January 3, 2025 • 11 mins
Chad Brendel of Bearcat Journal joined us to discuss UC's uninspiring start to Big 12 play and Saturday's massive tilt against Arizona.
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Podcasts of The Mo Egger Radio Show are a service of Longnecks Sports Grill.
Listen to the show live weekday afternoons 3:00 - 6:00 on ESPN1530.
Listen Live: ESPN1530.com/listen
Get more: https://linktr.ee/MoEgger
Follow on X: @MoEgger
Instagram too: @MoEgger
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On Saturday afternoon. This week, the UC basketball team tries
to bounce back. They take on an Arizona team that
won its Big twelve opener ninety to eighty one over TCU.
Cincinnati did not win. It's a Big twelve opener, falling
on the road to Kansas State. Chad Brendle typically joins
US on Thursdays, usually at three forty five, but we
moved him to four h five, which is what time
(00:22):
it is now. Chadwi Bearcat Journal dot com. He is
with US.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hi, Chad, if I had a broken leg, you wouldn't
see me for a couple of weeks. I'll tell you
that much. Now.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I wouldn't do a radio show with a broken leg,
much less play a football.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
No. Oh, I wouldn't answer your phone call from my
living room with a broken leg.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
A lot of people who don't answer my phone call
even without a broken leg. So get in line. How
should have I reacted to what I saw in Manhattan
on Monday night?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Frustrated? I mean, I think that was you know, when
you're looking at this league and the way that it
plays out, that was an opportunity to go get a
road win against the team that you know, you should
be able. If this team is what we think it's
going to be like, you should be able to get
that win. So the frustration I think is fair, especially
(01:21):
when you consider what's coming up the next three games.
It would have made life a heck of a lot
easier to get that one out of the way, and
you know, try to try to snatch one of these
next three as opposed to now, boy, you got to
figure out a way to get one and and really
two of these next three, which is a daunting task.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Is this team going to be good offensively?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah? I think there's you know, I think there's some
things they need to to continue to figure out offensively
right now. I think the biggest thing is teams are
loading up to take away Gisel James and Sima's Lucotius
and saying, what can you do if we if we
slow those two down? And the answer has been not
a whole lot hopefully. As you know, we did see
(02:15):
kind of a an emergence of the old Dan skillings,
although I don't know how much him making four to
three point three pointers is, you know, repeatable throughout the schedule,
but him putting that on tape, I think when teams
go to scout Cincinnati at least makes them say, Okay,
this guy's back to being you know who he was
(02:36):
before he had knee injury. So I think that's one
part of it. The other thing I think that you
can't really apply to the rest of the season is
in both this game and the Villanova game, you had
two teams that were struggling, that were searching for something
(02:58):
to work, which means you're gonna you're gonna be tinkering,
you're gonna be changing what you do, what you you know,
what you think is going to work. And they had,
you know, six seven days to do it in between
their previous game and then their next game with Cincinnati,
which means you come out showing some stuff you don't
have on tape, and that kind of threw Cincinnati off.
(03:19):
I know, you know that through scouting they had seen
like this is kind of the way Case State was
defending both against Drake and then against witchitof State. Cincinnati
came in kind of preparing for that and expecting that
they showed it on the first offensive series and didn't
go back to with the rest of the game. So
(03:40):
that makes it extremely difficult. You spend a you know,
a chunk of practice time expecting them to do something
they've been doing recently. Then they don't do it and
you get something completely different. As a coach, that's you know,
that's difficult to just on the fly. Okay, we're gonna
we've got to change what we worked on leading up
(04:02):
to this game because that's not gonna apply to this game.
You won't see that anymore the rest of the way
because the Big Twelve and their infinite wisdom has decided
that twenty games in ten weeks is the way to go.
Teams aren't going to be able to throw a whole
bunch of new rakles at you with two days to
prepare in between games.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
What's wrong with Semos Lukash's.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Teams are defending the hell out of them right now.
You know, you start the way he started, everybody's going
to have you at the top of their scouting report.
Everybody is going to do something you know, different to
try to take you away like he's. One of the
ways he was getting really good action would be like
(04:49):
the you hear the term screen the screener, so where
Semos would set screens and then immediately go into a
screen action and be open at the three point line.
You'll see him catch and immediately start to go in
his shot because he's expecting a little bit of space.
That space hasn't been there, and teams have been able
(05:10):
to take away some of that stuff that made him
so effective. So they're going to have to go back
to the drawing board a little bit and say, you know,
how else, what else can we do to get him
the action that he's comfortable with? And they just haven't
really been able to do that for you know, three
four games, and it's a copycat world mode. Teams are
(05:33):
looking at tape and saying, what's being done to make
this guy a little bit off? And then they start,
you know, okay, well we're going to work that into
our game plan. Cincinnati's one going to have to do
a little bit better job drawing up plays for him. Two,
the other guys are going to have to start carrying
some of that load so the defense can't so heavily
focus on taking him away. It's it's why Joe Burrow
(05:57):
wants Jamar, Chase and t Higgins on his team forever, right,
because everybody's loading up to stop Jamar. Well, Okay, then
tea's open like that. That's kind of where Cincinnati's out
offensively right now. Who's key Who's making teams change what
they're doing to free up seamos a little bit more so?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Wes Miller talked today publicly a little bit about Sea Moss.
You were there. Have we heard anything else interesting from
the coach?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
You know, he's very coy in these things. The one
thing I think that this team does need to adjust to.
They've got a bigger target on their back now. They're
not a you know, at least metrically and having a
ranked number by your name. You're coming into these games
against a team like Kansas State that's saying, look, we
(06:46):
can get right. We haven't had a great season so far.
We've let some opportunities slip through our fingers. But we
got Cincinnati coming in our gym. If we win this game,
this one's going to carry a lot of weight. His
team's got to be ready for that. You're not sneaking
up on anybody anymore. As let's builds this program back up,
(07:06):
you have to learn how to play with the target
on your back. And you know, I think that's something
he's going to have to work with on his team's mentality,
because I could tell from the opening tip of that
Kansas State game that they were the aggressor, that they
were a little quicker to lose balls. They were a
little quicker, you know, defensively in the pat League, you know,
play with a little bit more purpose, and in a
(07:30):
game that's going to end up coming down to the wire,
that little stuff matters. Giving up an offensive rebound on
a pre throw. We saw it win them the Xavier game, right,
We saw it probably lose them the Kansas State game.
So stuff like that this team has to be ready for.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Do they have an answer for Caleb Love.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
You've got to frustrate tale Glove because he will shoot
them out of games if he's frustrated. If you let
him get into rhythm like we saw him do the
other night against TCU, he takes seventeen shots and scores
thirty three points, and your odds of winning that game
go down consistently. So I think you need to throw
(08:10):
a bunch of different wrinkles at him and get him
frustrated so that he's going to take those seventeen to
twenty shots no matter what. That's that's part of their offense.
You need him to be at like seventeen points on
seventeen shots and not thirty three points on seventeen shots.
That's how you get their offense a little bit out
(08:31):
of state.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
M Uh. I'm hopeful, but I'm nervous because you know,
you drop this one on Saturday, you're staring zero to
four in the face. Not that that is what's going
to happen, but you know, suddenly there's a huge premium
on playing a team that was ranked in the top
ten in the AP top twenty five before the season,
and heck and the net ranking is still twenty third.
(08:55):
They've got five losses, all Q one losses. Like this,
this feels like a pivot point in the season.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
On Saturday, it is, and it's against the team that's
top twenty and Ken Palm in offense and top forty
in the Ken Palm and defense, so you know they
haven't scored it well. Villanova's bad on defense. I think
they're like one to seventy five. Xavier and Dayton their
fifty sixty somewhere, and they're not great. Kansas State is
(09:23):
in the seventies. Like this is the best defense that
they've played this season, and their offense has not been
exactly enjoyable to watch run the make shots offense, and
it's going to be difficult Kansas. Arizona's big bo multiple
(09:45):
seven footers, and you know their wings and guards are
six three sixty six. They're going to have their work
cut out for him at home to not only hold
Arizona in check, but to be able to score enough
to get the win. So, you know, it's definitely something
that makes you nervous. But if they are who they
thought they were coming into the season, and as recently
(10:08):
as five days ago, they need to figure out a
way to get this Arizona win, to get on track
in the Big Twelve and not stare down Oh to
four would just be a catastrophe because you have so
much space that you've already lost. If you start like that,
the math, the math already is not mathing, and that's
(10:32):
not where you want to be on you know, January
twelfth or whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah, yeah, with eighty percent of your Big twelve schedule
in front of you. All right, we'll see what happens.
You see in Arizona on Saturday, Chad and his staff
will have it covered for Bearcatjournal dot Com. Thank you
as always.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
I don't feel like I made you feel better.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
No, I hated everything about Monday night's game.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Hated everything from the twelve to three start. I don't
think that team they played is very good. They couldn't,
for large stretches get shots off. We haven't, you know, looked.
They beat Dayton and deserve a lot of credit for it,
and they beat Xavier, and I think all the emotion
going into and resulting from that game kind of masked
(11:29):
the fact that, boy, offensively, they showed some warts and
I'm just I'm starting to wonder if offensively, at least
the ceiling is a lot lower than I thought it
was going to be.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
That's fair. They need to be better on offense. Absolute
direct though. You have a delightful weekend, sir.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
I will do my best.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Thank you, I'd say it.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Chad Brendel, Bearcat Journal dot Com. You see in Arizona
on Saturday afternoon at fifth third Arena
On Saturday afternoon. This week, the UC basketball team tries
to bounce back. They take on an Arizona team that
won its Big twelve opener ninety to eighty one over TCU.
Cincinnati did not win. It's a Big twelve opener, falling
on the road to Kansas State. Chad Brendle typically joins
US on Thursdays, usually at three forty five, but we
moved him to four h five, which is what time
(00:22):
it is now. Chadwi Bearcat Journal dot com. He is
with US.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hi, Chad, if I had a broken leg, you wouldn't
see me for a couple of weeks. I'll tell you
that much. Now.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I wouldn't do a radio show with a broken leg,
much less play a football.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
No. Oh, I wouldn't answer your phone call from my
living room with a broken leg.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
A lot of people who don't answer my phone call
even without a broken leg. So get in line. How
should have I reacted to what I saw in Manhattan
on Monday night?
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Frustrated? I mean, I think that was you know, when
you're looking at this league and the way that it
plays out, that was an opportunity to go get a
road win against the team that you know, you should
be able. If this team is what we think it's
going to be like, you should be able to get
that win. So the frustration I think is fair, especially
(01:21):
when you consider what's coming up the next three games.
It would have made life a heck of a lot
easier to get that one out of the way, and
you know, try to try to snatch one of these
next three as opposed to now, boy, you got to
figure out a way to get one and and really
two of these next three, which is a daunting task.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Is this team going to be good offensively?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah? I think there's you know, I think there's some
things they need to to continue to figure out offensively
right now. I think the biggest thing is teams are
loading up to take away Gisel James and Sima's Lucotius
and saying, what can you do if we if we
slow those two down? And the answer has been not
a whole lot hopefully. As you know, we did see
(02:15):
kind of a an emergence of the old Dan skillings,
although I don't know how much him making four to
three point three pointers is, you know, repeatable throughout the schedule,
but him putting that on tape, I think when teams
go to scout Cincinnati at least makes them say, Okay,
this guy's back to being you know who he was
(02:36):
before he had knee injury. So I think that's one
part of it. The other thing I think that you
can't really apply to the rest of the season is
in both this game and the Villanova game, you had
two teams that were struggling, that were searching for something
(02:58):
to work, which means you're gonna you're gonna be tinkering,
you're gonna be changing what you do, what you you know,
what you think is going to work. And they had,
you know, six seven days to do it in between
their previous game and then their next game with Cincinnati,
which means you come out showing some stuff you don't
have on tape, and that kind of threw Cincinnati off.
(03:19):
I know, you know that through scouting they had seen
like this is kind of the way Case State was
defending both against Drake and then against witchitof State. Cincinnati
came in kind of preparing for that and expecting that
they showed it on the first offensive series and didn't
go back to with the rest of the game. So
(03:40):
that makes it extremely difficult. You spend a you know,
a chunk of practice time expecting them to do something
they've been doing recently. Then they don't do it and
you get something completely different. As a coach, that's you know,
that's difficult to just on the fly. Okay, we're gonna
we've got to change what we worked on leading up
(04:02):
to this game because that's not gonna apply to this game.
You won't see that anymore the rest of the way
because the Big Twelve and their infinite wisdom has decided
that twenty games in ten weeks is the way to go.
Teams aren't going to be able to throw a whole
bunch of new rakles at you with two days to
prepare in between games.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
What's wrong with Semos Lukash's.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Teams are defending the hell out of them right now.
You know, you start the way he started, everybody's going
to have you at the top of their scouting report.
Everybody is going to do something you know, different to
try to take you away like he's. One of the
ways he was getting really good action would be like
(04:49):
the you hear the term screen the screener, so where
Semos would set screens and then immediately go into a
screen action and be open at the three point line.
You'll see him catch and immediately start to go in
his shot because he's expecting a little bit of space.
That space hasn't been there, and teams have been able
(05:10):
to take away some of that stuff that made him
so effective. So they're going to have to go back
to the drawing board a little bit and say, you know,
how else, what else can we do to get him
the action that he's comfortable with? And they just haven't
really been able to do that for you know, three
four games, and it's a copycat world mode. Teams are
(05:33):
looking at tape and saying, what's being done to make
this guy a little bit off? And then they start,
you know, okay, well we're going to work that into
our game plan. Cincinnati's one going to have to do
a little bit better job drawing up plays for him. Two,
the other guys are going to have to start carrying
some of that load so the defense can't so heavily
focus on taking him away. It's it's why Joe Burrow
(05:57):
wants Jamar, Chase and t Higgins on his team forever, right,
because everybody's loading up to stop Jamar. Well, Okay, then
tea's open like that. That's kind of where Cincinnati's out
offensively right now. Who's key Who's making teams change what
they're doing to free up seamos a little bit more so?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Wes Miller talked today publicly a little bit about Sea Moss.
You were there. Have we heard anything else interesting from
the coach?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
You know, he's very coy in these things. The one
thing I think that this team does need to adjust to.
They've got a bigger target on their back now. They're
not a you know, at least metrically and having a
ranked number by your name. You're coming into these games
against a team like Kansas State that's saying, look, we
(06:46):
can get right. We haven't had a great season so far.
We've let some opportunities slip through our fingers. But we
got Cincinnati coming in our gym. If we win this game,
this one's going to carry a lot of weight. His
team's got to be ready for that. You're not sneaking
up on anybody anymore. As let's builds this program back up,
(07:06):
you have to learn how to play with the target
on your back. And you know, I think that's something
he's going to have to work with on his team's mentality,
because I could tell from the opening tip of that
Kansas State game that they were the aggressor, that they
were a little quicker to lose balls. They were a
little quicker, you know, defensively in the pat League, you know,
play with a little bit more purpose, and in a
(07:30):
game that's going to end up coming down to the wire,
that little stuff matters. Giving up an offensive rebound on
a pre throw. We saw it win them the Xavier game, right,
We saw it probably lose them the Kansas State game.
So stuff like that this team has to be ready for.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Do they have an answer for Caleb Love.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
You've got to frustrate tale Glove because he will shoot
them out of games if he's frustrated. If you let
him get into rhythm like we saw him do the
other night against TCU, he takes seventeen shots and scores
thirty three points, and your odds of winning that game
go down consistently. So I think you need to throw
(08:10):
a bunch of different wrinkles at him and get him
frustrated so that he's going to take those seventeen to
twenty shots no matter what. That's that's part of their offense.
You need him to be at like seventeen points on
seventeen shots and not thirty three points on seventeen shots.
That's how you get their offense a little bit out
(08:31):
of state.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
M Uh. I'm hopeful, but I'm nervous because you know,
you drop this one on Saturday, you're staring zero to
four in the face. Not that that is what's going
to happen, but you know, suddenly there's a huge premium
on playing a team that was ranked in the top
ten in the AP top twenty five before the season,
and heck and the net ranking is still twenty third.
(08:55):
They've got five losses, all Q one losses. Like this,
this feels like a pivot point in the season.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
On Saturday, it is, and it's against the team that's
top twenty and Ken Palm in offense and top forty
in the Ken Palm and defense, so you know they
haven't scored it well. Villanova's bad on defense. I think
they're like one to seventy five. Xavier and Dayton their
fifty sixty somewhere, and they're not great. Kansas State is
(09:23):
in the seventies. Like this is the best defense that
they've played this season, and their offense has not been
exactly enjoyable to watch run the make shots offense, and
it's going to be difficult Kansas. Arizona's big bo multiple
(09:45):
seven footers, and you know their wings and guards are
six three sixty six. They're going to have their work
cut out for him at home to not only hold
Arizona in check, but to be able to score enough
to get the win. So, you know, it's definitely something
that makes you nervous. But if they are who they
thought they were coming into the season, and as recently
(10:08):
as five days ago, they need to figure out a
way to get this Arizona win, to get on track
in the Big Twelve and not stare down Oh to
four would just be a catastrophe because you have so
much space that you've already lost. If you start like that,
the math, the math already is not mathing, and that's
(10:32):
not where you want to be on you know, January
twelfth or whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah, yeah, with eighty percent of your Big twelve schedule
in front of you. All right, we'll see what happens.
You see in Arizona on Saturday, Chad and his staff
will have it covered for Bearcatjournal dot Com. Thank you
as always.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
I don't feel like I made you feel better.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
No, I hated everything about Monday night's game.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Hated everything from the twelve to three start. I don't
think that team they played is very good. They couldn't,
for large stretches get shots off. We haven't, you know, looked.
They beat Dayton and deserve a lot of credit for it,
and they beat Xavier, and I think all the emotion
going into and resulting from that game kind of masked
(11:29):
the fact that, boy, offensively, they showed some warts and
I'm just I'm starting to wonder if offensively, at least
the ceiling is a lot lower than I thought it
was going to be.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
That's fair. They need to be better on offense. Absolute
direct though. You have a delightful weekend, sir.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
I will do my best.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Thank you, I'd say it.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Chad Brendel, Bearcat Journal dot Com. You see in Arizona
on Saturday afternoon at fifth third Arena
Mo Egger News
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