February 21, 2025 • 13 mins
Chad Brendel of Bearcat Journal joined us to talk UC Basketball.
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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
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bearcadtournal dot com. Uh, who is going to be hosting
this show tomorrow? Because I will be off. There's a
lot to talk about. Chad is here on Twitter at
Chad Brendle. I briefly jumped into the aftermath last night, Chad,
thinking you guys would make me feel better and you failed.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
That was not a field. That was not much of
a therapy session.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
No, no, no, no it, uh no it was not.
I'm just gonna ask you this, where where do you
want to start? Where do you want to start with
last night's game.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Talking about something else? Uh? I mean I don't know.
We could. Can we talk about like the the middle
twenty minutes of the game, Sure, if you want. Yeah,
that was a lot of fun those middle twenty minutes,
(01:02):
Like they you know, those they went from like down
nine to like up six, and like felt like they
had control of the game, and they're going to go
into Morgantown and do what they were supposed to do
and get a nice quad one road win and we
could all at least feel good for a couple of
a couple more days. And then Dylan Mitchell went to
(01:24):
the line up six with two free throws and Humpty
dumpty had a great fall.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Well yeah, as soon as he missed those two free throws,
I started to get a really, really bad feeling that
was only amplified as the next few minutes played themselves out.
I think there's a lot of us that if you
would have said on February the twentieth, they'll have eleven losses,
(01:51):
they will have ten big twelve losses, would have said,
uh huh, not by February twentieth, And yet that's where
we are. What did most of his get wrong most
about this team.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
That they didn't have a star that you know the
I think, excuse me, the weather is not doing well
with me. I Dand I think that the anticipation or
the belief that a couple guys were going to make
(02:25):
that leap is something that you can't do in this league.
You know that that's something that works in the American
where you know you're just cycling. Okay, well this guy's next,
so we're going to trust that he's going to be
able to do it. If you look around this league,
that's not how these teams are built. They are built
on guys that have done it. They are built on
(02:47):
stars that are stars, not stars that might become stars,
and then they have guys around them that maybe can
you know, fill into those roles. I think Aaron said
it best on the Aftermath last night. Though they got
a lot of supporting actors, they don't have a lead man.
And you know, I think where the And I hate
(03:09):
to do this because the thing is a really good
player and this is not too Maybe it's it's part
of what wasn't fair to him. I don't know that
Gisel James is the number one guy. I mean, he
is a guy that relies on the mid range jump shot,
which is the worst shot in basketball. When he has
(03:29):
that mid range jump shot cooking, he looks good when
he doesn't. I was looking at the numbers today, Mo.
He's made more than to more than one three in
four Big Twelve games. Out of fifteen, he's made more
than two threes twice. So he's a mid range jump
(03:51):
shooter that doesn't really give you a consistent outside shot.
And I think that belief that he was gonna be
your like go to guy with the ball in his
hands is kind of the error in roster construction that
is hurting the team the most. They don't have a
two guard. Really, they don't have a two guard on
(04:13):
the roster. Dan Skilly is that best of three? They don't,
you know? And maybe that was gonna be Connor Hickman,
but he's hurt and we're probably not gonna see him
again the rest of this year. So not going out
and getting a bona fide scorer, it is hurting this
(04:33):
team a lot. And I hear a lot mough. You
know what makes me laugh. You know what phrase makes
me laugh when looking at this roster. Positionless basketball, it's
a lot. They have two point guards, they have like
six guys that are three fours, and they have, you know,
(04:56):
two centers. Like the positionless basketball is just not true
in this league. You have to have a guy when
when the wheels start to fall off that you can
clear out, get him the ball, and have him go
get a basket to calm things down. Because if you
go back and look at that stretch they got looks
right like Dylan Mitchell had a point blank look. He
(05:18):
also threw maybe one of the worst passes in the
history of basketball to he gets a paint touch. Josh
Reed is wide open, standing and waiting on the wing.
I don't know who the hell he threw that ball to,
Like Josh Reed had had to be Randing, but he
had to be Chris Carter making a sideline catch to
(05:39):
get that thing as far away from him as it
was thrown, and then he shoots it off the top
of the backboard because he wasn't set like it's just
a failure in looking at the big twelve and not
yet understanding what it takes to actually be a really
good team in this league. They bet on Gigsel, they
(05:59):
bet on Dan and it didn't work.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
So roster construction obviously falls at the desk of the
head coach. And when you're going through a season like
this and you've been the head coach at a program
for as long as West has, there's going to be
a lot of criticism that comes his way. Is that
where the most fair and legitimate criticism starts with roster construction?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I think so, And you know, I do think look
like trying to figure out this league on the fly
as a team coming into it with a younger coach.
Yes he's been a coach for a while, but he's
never been a coach at this level. Trying to figure
out the right buttons to push is a challenge, and
(06:43):
so far his belief on what it was going to
take to win in this league has not worked. They
went with a bunch of big guys last year thinking
the league was more physical than it was. It felt
like they built like a big East roster last year, right,
like you're gonna have to have a bunch of guys
you can throw in at the four and five and
be physical at the rim, and that wasn't really the
(07:06):
formula in this league. And this year, one of the
things I do think is a problem. How many guys
on this roster do you think can comfortably hold more
than like two hundred and fifteen pounds? Like where's the
six eight to two hundred and thirty five pound guy
that everybody in this league has? And I think that's
(07:27):
part of why you're getting beat up on the glass
so much, is that they just don't have the muscle
to compete with a lot of the teams that are
that are sending three and four guys to the rim
and just out physically Cincinnati, because really that's the one
I've been doing this long enough fortunately that you don't
(07:50):
really get a whole lot wrong, because you know what
it looks like coming off of last year, I thought
this was gonna be one of the ten best rebounding
teams in the country. They're not one of the ten
best rebounding teams in the Big Twelve. No, that is
a dreadful rebounding West Virginia team. Like they are bad
(08:13):
at rebounding, bad on offense and defense. And they out
rebounded Cincinnati by eight, coming off a game where they
got rebounded by eighteen, and the response was we kept
it within eight. Like when they played well in that game,
they were good on the glass, and they got dominated
(08:36):
in the opening segment of the game and the opening
two segments of the game and the closing two segments
of the game. West Virginia kicked their tail up and
down the court. What they have four offensive possessions with
three shot attempts. That can't happen if you're gonna win
in this league. It can't happen.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
In the era we're in now. How does someone like
yourself forecast what next year might look like with the
objective being to have a team that is dramatically better
in so many areas than this one is.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
I mean, you almost have to tear it down, like
the thought process of we're gonna we're gonna have a
balanced roster that you know, there's not one great player,
but there's a bunch of good players. Because I do
think like there are a bunch of Big twelve quality
(09:35):
players on this roster. There's just not enough top of
the conference level big twelve players on this roster. And
if that means you gotta you're gonna have to answer
some tough questions in terms of what the top of
the roster looks like in regards to the money that
you're spending, because spreading out, you know, I would say
(10:00):
probably two and a half million dollars of their budget
is spread out amongst the starting five, but nobody's making
a million dollars. Like I'm confident in saying that, there's
probably nobody that's even within a couple hundred thousand of
making a million dollars. You've got to have one or
two million dollar players on this roster. And it feels
(10:21):
weird talking about that in college basketball, right, but it's reality.
It is absolute fact. If you look at these teams
that they're playing, almost all of them have at least
one and usually two million dollar valuation level guys. At
the top of the roster, and I think it has
(10:41):
to start there. And unfortunately, the only way you get
there is to clear out the top of the roster.
And I don't know, like I don't know exactly what
that looks like, but I think you're starting five has
to look drastically different next year than it looks right now,
(11:02):
and I think that's when they has to start.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, God, can they Can they afford a million dollar player?
Do they have? Are those resources available?
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I think in this particular window it is because you
still have nil. It's gonna after July first have to
be used differently. But guess what, You're recruiting the portal
in April, March in April, so you clear out the
decks on your NIL going into July first, and then
(11:35):
in July first you get your nil, which, if you
follow the math on the way most teams are planning
on doing this, they should have four roughly four million
dollars in revenue share coupled with your NIL. That should
allow you to get to a point where you have
(11:57):
at least one, potentially a million dollar players on your roster.
And look, the reality is a lot of next year
is going to depend on how good is Shanabiyahs, because
he's going to be somebody that that just you're going
to have to count on heavily next year. It's you
(12:21):
recruited him to be a scorer, to be a bucket getter.
He's gonna get the ball and get a chance to
be a bucket getter. You need somebody else to go
alongside him, and then you're gonna need a you know,
a big man that can score, because that's Dylan Mitchell
is as much good as he does, he's not a
(12:43):
guy that's gonna consistently get you twelve, thirteen, fourteen points
and as he's we know that's not his game. So
you've got to go hit. I've got a name I
know that I love mo. I don't think they can
get him because I think, but I would if it
was me, I would put just whatever this kid kind
(13:04):
of wants you write to check. His name is Yaxell
Londonborg plays at UAB and he averages twenty and ten.
And you know I would say, hey, here you are
the missing piece that we need at the four or
the five, whichever one you want to use them. But
(13:25):
you go get you a guy that can get you
fifteen twenty points consistently and go get you eight nine
rebounds on a night in, night out basis. Finding that
guy is going to be expensive, but you can't bet
on somebody you think might do it. You got to
go get somebody that's shown they can do it. And
I mean that's honestly where I would start.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yaxxell Londenborg. Great, I'm gonna spend my weekend watching yackxell
Londenborg highlights. You've given me a homework assignment I have
to run. Thank you as always
Bearcadtournal dot com. Uh, who is going to be hosting
this show tomorrow? Because I will be off. There's a
lot to talk about. Chad is here on Twitter at
Chad Brendle. I briefly jumped into the aftermath last night, Chad,
thinking you guys would make me feel better and you failed.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
That was not a field. That was not much of
a therapy session.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
No, no, no, no it, uh no it was not.
I'm just gonna ask you this, where where do you
want to start? Where do you want to start with
last night's game.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Talking about something else? Uh? I mean I don't know.
We could. Can we talk about like the the middle
twenty minutes of the game, Sure, if you want. Yeah,
that was a lot of fun those middle twenty minutes,
(01:02):
Like they you know, those they went from like down
nine to like up six, and like felt like they
had control of the game, and they're going to go
into Morgantown and do what they were supposed to do
and get a nice quad one road win and we
could all at least feel good for a couple of
a couple more days. And then Dylan Mitchell went to
(01:24):
the line up six with two free throws and Humpty
dumpty had a great fall.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Well yeah, as soon as he missed those two free throws,
I started to get a really, really bad feeling that
was only amplified as the next few minutes played themselves out.
I think there's a lot of us that if you
would have said on February the twentieth, they'll have eleven losses,
(01:51):
they will have ten big twelve losses, would have said,
uh huh, not by February twentieth, And yet that's where
we are. What did most of his get wrong most
about this team.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
That they didn't have a star that you know the
I think, excuse me, the weather is not doing well
with me. I Dand I think that the anticipation or
the belief that a couple guys were going to make
(02:25):
that leap is something that you can't do in this league.
You know that that's something that works in the American
where you know you're just cycling. Okay, well this guy's next,
so we're going to trust that he's going to be
able to do it. If you look around this league,
that's not how these teams are built. They are built
on guys that have done it. They are built on
(02:47):
stars that are stars, not stars that might become stars,
and then they have guys around them that maybe can
you know, fill into those roles. I think Aaron said
it best on the Aftermath last night. Though they got
a lot of supporting actors, they don't have a lead man.
And you know, I think where the And I hate
(03:09):
to do this because the thing is a really good
player and this is not too Maybe it's it's part
of what wasn't fair to him. I don't know that
Gisel James is the number one guy. I mean, he
is a guy that relies on the mid range jump shot,
which is the worst shot in basketball. When he has
(03:29):
that mid range jump shot cooking, he looks good when
he doesn't. I was looking at the numbers today, Mo.
He's made more than to more than one three in
four Big Twelve games. Out of fifteen, he's made more
than two threes twice. So he's a mid range jump
(03:51):
shooter that doesn't really give you a consistent outside shot.
And I think that belief that he was gonna be
your like go to guy with the ball in his
hands is kind of the error in roster construction that
is hurting the team the most. They don't have a
two guard. Really, they don't have a two guard on
(04:13):
the roster. Dan Skilly is that best of three? They don't,
you know? And maybe that was gonna be Connor Hickman,
but he's hurt and we're probably not gonna see him
again the rest of this year. So not going out
and getting a bona fide scorer, it is hurting this
(04:33):
team a lot. And I hear a lot mough. You
know what makes me laugh. You know what phrase makes
me laugh when looking at this roster. Positionless basketball, it's
a lot. They have two point guards, they have like
six guys that are three fours, and they have, you know,
(04:56):
two centers. Like the positionless basketball is just not true
in this league. You have to have a guy when
when the wheels start to fall off that you can
clear out, get him the ball, and have him go
get a basket to calm things down. Because if you
go back and look at that stretch they got looks
right like Dylan Mitchell had a point blank look. He
(05:18):
also threw maybe one of the worst passes in the
history of basketball to he gets a paint touch. Josh
Reed is wide open, standing and waiting on the wing.
I don't know who the hell he threw that ball to,
Like Josh Reed had had to be Randing, but he
had to be Chris Carter making a sideline catch to
(05:39):
get that thing as far away from him as it
was thrown, and then he shoots it off the top
of the backboard because he wasn't set like it's just
a failure in looking at the big twelve and not
yet understanding what it takes to actually be a really
good team in this league. They bet on Gigsel, they
(05:59):
bet on Dan and it didn't work.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
So roster construction obviously falls at the desk of the
head coach. And when you're going through a season like
this and you've been the head coach at a program
for as long as West has, there's going to be
a lot of criticism that comes his way. Is that
where the most fair and legitimate criticism starts with roster construction?
Speaker 2 (06:23):
I think so, And you know, I do think look
like trying to figure out this league on the fly
as a team coming into it with a younger coach.
Yes he's been a coach for a while, but he's
never been a coach at this level. Trying to figure
out the right buttons to push is a challenge, and
(06:43):
so far his belief on what it was going to
take to win in this league has not worked. They
went with a bunch of big guys last year thinking
the league was more physical than it was. It felt
like they built like a big East roster last year, right,
like you're gonna have to have a bunch of guys
you can throw in at the four and five and
be physical at the rim, and that wasn't really the
(07:06):
formula in this league. And this year, one of the
things I do think is a problem. How many guys
on this roster do you think can comfortably hold more
than like two hundred and fifteen pounds? Like where's the
six eight to two hundred and thirty five pound guy
that everybody in this league has? And I think that's
(07:27):
part of why you're getting beat up on the glass
so much, is that they just don't have the muscle
to compete with a lot of the teams that are
that are sending three and four guys to the rim
and just out physically Cincinnati, because really that's the one
I've been doing this long enough fortunately that you don't
(07:50):
really get a whole lot wrong, because you know what
it looks like coming off of last year, I thought
this was gonna be one of the ten best rebounding
teams in the country. They're not one of the ten
best rebounding teams in the Big Twelve. No, that is
a dreadful rebounding West Virginia team. Like they are bad
(08:13):
at rebounding, bad on offense and defense. And they out
rebounded Cincinnati by eight, coming off a game where they
got rebounded by eighteen, and the response was we kept
it within eight. Like when they played well in that game,
they were good on the glass, and they got dominated
(08:36):
in the opening segment of the game and the opening
two segments of the game and the closing two segments
of the game. West Virginia kicked their tail up and
down the court. What they have four offensive possessions with
three shot attempts. That can't happen if you're gonna win
in this league. It can't happen.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
In the era we're in now. How does someone like
yourself forecast what next year might look like with the
objective being to have a team that is dramatically better
in so many areas than this one is.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
I mean, you almost have to tear it down, like
the thought process of we're gonna we're gonna have a
balanced roster that you know, there's not one great player,
but there's a bunch of good players. Because I do
think like there are a bunch of Big twelve quality
(09:35):
players on this roster. There's just not enough top of
the conference level big twelve players on this roster. And
if that means you gotta you're gonna have to answer
some tough questions in terms of what the top of
the roster looks like in regards to the money that
you're spending, because spreading out, you know, I would say
(10:00):
probably two and a half million dollars of their budget
is spread out amongst the starting five, but nobody's making
a million dollars. Like I'm confident in saying that, there's
probably nobody that's even within a couple hundred thousand of
making a million dollars. You've got to have one or
two million dollar players on this roster. And it feels
(10:21):
weird talking about that in college basketball, right, but it's reality.
It is absolute fact. If you look at these teams
that they're playing, almost all of them have at least
one and usually two million dollar valuation level guys. At
the top of the roster, and I think it has
(10:41):
to start there. And unfortunately, the only way you get
there is to clear out the top of the roster.
And I don't know, like I don't know exactly what
that looks like, but I think you're starting five has
to look drastically different next year than it looks right now,
(11:02):
and I think that's when they has to start.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, God, can they Can they afford a million dollar player?
Do they have? Are those resources available?
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I think in this particular window it is because you
still have nil. It's gonna after July first have to
be used differently. But guess what, You're recruiting the portal
in April, March in April, so you clear out the
decks on your NIL going into July first, and then
(11:35):
in July first you get your nil, which, if you
follow the math on the way most teams are planning
on doing this, they should have four roughly four million
dollars in revenue share coupled with your NIL. That should
allow you to get to a point where you have
(11:57):
at least one, potentially a million dollar players on your roster.
And look, the reality is a lot of next year
is going to depend on how good is Shanabiyahs, because
he's going to be somebody that that just you're going
to have to count on heavily next year. It's you
(12:21):
recruited him to be a scorer, to be a bucket getter.
He's gonna get the ball and get a chance to
be a bucket getter. You need somebody else to go
alongside him, and then you're gonna need a you know,
a big man that can score, because that's Dylan Mitchell
is as much good as he does, he's not a
(12:43):
guy that's gonna consistently get you twelve, thirteen, fourteen points
and as he's we know that's not his game. So
you've got to go hit. I've got a name I
know that I love mo. I don't think they can
get him because I think, but I would if it
was me, I would put just whatever this kid kind
(13:04):
of wants you write to check. His name is Yaxell
Londonborg plays at UAB and he averages twenty and ten.
And you know I would say, hey, here you are
the missing piece that we need at the four or
the five, whichever one you want to use them. But
(13:25):
you go get you a guy that can get you
fifteen twenty points consistently and go get you eight nine
rebounds on a night in, night out basis. Finding that
guy is going to be expensive, but you can't bet
on somebody you think might do it. You got to
go get somebody that's shown they can do it. And
I mean that's honestly where I would start.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yaxxell Londenborg. Great, I'm gonna spend my weekend watching yackxell
Londenborg highlights. You've given me a homework assignment I have
to run. Thank you as always
Mo Egger News
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