coached and really connected defensively. Do I think
(26:06):
that works against Michigan? Probably not, because uh, you know
you can do Michigan can kind of downshift and put
Danny Wolf at the five and that matches up with them.
But it's not a fun It would not be a
fun experience. I would not want to play Uccian Diego.
They're good that you see. Irvine belongs in the NCAA term.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
You know. One of the things that I've learned this year.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
And I sort of knew it, but now it's become
very clear is now you lose games because of scheduling
more than a time, especially at our level, more than
the opponent.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
And I say that, you know had experience like we
we want.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
I want to get back to California. I wanted my
mom to come up and see a game. I had
a couple of kids from California, so we were gonna play.
Irvine wanted to come on play us at our place.
I said, no, I need a road game, which would
again a mistake. I should have probably played them on
our place. I don't know if we could have beaten them,
but that game they lost to Ducane, and the travel
is just when you're at the low major mid major
level and you're playing. You know, we beat Siue who
(27:09):
won the Oile Valley, and we beat them by twenty five.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
I saw that.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
Yeah, yeah, well.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
They had played that was their fourth game in seven days,
and so they weren't. We might have been better than
them when we were fully healthy, but we weren't that.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
Much better than them. They were just dead.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
They were just dead, right, And so when you're trying
to compare games and a computer model and be like,
well you lost to Ducane, like, yeah, Duking's in Pittsburgh
and you went on a road swing, and.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
It's not like one of these made for TV.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Kansas for Kentucky games where you're flying on a private
jet and you play one game and then you go
back home and you play a bunch of other games.
So I think you c Irvine both deserved an at
large bid.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
I truly do.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
But you see San Diego's big time twelve seed is
not overseed at all.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Do I think they can beat Michigan? Could they?
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I mean the line is down to two and a half.
I don't know how how close do you care about
the lines, but like money has come in. It was
three and a half now down to two and a half,
so a lot of respected money on U c CD.
I'm on the money line, and with the points, I
think there's.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
I think the one the one in terms of travel
that's interesting to me is uh is Wisconsin.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Wisconsin going to altitude?
Speaker 4 (28:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
No, for sure.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Well it's not just that, but remember Wisconsin played four
and four days yep, and now they play Thursday and Saturday,
so that will be was six games in like ten
or eleven days.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
And they could just BYU who's kind of used to
the altitude there in the era.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
And by has been off, by who has been off
for a couple of days, and they.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Got to get by VCU. I don't know if they.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Will well, VCU just played three or four and four
days as well, so that that has a huge, huge
effect on the outcome of games.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Let me ask you another one real quick on location.
So Louisville is playing somehow, somehow in Lexington against Creighton,
and then they would essentially get a home game against
top seed at Auburn in the second round. Now, I
don't know where you are on Louisville, but I mean
their backcourt matches up pretty good with the young Auburn
kids in the back court. I don't know, Doug, that
that's a dangerous spot if Louisville gets by Creighton.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Uh yeah, I mean when Chucky's healthy and Chucky's a
stud man Chuckie Heppern who said Wisconsin last year.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Yeah, ye, he's awesome. I wouldn't make a.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Big deal about playing, you know, in Lexington when you're
from Louisville, omar, Creighton fans travel like crazy. I think
that I think that one's a little overblown, Okay, I
just do.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
I mean, like, uh, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
What Pat's done is incredible, right, that program was in
the ditch and they flipped it and they went out
in the portal, spent some money, and he has those
kids playing hard.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
He runs really really good stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Let me ask you, Doug, how the ac stinks. Well, well,
that's harsh. Come on, it wasn't great. This year stinks considerable.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Hold on, if I told you you've been, you've been.
You're a huge college basketball fan. You grew up in
New York, right, Okay, So if I said, hey, you've
got a league with Syracuse, Duke, Carolina, Virginia, Louisville, who else?
Speaker 2 (30:19):
I mean, have those teams lost their coaches like Beyhim's
gone to You know.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I understand. My point is, considering how that league has
been viewed. I didn't even get to NC State, Wake Forest,
et cetera. To be this far down where you can
win that many games. Like Louisville's an eighth seed, and
they deserve to be an eight seed.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
They just do.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
The league's not that good. They don't have the quality
of wins. So I just like, let's not go crazy
about a record against the league, which is it's it's
probably the fifth best league in the country. Now that
being said, I think Duke's the best team in the
country when they're healthy. But just because the league's not
great not mean that duke isn't fantastic, so let me.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
I'm sure you're all over this, but Milwaukee is hosting
some games, so it looks like some decent teams North
Carolina's going to be there Milwaukee. I just looked it
up as two hours from Green Bay, Like, how does
it work for coaches?
Speaker 4 (31:14):
Half?
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Okay hour and a half? Would can you just straight
up go to that and watch? Or is that not allowed?
Or will they think they're scouting and trying to steal players.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
I can go wherever, I can go wherever I want. No,
I can't.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
You can't go watch somebody. You are going to go play?
So I went scouted.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
We're scouting.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
I was actually in California, went to the JU Junior
College Championship out here. I have people at ne I
A Championship, We're at the D two tournament, We're at
the D three tournament, and I mean the NAA tournament doesn't.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
Do a lot for us.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
The one I don't understand about Milwaukee is why is
Wisconsin not playing there?
Speaker 4 (31:51):
What? What? There are three questions? They deserve to be
in Milwaukee.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
They kind of got screwed. You're right, all right, we
can we can kind of wrap here, Doug with.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
When you come to Green Bay.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
I don't know. Man, if I get the time off
in the summer, maybe uh, Coward can gass up. Coward
can gas up the private jet and bring me down.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
Coward's moving to Chicago, So three hours, three hours away.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
So while you game next year, we're gonna play an
exhibition game for a Packer game. Come up, double up,
see the place, check it out.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I'll get you check it Can you leave me a scout?
Let me be a scout for you out here in
California and send some players your way. I will text
you a player. Want to send some money?
Speaker 4 (32:35):
You want to send some money.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
I'm not making that much money real quick, Doug, let
me final four picks. I know you said do because
you're is the best? Do you expect to chalk e
like four number ones advancing? Or what are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna be honest with you here.
I I don't know how the brackets line out. I
don't don't. I don't, but here's what I will tell you.
I do commend the committee on this this one point
they got right.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
What college football got wrong?
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Okay, the SEC has and spends the most money. So
it's not a it's not an absolute. I'm not an absolutist. Okay,
it's not always. You know, Kansas spent a bunch of money.
They seem to have somethings off with their team juju wise,
but generally, Okay, the SEC has and spends more money
(33:23):
than anybody. So yeah, they deserve to have fourteen teams
in because it's crazy how deep that league is. West
Virginia should have been in the tournament, right, because the
Big twelve spends a ton.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
West Virginia spent a ton as well.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
But the point is that I wouldn't surprise me at
all if the Elite eight was littered with SEC teams
and Big twelve teams and do I don't think. I
don't think the Big twelve is as good as it's been.
I think, you know, Houston is still impossible to score on.
I still think that Kansas has a chance. You know,
that's a crazy break they're in. But those schools have
(34:03):
so much more money. Like look, you know is the Godfather.
He's do an amazing job, but he's also helped out
by the fact that he's got you know, I'll be
a five, four or.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
Five million dollar payroll. Yeah, so just.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Just track the teams that have the most money and
have Hall of Fame coaches and.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
They'll be there.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
But my you know, without making any grandyous predictions, my
guess is Duke Win's it. I think they're terrific. I
think John is wildly underrated as a coach. I mean,
he's handled the transition really well. But as a coach,
they are expertly coached. And yeah, and then, uh, you know,
we played against Drake and Ben McCullum, who people say
(34:42):
is going to get a bigger job and maybe get
the Indiana job, and it's interesting, you know, there's no
real tricks to what they do. They're just so fricking good, defensively,
so connected. And they have two six year seniors, two
fifth years, and then Bennett starts. He's as good as
anybody we've seen on taping, definitely better than anybody saw
it in person. So you know, Drake's got a chance
(35:04):
to make a little run here as well. But I
do think that those SEC schools are significantly better than
most of the Big East schools, most of the Big
ten schools, especially in terms of funding.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
All Right, Doug Gottlieb head coach the Green Bay Phoenix.
Thanks for taking the time, Doug, Fox Sports radio host
can continued success and I'm excited to see your portal success, buddy.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
Thanks Sha
This is straight Fire with Jason McIntyre.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
What is up straight Fire, Faan, It's me Jason McIntyre.
Straight Fire for Thursday, March twentieth, It's ear ladies and gentlemen,
March Madness. It officially kicks off about what twelve fifteen
Eastern nine to fifteen Pacific Today. It is a glorious Thursday,
ladies and gentlemen. Fortunately, Colin Cowherd was able to get
(00:35):
us off today and tomorrow, so your boy will be
watching all of the games, consuming all of the content,
panicking about all of the brackets. Oh my gosh, I'm
so excited. It is going to be so much fun.
This is actually a monster day. I will tell you
about the cow cutout, well what I can reveal, at
(00:57):
least that went down last night. I've got so many bracks.
I'm in a million bracket contest. It's just so fun.
You get invited to all of them, You're like, oh,
twenty bucks, what's a big deal. It's just so fun.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Guys.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I love this so much, and I know not everybody
loves it as much as me, and that's fine. And
some of you will check out after the first two
days or three and I'm all in. This weekend's going
to be spectacular. I have basically nothing planned except watched basketball. However,
big one tonight for the Great Foxes. We are back
in the championship, a rematch against the team we played
(01:29):
last year. We led the entire game and then blew
it in the end, lost by two on two free throws.
They never led until the final ten seconds. We should
have won the game. We had Richard Jefferson last season.
We don't have him this season. He's obviously announcing NBA games.
We're just as good. I don't know the other team
got better. They got this young guy from who played
at the University of San Francisco. I think he was
(01:50):
like top fifteen all time for them three point shooting.
He's like twenty five. Good player. And then they got
this other guy who played briefly at Sienna. His dad
was a college basketball coach. I'm not going to say
his name because I didn't ask. If I could say it,
you would know him. Coached at a prominent school in
south of the Mason Dixon line. I'll say in the
acc super nice guy and he's pretty good. So listen,
(02:11):
they're good. We beat him twice this season, but they
didn't have their horse, the big guy, and the other
time they were missing their other guard. I'm buddies with
both those guys fired up. Unfortunately, I cannot play. I'm
still injured with this leg injury. I thought it would
be a one week thing. Clearly it's gonna be like three.
I think it's just a deep calf bruise. Like if
(02:33):
you stand up straight and try to do a a
calf raise with both legs, you can do it easy.
I can do it, no problem. If I stand on
my left leg, I can do it easy, no problem.
But I stand on my right leg and try to
do a single leg calf raise, and I cannot do
it because it's just immensely painful and the calf is
bruised and injured, and the muscles just haven't healed yet.
So I am icing, I'm heating. I can't play. I mean, listen.
(02:55):
I tried to play in other games that weren't as
high profile as this, or there was bad players on
the court and I could hide on them for a
minute or two and that was fine, but that was
all I could do. This team doesn't have any players
you can hide on, so it's a tough one. We're underdogs.
I'll just say that. But let me quickly before our
guest today, Doug Gottlieb, the Fox Sports radio host also
(03:17):
the coach of Green Bay. Obviously, Doug under a lot
of stress this season his first year coaching Division one,
and it didn't go great. They won four games, they
lost a million games in a row. He talks about that,
the transfer portal, life, adjusting to being a head coach.
It's fun. I think you guys will like it. There's
nobody else in the country who's juggling a radio host
job as well as college basketball coaching. And now he's recruiting.
(03:41):
He's recruiting D two, D three, try to find anybody
to bolster the roster. I think you'll like it. Nice
chat with Doug this week leading up to the tournament.
I will offer bets that I have on the tournament
a lot, not a billion, but a lot. But really quickly.
On the Calcutta so you guys know the story. A
few years ago, got in with a group and we
(04:04):
had Kansas. They went all the way. It was awesome.
Since then, have not cleaned up in this I think
I want a little bit in one and then lost
in two. This one was a little stressful because you know,
we have our group, we got our we got our guys,
we got our budget, and we're trying to addhere to
the budget. And Texas Tech was a team I was
(04:25):
extremely bullish on. One of the guys in our group
is Preston who comes on the podcast. He is not
in America right now, so he couldn't really participate, but
he's in our group, but he couldn't participate on the call.
He liked Texas Tech a lot, and the number just
keeps going up. They were one of the first teams
off the board. It's like, we can't twenty two thousand
(04:45):
on Texas Tech. How are we going to get Florida
or Duke, you know, So we punted on Texas Tech,
and then a couple of the other guys, like Michigan State.
I wasn't as bullish. We missed out on Michigan State.
Saint John's I didn't like him. A couple of theirs did,
same story. And you know, we're probably a third of
the way through. We have the thirteen through sixteen seeds
in like the Midwest, which were cheap, but we got
(05:06):
them on a steel which is fine, and you do
get bonus points. If you're the biggest first round loser
you lose by fifty to Houston or whatever, you get
a percentage of the pot, which is great. And so
we just start deciding, geez, we keep missing out on
all these Tennessee we couldn't get them. Maybe we just
go all in on Duke. You know, everybody kind of agreed, like, yeah,
(05:28):
they're the best team in net rating college BASKETBA in
the last twenty years. Cooper flags should be healthy. Even
if they don't have them in the first round, they
should be fine. Second round they should still be fine.
Without them. They won't be easy, but they should be good.
And then after that Flag comes back and hopefully they're good,
and we decide to go all in on Duke, and
the bidding war got crazy. It exceeded our budget, that's
(05:49):
all I'll say. And you know, we were all a
bunch of us were together and we finally we get
them at our number, and we're just like kind of
sweating it and cheering. We all just erupted. We got Duke.
We got Yeah, let's go. So I am a massive
Cooper Flag fan Duke fan for the next three weeks,
John Shire, you're the man. You got this. I love Proctor.
(06:12):
I don't know how to say Kenneppole's first name, it's
his initials are KK. He's a nice player. I don't
think he's like a lottery pick. I see him on
some lists for that. But I am going to be
a massive Duke fan as I root for the Blue Devils.
So we essentially got Duke, which exceeded our budget by himself,
and then we got McNee State. Now they actually play
I believe today. Yeah, McNee State again and waite Wade.
(06:38):
Will Wade, the former coach at LSU, he's at McNee
state now. If you remember fran Frachilla earlier this week
said McNeice can push Clemson. Now we like Clemson. Actually
we tried to get them, couldn't. And Pran Fachella, if
you go back and listen, he's like, listen, Will Wade
knows what he's doing now. He has accepted the job.
I think I saw a report or he's going to
(07:00):
accept the job one of those at NC State, which
is you know, obviously not ideal that he's going to
be leaving. He's already got one foot out the door.
Is he looking at the portal? Do they get blown out?
I mean, I don't know. They're playing today three point
fifteen on True TV, and I don't know, Like, how
(07:22):
do your kids react to that? Or are they like, hey,
we're all in, let's do let's go, let's do this.
He's a damn good coach. Obviously got fired from LSU
because of the whatever the violations were, but he's a
damn good coach. We know that ex's and o's. Now
does he go out with the bang or is he
checked out and the players are pissed? Like I don't know,
(07:42):
or is this a Hey, guys, I'm leaving and I
probably want some of you to come with me, So
show me what you got, go in the portal and
come join me next year. Like I have no idea
what to expect from McNee state. My guess is they
don't deliver. But anyways, we got them, and then we
got the thirteen through sixteen. I believe it is in
(08:06):
the hold on, hold on, hold on. I think it's
the West. I'm sorry, Yes, in the West, So the
thirteen through sixteen in the West, Norfolk State. We expect
Florida wax them Omaha we expect Saint John's to crush them.
Those are two teams that should win by thirty five plus,
and there's a chance that we get the biggest blow
out there, and then the others are UNC Wilmington. I
(08:27):
don't think they have any shot at all against Texas
Tech Grand Canyon, which showed well last year. I don't
necessarily think they're going to push Maryland. So that's all
we got. It's the Duke Show, and if Duke goes
down in Mississipi State or Baylor, I'm probably gonna go
dark for a little while, and you guys won't hear
from me. I don't think I don't. I'm not really
worried about Arizona Oregon in the Sweet sixteen. Alabama could
(08:51):
be a problem, but is Alabama gonna get there? Some
of my brackets I have VCU. I'm not worried about Wisconsin.
I'm not really worried about Saint Mary's. This Duke team
is a juggernaut, so then they would probably meet Houston
in the final four, perhaps Tennessee. It's gonna be a
tough game. It's a rematch used to a while revenge.
I just think Duke's a better squad side there. The
(09:11):
only teams that really fear me or worry me for
Duke are Florida and Auburn, and they wouldn't face them
until the championship. So if we win the championship, if
they get to the championship and lose, then we break even,
maybe win a little bit more if they win the title.
You know, drinks on me, guys, next time you see me.
All right, quickly picks for Thursday games. The dumbest play
(09:35):
that I have is the biggest one Georgia plus six
plus six and a half against Gonzaga. Just fading the narrative.
I think Zag is good. I don't think they're great.
I'm on Houston minus twenty nine. Dumb bet a four
fun pizza money parlay Yale to win on the money line,
UCSD to win on the money line. You guys know,
(09:56):
I'm loaded up on UCSD. That's actually bigger than Georgia.
Go Triton's I'm on Louisville minus two small play on
high point plus eight. I really don't recommend that bet.
In hindsight, Perdue is going to wax him. Unless the
Braden Smith transfer stuff is legit, then maybe he's checked out,
and Purdue just you know, falls apart. I'm on Drake
(10:16):
plus six and a half against Missouri. I have a
silly parlay for fun Houston and Florida both to cover
twenty nine and twenty eight and a half respectively, and
then I did three totals in the early games. Historically
I've done this. I just take the under in the
three the first three games of the day because they're
in the middle of the day, it's the early in
(10:38):
the tournament. Jitters galore. So I'm on Montana Wisconsin under
one fifty two, Creighton Louisville under one forty five and
a half, and High Point Perdue under one fifty four
and a half, which, again that's a silly play and
Perdue there's a chance Purdue wins that game by twenty five.
And you're like, Jay, what are you doing? But I
don't think Purdue is very good. I think they're kind
of checked out on the season, and I think high
(10:59):
points max effort, and I think it's an interesting game
to say the least. All Right, without further ado, let's
get to our guest, and that's Fox Sports Radio Slash
Green Bay College basketball head coach Doug Gottlieb.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
the nation. Catch all of our shows at Foxsports Radio
dot com and within the iHeartRadio app. Search FSR to
listen live. You know a guy, Jason likes to think
he knows everything when it comes to sports.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I know what sports fans want.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
But for everything he doesn't. He knows a guy who does.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Let's just say I.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Know a guy who knows a guy who knows another guy.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
All right, let's welcome back to straight fire. This time
he's a college basketball coach, not just a radio host.
And that's Doug Gottlieb, Fox Sports Radio's finest. Also the
head coach at Green Bay. You know, it was his
first season there, a little tough one. Hey, it happens.
But he's a college basketball coach, which is pretty cool
and we're happy to have you. Doug.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
How's life, man, that's good, man, really good.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Obviously, you get to this time of year is fun
but kind of weird. I've been doing the college basketball
analyst work for twenty three straight years.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
I'd been on some sort of bracket show, and.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
Instead I'm trying to figure out my own team and
who we're bringing in and what the portal is gonna
look like. Well, kind of keeping a curious eye on
the NCAA tournament as well.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Yeah, no, no, definitely. I've done a lot of stuff with
you on college basketball, love sparring back and forth. But
I do want to ask about the portal because Doug,
I saw a crazy story that like some teams are
turning down the NIT allegedly because they'd rather focused on
the transfer portal. What's it like now that the portal
is happening. You're part of it, You're a big part.
You're hammering it hard. What's it like behind the scenes?
(12:55):
You just work in the phones? Talk to me?
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Well, what they're it's it's not that they want to
work the portal. It's like, I don't know how you.
I don't know how you play in these non NCAA
tournament deals when you know you have some of them.
The coaches have been fired. You know, most teams are
gonna lose, you know, a couple to half to Sometimes
(13:20):
they'll recycle their entire team, right or or they'll cycle
through an entire new team.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
So you, yeah, who.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Knows if you look at those tournaments, who's going to
play for these teams when half the guys are already
in the portal. I don't I don't really get that one.
So that's gonna be that's super interesting to me. But
what's it like, Uh, it's interesting, you know, because there's
a there's a multitude of layers. The first thing is
(13:50):
you got to throughout the season, you have to constantly
evaluate and recruit your players that you want to retain,
you know, because the most the expression in college sports
is the most important recruits are the ones you have
on campus. There is no substitute for continuity. And I
(14:13):
understand that teams like Saint John's got they just wiped
out the roster last year, brought it mostly they ones.
There are guys in places, especially when you have a
lot of money, that that works. But we feel like
for our level we were by the end of the year,
you know, we lost the nation's leading score ten games in.
By the end of the year, we were starting four
freshmen and nineteen year old sophomore. And we think, you know,
(14:36):
retention is the key that we want to build continuity now.
We need we need the guys that we bring in
outside of our high school signing class to be guys
ready to compete to start to kind of level up
all of our retaining returning talent. So what's it like, Well,
first you have to evaluate your own team. You have
(14:57):
to also evaluate, Okay, who do we want to remain
in this culture? And for us it was kind of easy,
right we lost twenty two consecutive game chasing and if
you if you keep coming to practice, you keep coming
to work, you keep having a great attitude, like that's glue,
that's those are guys. I said it all the time
that guys, you can make through this.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
You can make through anything.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
And the ones that we want to keep, the ones
we are keeping are guys that we felt like really
showed resolve and a commitment to each other, to our
program and to constantly getting better and fighting through it.
But by the end of the year, we were playing
really good basketball.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
So that's the first thing you have to do.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Then you know that some people call it the dark portal,
you know where it's like the portal or the pre
portal where you know a lot of these people that
are going in and you have to be reasonable about it.
Like a kid pops up on your Twitter feed is
from one of these things.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Is he's going into portal? Okay, well, the numbers are great,
how do I evaluate that versus can I get him?
Do I want them? How much does it cost? Right?
And then the balance of.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
A player who looks great to somebody else, but does
he want to come to Green Bay? And I have
a player who may not be as good as that
kid on paper, but I've coached him and he knows
our system and he's going to improve because he's going
to stay here all spring and all summer. And by
the time we get to you know, November third next
(16:28):
year and we open hup the season at Northwestern like,
he's ready to go.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
So that's that's the second part to it.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
And then you know, when coaches get fired or coaches leave,
now all of a sudden, all their players become available
in the portal, So you have to have a working
sense of what you have coming back, what you want
to go after.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
And then then the last part is.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
You know, there's a whole group of players and I
don't know the numbers.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
If you graduate and you have and you have more years,
you don't have to in the portal. You're a graduating player,
there's no poh.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
You just it's a free for all.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Yeah, coo.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
But there's also there's also a there's also no time
limit to it. Like the portal has a month long
it's open for a month. It doesn't mean that you
have to select a guy from the portal within that month,
but in terms of entrance into the portal, it has
to take place during that time unless a coach leaves.
That's what happened in our place, right where Sundance Wicks left.
I think it was May fourteenth, and then May fifteenth
(17:27):
I got the job, So all of my players had
thirty days to decide if they wanted to get in
the portal. But the point is that there's a recent
ruling where if you spent a year during the last
four years playing Anaia basketball, junior college basketball, or college
(17:48):
basketball in Canada, you can get you get an extra year.
So there's a whole group of guys that aren't in
don't have to be in the portal that you could
actually have conversations with the recruit or recruiting Division two kids.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Yeah, I was going to ask about that.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Yeah, you're seeing the success of Division two kids that
are older at places like Drake and you're like, hey,
for our level, there's not a huge difference, especially when
you have, you know, a twenty three, twenty four year
old and I'm trying to play with eighteen year olds.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Yeah, so what's it like. It's there's a lot of
stuff going on.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
So like in the NFL, you got a salary cap expert,
do you need a portal expert who just knows all
the ins and outs? Is there anybody of that level?
I mean, this is portals relatively new.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
That's well, that's what the gms are supposed to be
at these schools. You know, Adrian Organowski's doing that. Obviously,
there's at Saint Bonaventure. There's there's other guys that are
out there doing it for my school. That's that's part
of what happens at a lower mid major level where
I'm the GM and the head coach.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
So time have the whole budget, and the whole.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
Budget means who I play, and how much we make
in guarantees, what we have from the state, what we have.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
In the the Phoenix Fund.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Next year, nil comes in house because we opted in,
which is a new NCAA ruling most people are opting in,
which means you can pay the kids in out from
your actual school budget, how much I pay assistant coaches,
how much I get paid, how much we spent on travel,
what else is there, you know, and there's all other things.
There's also an analytics company that we use called HDI,
(19:24):
and HDI we use them for scouting reports self scout
as well, but we also use them for portal reports
where you get a name and you run it through
HDI and they give you the number, and the number
is an analytics evaluation on that kid, and that kind
of gives you a sense of where they are in
terms of financial value as well as value at your
(19:45):
level and roster.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
So there's a lot of different parts to it, but
that's all part of.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Being kind of the quasi GM, and I've had to
learn sort of on the fly.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Son.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
That's fun, I mean frustrating, but fun. It's fun if
you're winning, obviously, it's frustrating if you're losing, but you
know you.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Got it the winning and losing honestly, Like, don't get
me wrong, in the regular season, like that matters to everything, right,
that's everything, But it doesn't effect It really has sort
of limited effect on most things because you know so
many of these schools. It's it's one year to the next,
(20:20):
like you can flip it or you can improve again.
My view of what we want to do in Green Vegas,
we want to bring back as many kid of lower
high major and high level mid major and quality mid
major kids. There's only four Division one schools. Wisconsin, they
take the best of the best. Marquette, they take the
best the best. Iowa State does a great job of
(20:41):
coming to recruit in the state. Milwaukee has done a
lot of junior colleges and kids from the South hasn't
recruited in state all that well or all that often.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
They've done a lot.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Bart Lundy's done a tremendous job and in twenty games,
but he doesn't really so for us, you know, the
school was so down two years ago that there's just
bad mojo and they missed out on some kids and
many of us ping this this year.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Like you go back through games, like if he's a kid.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
From Wisconsin, he probably had twenty five against us, because
they come in like so mad that we don't hear them,
like I wasn't there, dude, Not my fault. So one
of our focus is is that we want we want
to build a fence and make sure that we have
two airports, you know, within thirty minutes of Green Bay,
Green Bay and Appleton, and we want we want to
bring those boys home. So location matters to us, style
(21:31):
of play matters to us. But in terms of being
the general manager, you got to manage all these things,
and you've got to understand the portal. You got to
deal with agents, So you can't talk to players now,
but you can talk to agents, and agents won't share
with you necessarily who's in or who's out, but they
can kind of get a sense of what you're looking for.
(21:51):
And right now, everybody's overvalued. You know, every whatever they
ask for, it's like two three x of what they're
actually going to get. Yeah, but that's kind of what's
current going on lastcap. So to go back to your
question about the N I T and the Crown all
these other things, like.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
It's really hard and yeah, remember.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Every time you're playing a game, all you're doing is
advertising for the kids on your team.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Yeah that they can for everybody else, Like, oh, he's
gonna go in the portal, let me watch him play,
see if I like him?
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, I saw that.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
It's gotta be very difficult.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
the nation. Catch all of our shows at foxsports Radio
dot com and within the iHeartRadio app. Search FSR to
listen live.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Because in college football, some teams are scrapping the spring
game because they're like, why would I put on tape
that Look at this guy is gonna pop and then
he you know, he becomes a target in the portal.
Let me ask Green Bay. I've never been to the
town where the school's located. It seems like it's an
awesome setup. I know you had some reporters pop into town.
You know, obviously you guys were a hot story this year.
(22:55):
Is that a draw you think to the school that
maybe has been underplayed in recent years? Which part just
the location location, Green.
Speaker 4 (23:03):
Bay, Wisconsin is awesome.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Everybody knows it for the Packers, nobody knows where it
is and nobody knows how big it is or how
safe it is. I believe this year was like twelve,
but for the last five years, I think four of them,
it's been called the place to live in the United
States the summer. It's you know where you live is
(23:29):
the Only problem with Manhattan Beach is that everybody comes
to Manhattan Beach in the summer. You got a bunch
of you have a bunch of tourists to come to town.
The summer in Green Bay, weatherwise is similar, very limited community.
It's beautiful. I live right in the water. It's inexpensive
and people, you know, one's home on summer weekends either
playing golf or you're.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Out in the water.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
I live on the gateway to Door County. Door County
is the Cape Cotton Midwest. People from chicag Go and
from Milwaukee. They all own these cottages, and it sounds
cottages are really nice in these little towns in Door County,
which is that little Finger in Wisconsin.
Speaker 4 (24:08):
You know, if you look at Wisconsin, little Finger at
Door County. Okay, So it's cool.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
It's only one hundred thousand people. Takes the most it'll
take you to drive anywhere is fifteen minutes. The town
is overbuilt road wise, you know for football games.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
Watch you come out for the NFL draft too. We
got the NFL Draft in April twenty.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Another draw for you guys, So let me quickly go
back the draw.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Yes, it's great and all the attention we've gotten is fantastic.
You know, it's not all positive this year because we
we weren't winning, but as we flip it, we know
we're going to use that to our benefit.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk lineup in
the nation. Catch all of our shows at Foxsports Radio
dot com and within the iHeartRadio app search FSR to
listen live.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Let me jump to the tournament and just the D
two D three, so you see. San Diego has been
an incredible story and I'm sure you know a lot
of people are loving them against Michigan, and I gave
them out last week as a team to watch in
the tournament. I'm on them against Michigan. I'm just curious.
You said the level is not that difference between low
division one and Division two, and I don't disagree, but
(25:17):
I'm just curious when they have to step up in
class to face of Michigan. Do you think a school
like UC San Diego has a shot?
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
What's amazing about UC San Diego is, I don't know
if you know this. Their best player transferred last year
at the end of the year as a grand senior
to USC. Barely plays at USC like they've lost their
best player. I think the last three years, two years
ago to Boise State last year. And yet they do
a great job. You know, California Division twos have been
(25:46):
kind of undercovered, under the radar, and they've done an
amazing job. Now they've been they've gone through the transition
phase and everybody who's anybody's watched UC San Diego and like,
well that'll work, you know, sort of a model five
Princeton style. They run some of the Princeton stuff. They're
really well coached and really connected defensively. Do I think
(26:06):
that works against Michigan? Probably not, because uh, you know
you can do Michigan can kind of downshift and put
Danny Wolf at the five and that matches up with them.
But it's not a fun It would not be a
fun experience. I would not want to play Uccian Diego.
They're good that you see. Irvine belongs in the NCAA term.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
You know. One of the things that I've learned this year.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
And I sort of knew it, but now it's become
very clear is now you lose games because of scheduling
more than a time, especially at our level, more than
the opponent.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
And I say that, you know had experience like we
we want.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
I want to get back to California. I wanted my
mom to come up and see a game. I had
a couple of kids from California, so we were gonna play.
Irvine wanted to come on play us at our place.
I said, no, I need a road game, which would
again a mistake. I should have probably played them on
our place. I don't know if we could have beaten them,
but that game they lost to Ducane, and the travel
is just when you're at the low major mid major
level and you're playing. You know, we beat Siue who
(27:09):
won the Oile Valley, and we beat them by twenty five.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
I saw that.
Speaker 4 (27:13):
Yeah, yeah, well.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
They had played that was their fourth game in seven days,
and so they weren't. We might have been better than
them when we were fully healthy, but we weren't that.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
Much better than them. They were just dead.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
They were just dead, right, And so when you're trying
to compare games and a computer model and be like,
well you lost to Ducane, like, yeah, Duking's in Pittsburgh
and you went on a road swing, and.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
It's not like one of these made for TV.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Kansas for Kentucky games where you're flying on a private
jet and you play one game and then you go
back home and you play a bunch of other games.
So I think you c Irvine both deserved an at
large bid.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
I truly do.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
But you see San Diego's big time twelve seed is
not overseed at all.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Do I think they can beat Michigan? Could they?
Speaker 2 (28:01):
I mean the line is down to two and a half.
I don't know how how close do you care about
the lines, but like money has come in. It was
three and a half now down to two and a half,
so a lot of respected money on U c CD.
I'm on the money line, and with the points, I
think there's.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
I think the one the one in terms of travel
that's interesting to me is uh is Wisconsin.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Wisconsin going to altitude?
Speaker 4 (28:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
No, for sure.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Well it's not just that, but remember Wisconsin played four
and four days yep, and now they play Thursday and Saturday,
so that will be was six games in like ten
or eleven days.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
And they could just BYU who's kind of used to
the altitude there in the era.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
And by has been off, by who has been off
for a couple of days, and they.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Got to get by VCU. I don't know if they.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Will well, VCU just played three or four and four
days as well, so that that has a huge, huge
effect on the outcome of games.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Let me ask you another one real quick on location.
So Louisville is playing somehow, somehow in Lexington against Creighton,
and then they would essentially get a home game against
top seed at Auburn in the second round. Now, I
don't know where you are on Louisville, but I mean
their backcourt matches up pretty good with the young Auburn
kids in the back court. I don't know, Doug, that
that's a dangerous spot if Louisville gets by Creighton.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Uh yeah, I mean when Chucky's healthy and Chucky's a
stud man Chuckie Heppern who said Wisconsin last year.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
Yeah, ye, he's awesome. I wouldn't make a.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
Big deal about playing, you know, in Lexington when you're
from Louisville, omar, Creighton fans travel like crazy. I think
that I think that one's a little overblown, Okay, I
just do.
Speaker 4 (29:42):
I mean, like, uh, don't get me wrong.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
What Pat's done is incredible, right, that program was in
the ditch and they flipped it and they went out
in the portal, spent some money, and he has those
kids playing hard.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
He runs really really good stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Let me ask you, Doug, how the ac stinks. Well, well,
that's harsh. Come on, it wasn't great. This year stinks considerable.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Hold on, if I told you you've been, you've been.
You're a huge college basketball fan. You grew up in
New York, right, Okay, So if I said, hey, you've
got a league with Syracuse, Duke, Carolina, Virginia, Louisville, who else?
Speaker 2 (30:19):
I mean, have those teams lost their coaches like Beyhim's
gone to You know.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I understand. My point is, considering how that league has
been viewed. I didn't even get to NC State, Wake Forest,
et cetera. To be this far down where you can
win that many games. Like Louisville's an eighth seed, and
they deserve to be an eight seed.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
They just do.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
The league's not that good. They don't have the quality
of wins. So I just like, let's not go crazy
about a record against the league, which is it's it's
probably the fifth best league in the country. Now that
being said, I think Duke's the best team in the
country when they're healthy. But just because the league's not
great not mean that duke isn't fantastic, so let me.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
I'm sure you're all over this, but Milwaukee is hosting
some games, so it looks like some decent teams North
Carolina's going to be there Milwaukee. I just looked it
up as two hours from Green Bay, Like, how does
it work for coaches?
Speaker 4 (31:14):
Half?
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Okay hour and a half? Would can you just straight
up go to that and watch? Or is that not allowed?
Or will they think they're scouting and trying to steal players.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
I can go wherever, I can go wherever I want. No,
I can't.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
You can't go watch somebody. You are going to go play?
So I went scouted.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
We're scouting.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
I was actually in California, went to the JU Junior
College Championship out here. I have people at ne I
A Championship, We're at the D two tournament, We're at
the D three tournament, and I mean the NAA tournament doesn't.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
Do a lot for us.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
The one I don't understand about Milwaukee is why is
Wisconsin not playing there?
Speaker 4 (31:51):
What? What? There are three questions? They deserve to be
in Milwaukee.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
They kind of got screwed. You're right, all right, we
can we can kind of wrap here, Doug with.
Speaker 4 (32:03):
When you come to Green Bay.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
I don't know. Man, if I get the time off
in the summer, maybe uh, Coward can gass up. Coward
can gas up the private jet and bring me down.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
Coward's moving to Chicago, So three hours, three hours away.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
So while you game next year, we're gonna play an
exhibition game for a Packer game. Come up, double up,
see the place, check it out.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I'll get you check it Can you leave me a scout?
Let me be a scout for you out here in
California and send some players your way. I will text
you a player. Want to send some money?
Speaker 4 (32:35):
You want to send some money.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
I'm not making that much money real quick, Doug, let
me final four picks. I know you said do because
you're is the best? Do you expect to chalk e
like four number ones advancing? Or what are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna be honest with you here.
I I don't know how the brackets line out. I
don't don't. I don't, but here's what I will tell you.
I do commend the committee on this this one point
they got right.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
What college football got wrong?
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Okay, the SEC has and spends the most money. So
it's not a it's not an absolute. I'm not an absolutist. Okay,
it's not always. You know, Kansas spent a bunch of money.
They seem to have somethings off with their team juju wise,
but generally, Okay, the SEC has and spends more money
(33:23):
than anybody. So yeah, they deserve to have fourteen teams
in because it's crazy how deep that league is. West
Virginia should have been in the tournament, right, because the
Big twelve spends a ton.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
West Virginia spent a ton as well.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
But the point is that I wouldn't surprise me at
all if the Elite eight was littered with SEC teams
and Big twelve teams and do I don't think. I
don't think the Big twelve is as good as it's been.
I think, you know, Houston is still impossible to score on.
I still think that Kansas has a chance. You know,
that's a crazy break they're in. But those schools have
(34:03):
so much more money. Like look, you know is the Godfather.
He's do an amazing job, but he's also helped out
by the fact that he's got you know, I'll be
a five, four or.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
Five million dollar payroll. Yeah, so just.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Just track the teams that have the most money and
have Hall of Fame coaches and.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
They'll be there.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
But my you know, without making any grandyous predictions, my
guess is Duke Win's it. I think they're terrific. I
think John is wildly underrated as a coach. I mean,
he's handled the transition really well. But as a coach,
they are expertly coached. And yeah, and then, uh, you know,
we played against Drake and Ben McCullum, who people say
(34:42):
is going to get a bigger job and maybe get
the Indiana job, and it's interesting, you know, there's no
real tricks to what they do. They're just so fricking good, defensively,
so connected. And they have two six year seniors, two
fifth years, and then Bennett starts. He's as good as
anybody we've seen on taping, definitely better than anybody saw
it in person. So you know, Drake's got a chance
(35:04):
to make a little run here as well. But I
do think that those SEC schools are significantly better than
most of the Big East schools, most of the Big
ten schools, especially in terms of funding.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
All Right, Doug Gottlieb head coach the Green Bay Phoenix.
Thanks for taking the time, Doug, Fox Sports radio host
can continued success and I'm excited to see your portal success, buddy.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
Thanks Sha
Host
Jason McIntyre
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