January 9, 2025 • 12 mins
Chad Brendel of BearcatJournal joined us to talk about the Bearcats, Saturday's game against Kansas, and whether this season is salvageable.
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
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):
Four.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
This is ESPN fifteen thirty on Oegger Thrilled that you're
listening today. Kelsey Conway is going to be with us
in twenty minutes on the Bengals offseason and the search
for assistant coaches like a defensive coordinator. That At four
h five on Thursdays, we spend time with our friend
Chad Brendel Bearcat Journal dot com. The UC Bearcats back
(00:21):
at home trying to avoid a fourth consecutive loss to
start Big twelve play hosting Kansas.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Hi, Chad, how's it going good?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I saw you today, but you you didn't make it
down to say hello.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I was in a bit of a hurry.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I was at the press conference for the new women's
or the new volleyball coach at UC, and I did
an interview with her and we're going to air that tomorrow.
But I had to get in and get out, So
I apologize for not saying hi.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I meant to turn like wave, and then you were
talking to somebody, and then I was talking to somebody,
and we never even got to, like, you know, give
the old hey from across the room. The big room.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
It was a very big room, a crowded room, a
crowded room.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
It was a nice event. Saturday might not be a
very nice event. Is this season salvagable?
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah? Is it? Yes? Can they We'll find out. I mean,
I you know, I think the the one thing that's
stuck with me, and I generally don't even really listen,
uh to like the broadcast on away games, Like I'm
watching it on TV, but I don't pay attention to
announcers because I I know enough that I don't need
(01:35):
their assistance. But I did hear at one point that
they said Cincinnati looks like everything they're doing is very casual,
and that is a terrible place to be when you're
playing in a league like this, Like, you know, the
part of a big part of like why the offense
is struggling right now. If you go back and watch
(01:57):
their sets, they're not chrisp. They're not executing with purpose.
They're just kind of going and going through the motions
of like it looks like, you know, like a Saturday
morning walkthrough for a for a four o'clock game like that.
You know, they're just trying to like keep the sets
fresh in their mind. Like no, you have to be precise,
(02:20):
you have to be crisp. To be able to execute
at this level, and if you're not, it makes you
very easy to guard. And what I've seen for the
past three games is a team that was very easy
to guard.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah, I you know, far be it from me to
pretend like I should have a whiteboard in my hand,
But I've watched enough basketball, especially college basketball, in my
life that for the most part, I can watch a
team in the half court and through a few possessions,
have a general idea of what they're trying to do
and what the options are. Right what I what I
saw on Tuesday, from that standpoint cannot have confused me more.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
I agree, I completely agree. It was it was like
they they they they had concepts of a plan moo,
but but they didn't have any like conviction to executing it.
(03:20):
Like you know, there were there were open passes that
like and and easy passing lanes that they just they
didn't they didn't throw the ball to like. I can
really only think of one thing that stood out to
me that looked like crisp And at the end of
the game, when they when it was already decided they
run a high ball screen, they quickly passed the ball
(03:40):
into the corner of these crashes to the rim. As
soon as the ball gets to the corner, they touched
pass to a ease dunk, Like that's the only thing
I remember that looked crisp offensively, and it was when
they were down, you know, nineteen at the end of
the game like that. That can't it can't happen in
this league, Like you have to be dialed in. And
(04:00):
you know, people are gonna like roll their eyes in
their car while they're listening to this right now. But
for this team and for a lot of teams here
over the past thirty five years, their identity is defense,
and in that game in particular, they were lazy on defense.
Like Baylor just got to whatever spot they wanted to
get to, wherever they wanted to go, whatever they wanted
(04:21):
to do, they were able to do it. And Cincinnati
almost was like they were casually watching the game like
the rest of us instead of an active participant in it.
And that makes you know, the Kansas State loss, we're
going to look back on that potentially if things if
they don't get this turned around, We're going to look
back on that, like the New England loss for the Bengals,
(04:43):
that's a bad team that shouldn't happen. You can understand losing,
you know, a five point game to Arizona, like you
can understand going on the road and losing it Baylor.
That one doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But
the Baylor thing, they just didn't seem dialed in. They
did not seem like they were connected. I don't know.
You know that these guys all seem like good guys.
(05:04):
They all seem to get along, but for whatever reason,
things are not clicking right now.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
What's happened to Gisel James?
Speaker 1 (05:15):
I think in watching how teams are playing him, the
book is out, like I think for his whole life,
like that drive to the rim and that stop on
a dime, turn around, quick fade away. You know, guys
jump when he stops on a dime and they're anticipating
him to go to the rim and he gets that
(05:35):
little but guess what, nobody's jumping right Like he stops
on a dime and his defender is staying flat footed
and waiting for him to go into that fade away.
And that makes it much easier to guard because now
you're contesting it instead of it being wide open and
just rising up and knocking down like a six or
seven footer that he's been able to do his whole life.
(05:58):
Like I think he's been blocked six times in the
last two games. That tells me teams are sitting on it,
they're waiting for it. So you know there were two
or three times that there was one time a guy
fell down and he still shot a fade away. There's
a guy on the ground in front of him. The
basket is right there. All he has to do is
go towards the rim and lay it up, and instead
(06:18):
his muscle memory says stop on a dime, turn around
and fade away. Like they got to get that worked
out of him, because right now there is a major
difference mode between being you know, the point guard off
the bench to being the number one or two guy
on the scouting report. Teams are taking away, they're they're
high hedging taking away. Like when he comes off a
(06:41):
ball screen, there's a guy they're waiting for him, and
immediately he backs up instead of going towards the rim.
So then your offense is immediately out of sync and
you have to restart it because now the defense is
recovered because your point guard is backed up, everybody is
guarded and you have to start running act and again
that results in a lot of what you know, when
(07:03):
you look at it, you're like, well, they're just standing around,
Well they're waiting because now they have to reset. Everybody
has to go back into their spots and they got
to reset the play and try to run the play again.
And he's become easy to guard. And you can't have
a point guard that's easy to guard because you're not
going to be able to run very effective offense if
your point guard can't get through the first step of
(07:26):
that offense to make it effective. Like that's to me,
what is throwing off a lot of this is that
it is, you know, the structure of it is on
Gisel to play downhill and that opens up a lot
of other stuff. When's the last time you saw him
come off of pick and roll explode down the lane
and the defense have to collapse on him. Happening right now?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, And so like you you could look at his
you could look at his you know, baseline numbers and go,
you know, he's averaging eleven in a game, eleven a
game in nearly five assists a game like those aren't number,
but I watched I watched read possession he played on
offense last year. I've watched every possession he's played on
offense this season.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
It's not what it.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Should be, No, and he has to make adjustments to that, right, Like,
that's how this works anymore. Everybody's got every within the
click of a finger, they can watch every possession you've
played all year, and if they can find something that
somebody is doing, you know the first sign of it. Okay, well,
(08:30):
these teams are doing this to take Gigsel James out
of his offense. Everybody's gonna copy it. They're just gonna say, Okay,
this is what we got to do to take Cincinnati
out of their offense. You have to come up with
a counter to the counter. You have to be able
to to say, Okay, this is how you're going to
defend me. Then this is what I'm going to do
to beat it. And I've not seen much of that
(08:52):
in these last three games. Now, I will say the
one thing that you know that you hold on to
if you're a Cincinnati fans, we have seen this team
play well. We have seen this team play winning basketball.
So it's in there. They just have to dig it.
Back out. The other thing that really upset me about
(09:13):
the Baylor game, though, is where you're coming You're coming
off losing your first two conference games. Where is the fight? Like,
where is where is the passion to say? But stops here?
Like we're not going to do this again. And you
had to know Baylor got their ass kit against Iowa State.
(09:33):
They were going to bring the energy, so you have
to match it and then exceed it. And I didn't
see that. I mean it was it was just like
Kansas State from the opening tip. Baylor was the aggressor
and Cincinnati was okay with it. And I think that's
really why fans are freaking out because that's not Cincinnati basketball. Yeah,
Cincinnati basketball is not. This team's playing hard. We'll get
(09:57):
them next time, Yeah, got it.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
That's that's encapsulates that. It's not that they lost. It's
not that offensively they weren't very good and didn't execute.
It's not that at one point in the second half
the turnovers outnumbered the Mad Buckets. It's exactly what I
expected fight. I expected a level of desperation and urgency
and fight, and I saw the exact opposite. What I
(10:23):
saw look like a team it's late February, We're not
making the tournament. We've got one foot on the beach
or one foot in the portal. That's what it looked like.
And it was January the seventh, Like, that's that's what
I laid in bed on Tuesday night thinking about that.
I felt like I watched a team that seemed almost
checked out, and it's they've got eighteen games to go,
(10:47):
counting the Big Twelve tournament.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
That's what was most sobering.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Absolutely, without question. Well, I mean, you and I have
been doing this a long time. We have followed this team.
You're two weeks older than me, so we have followed
this team pretty much our entire lives. And that is
not Cincinnati basketball. That is I very rarely feel like
I cared more than they did, Like that's the identity
(11:13):
of this program. And it felt like doing the postgame
show after that game Tuesday night, that I cared more
than they did. And they have to find a way
to figure that out.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Wick. Do they have a prayer against Kansas?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Sure, Kansas lost to West Virginia, Kansas was at home.
Kansas was in a close game last night. It had
they were down six at halftime, to Arizona State. I
would hope Cincinnati should should be in a similar playing
as West Virginia and should be better than a young
(11:53):
Arizona State team. So you know, if they come out
and they play like it means something to them, I
think they have a chance today. Ultimately, you know, this
is a this is one of those games where they
can play well and lose, and you know, not that
I would be okay with that, but I'd feel a
hell of a lot better than I did on Tuesday.
(12:15):
Wes said it today in the press conference, like this
is a league where you can lose three You can
play well and lose three games, but we haven't done that,
right like that, That's not the problem right now. The
problem right now is we're zero and three and we've played,
like you know what, in three of those games.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
I'll see us Saturday, three of those games. I hear you.
I'll see us Saturday. Thank you as.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Always, well, thank you, and I have concepts of seeing
you on Saturday.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
I will see you on Saturday.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
I have concepts for seeing the Bearcats pull off the
upset that seems right now less likely, all right, man, thank.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
You, improbable, Thanks Mall.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Big Chaid Brendel, Bearcat Journal dot com. You see and
Kansas on Saturday at two o'clock. Of course, the game
is live on a seven hundred WLW. We have room
for you in a bit five three, seven, four, nine,
fifteen thirty. I wanted to talk about the offseason ahead
(13:14):
for the Bengals with our friend Kelsey Conways. She will
join us when we come back. It's coming up on
four o'clock on Moegar. This is ESPN fifteen thirty, Cincinnati
Sports station
Four.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
This is ESPN fifteen thirty on Oegger Thrilled that you're
listening today. Kelsey Conway is going to be with us
in twenty minutes on the Bengals offseason and the search
for assistant coaches like a defensive coordinator. That At four
h five on Thursdays, we spend time with our friend
Chad Brendel Bearcat Journal dot com. The UC Bearcats back
(00:21):
at home trying to avoid a fourth consecutive loss to
start Big twelve play hosting Kansas.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Hi, Chad, how's it going good?
Speaker 1 (00:34):
I saw you today, but you you didn't make it
down to say hello.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I was in a bit of a hurry.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
I was at the press conference for the new women's
or the new volleyball coach at UC, and I did
an interview with her and we're going to air that tomorrow.
But I had to get in and get out, So
I apologize for not saying hi.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I meant to turn like wave, and then you were
talking to somebody, and then I was talking to somebody,
and we never even got to, like, you know, give
the old hey from across the room. The big room.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
It was a very big room, a crowded room, a
crowded room.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
It was a nice event. Saturday might not be a
very nice event. Is this season salvagable?
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Yeah? Is it? Yes? Can they We'll find out. I mean,
I you know, I think the the one thing that's
stuck with me, and I generally don't even really listen,
uh to like the broadcast on away games, Like I'm
watching it on TV, but I don't pay attention to
announcers because I I know enough that I don't need
(01:35):
their assistance. But I did hear at one point that
they said Cincinnati looks like everything they're doing is very casual,
and that is a terrible place to be when you're
playing in a league like this, Like, you know, the
part of a big part of like why the offense
is struggling right now. If you go back and watch
(01:57):
their sets, they're not chrisp. They're not executing with purpose.
They're just kind of going and going through the motions
of like it looks like, you know, like a Saturday
morning walkthrough for a for a four o'clock game like that.
You know, they're just trying to like keep the sets
fresh in their mind. Like no, you have to be precise,
(02:20):
you have to be crisp. To be able to execute
at this level, and if you're not, it makes you
very easy to guard. And what I've seen for the
past three games is a team that was very easy
to guard.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Yeah, I you know, far be it from me to
pretend like I should have a whiteboard in my hand,
But I've watched enough basketball, especially college basketball, in my
life that for the most part, I can watch a
team in the half court and through a few possessions,
have a general idea of what they're trying to do
and what the options are. Right what I what I
saw on Tuesday, from that standpoint cannot have confused me more.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
I agree, I completely agree. It was it was like
they they they they had concepts of a plan moo,
but but they didn't have any like conviction to executing it.
(03:20):
Like you know, there were there were open passes that
like and and easy passing lanes that they just they
didn't they didn't throw the ball to like. I can
really only think of one thing that stood out to
me that looked like crisp And at the end of
the game, when they when it was already decided they
run a high ball screen, they quickly passed the ball
(03:40):
into the corner of these crashes to the rim. As
soon as the ball gets to the corner, they touched
pass to a ease dunk, Like that's the only thing
I remember that looked crisp offensively, and it was when
they were down, you know, nineteen at the end of
the game like that. That can't it can't happen in
this league, Like you have to be dialed in. And
(04:00):
you know, people are gonna like roll their eyes in
their car while they're listening to this right now. But
for this team and for a lot of teams here
over the past thirty five years, their identity is defense,
and in that game in particular, they were lazy on defense.
Like Baylor just got to whatever spot they wanted to
get to, wherever they wanted to go, whatever they wanted
(04:21):
to do, they were able to do it. And Cincinnati
almost was like they were casually watching the game like
the rest of us instead of an active participant in it.
And that makes you know, the Kansas State loss, we're
going to look back on that potentially if things if
they don't get this turned around, We're going to look
back on that, like the New England loss for the Bengals,
(04:43):
that's a bad team that shouldn't happen. You can understand losing,
you know, a five point game to Arizona, like you
can understand going on the road and losing it Baylor.
That one doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But
the Baylor thing, they just didn't seem dialed in. They
did not seem like they were connected. I don't know.
You know that these guys all seem like good guys.
(05:04):
They all seem to get along, but for whatever reason,
things are not clicking right now.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
What's happened to Gisel James?
Speaker 1 (05:15):
I think in watching how teams are playing him, the
book is out, like I think for his whole life,
like that drive to the rim and that stop on
a dime, turn around, quick fade away. You know, guys
jump when he stops on a dime and they're anticipating
him to go to the rim and he gets that
(05:35):
little but guess what, nobody's jumping right Like he stops
on a dime and his defender is staying flat footed
and waiting for him to go into that fade away.
And that makes it much easier to guard because now
you're contesting it instead of it being wide open and
just rising up and knocking down like a six or
seven footer that he's been able to do his whole life.
(05:58):
Like I think he's been blocked six times in the
last two games. That tells me teams are sitting on it,
they're waiting for it. So you know there were two
or three times that there was one time a guy
fell down and he still shot a fade away. There's
a guy on the ground in front of him. The
basket is right there. All he has to do is
go towards the rim and lay it up, and instead
(06:18):
his muscle memory says stop on a dime, turn around
and fade away. Like they got to get that worked
out of him, because right now there is a major
difference mode between being you know, the point guard off
the bench to being the number one or two guy
on the scouting report. Teams are taking away, they're they're
high hedging taking away. Like when he comes off a
(06:41):
ball screen, there's a guy they're waiting for him, and
immediately he backs up instead of going towards the rim.
So then your offense is immediately out of sync and
you have to restart it because now the defense is
recovered because your point guard is backed up, everybody is
guarded and you have to start running act and again
that results in a lot of what you know, when
(07:03):
you look at it, you're like, well, they're just standing around,
Well they're waiting because now they have to reset. Everybody
has to go back into their spots and they got
to reset the play and try to run the play again.
And he's become easy to guard. And you can't have
a point guard that's easy to guard because you're not
going to be able to run very effective offense if
your point guard can't get through the first step of
(07:26):
that offense to make it effective. Like that's to me,
what is throwing off a lot of this is that
it is, you know, the structure of it is on
Gisel to play downhill and that opens up a lot
of other stuff. When's the last time you saw him
come off of pick and roll explode down the lane
and the defense have to collapse on him. Happening right now?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, And so like you you could look at his
you could look at his you know, baseline numbers and go,
you know, he's averaging eleven in a game, eleven a
game in nearly five assists a game like those aren't number,
but I watched I watched read possession he played on
offense last year. I've watched every possession he's played on
offense this season.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
It's not what it.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Should be, No, and he has to make adjustments to that, right, Like,
that's how this works anymore. Everybody's got every within the
click of a finger, they can watch every possession you've
played all year, and if they can find something that
somebody is doing, you know the first sign of it. Okay, well,
(08:30):
these teams are doing this to take Gigsel James out
of his offense. Everybody's gonna copy it. They're just gonna say, Okay,
this is what we got to do to take Cincinnati
out of their offense. You have to come up with
a counter to the counter. You have to be able
to to say, Okay, this is how you're going to
defend me. Then this is what I'm going to do
to beat it. And I've not seen much of that
(08:52):
in these last three games. Now, I will say the
one thing that you know that you hold on to
if you're a Cincinnati fans, we have seen this team
play well. We have seen this team play winning basketball.
So it's in there. They just have to dig it.
Back out. The other thing that really upset me about
(09:13):
the Baylor game, though, is where you're coming You're coming
off losing your first two conference games. Where is the fight? Like,
where is where is the passion to say? But stops here?
Like we're not going to do this again. And you
had to know Baylor got their ass kit against Iowa State.
(09:33):
They were going to bring the energy, so you have
to match it and then exceed it. And I didn't
see that. I mean it was it was just like
Kansas State from the opening tip. Baylor was the aggressor
and Cincinnati was okay with it. And I think that's
really why fans are freaking out because that's not Cincinnati basketball. Yeah,
Cincinnati basketball is not. This team's playing hard. We'll get
(09:57):
them next time, Yeah, got it.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
That's that's encapsulates that. It's not that they lost. It's
not that offensively they weren't very good and didn't execute.
It's not that at one point in the second half
the turnovers outnumbered the Mad Buckets. It's exactly what I
expected fight. I expected a level of desperation and urgency
and fight, and I saw the exact opposite. What I
(10:23):
saw look like a team it's late February, We're not
making the tournament. We've got one foot on the beach
or one foot in the portal. That's what it looked like.
And it was January the seventh, Like, that's that's what
I laid in bed on Tuesday night thinking about that.
I felt like I watched a team that seemed almost
checked out, and it's they've got eighteen games to go,
(10:47):
counting the Big Twelve tournament.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
That's what was most sobering.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Absolutely, without question. Well, I mean, you and I have
been doing this a long time. We have followed this team.
You're two weeks older than me, so we have followed
this team pretty much our entire lives. And that is
not Cincinnati basketball. That is I very rarely feel like
I cared more than they did, Like that's the identity
(11:13):
of this program. And it felt like doing the postgame
show after that game Tuesday night, that I cared more
than they did. And they have to find a way
to figure that out.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Wick. Do they have a prayer against Kansas?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Sure, Kansas lost to West Virginia, Kansas was at home.
Kansas was in a close game last night. It had
they were down six at halftime, to Arizona State. I
would hope Cincinnati should should be in a similar playing
as West Virginia and should be better than a young
(11:53):
Arizona State team. So you know, if they come out
and they play like it means something to them, I
think they have a chance today. Ultimately, you know, this
is a this is one of those games where they
can play well and lose, and you know, not that
I would be okay with that, but I'd feel a
hell of a lot better than I did on Tuesday.
(12:15):
Wes said it today in the press conference, like this
is a league where you can lose three You can
play well and lose three games, but we haven't done that,
right like that, That's not the problem right now. The
problem right now is we're zero and three and we've played,
like you know what, in three of those games.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
I'll see us Saturday, three of those games. I hear you.
I'll see us Saturday. Thank you as.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Always, well, thank you, and I have concepts of seeing
you on Saturday.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
I will see you on Saturday.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
I have concepts for seeing the Bearcats pull off the
upset that seems right now less likely, all right, man, thank.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
You, improbable, Thanks Mall.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Big Chaid Brendel, Bearcat Journal dot com. You see and
Kansas on Saturday at two o'clock. Of course, the game
is live on a seven hundred WLW. We have room
for you in a bit five three, seven, four, nine,
fifteen thirty. I wanted to talk about the offseason ahead
(13:14):
for the Bengals with our friend Kelsey Conways. She will
join us when we come back. It's coming up on
four o'clock on Moegar. This is ESPN fifteen thirty, Cincinnati
Sports station
Mo Egger News
Popular Podcasts
Math & Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman
How do the smartest marketers and business entrepreneurs cut through the noise? And how do they manage to do it again and again? It's a combination of math—the strategy and analytics—and magic, the creative spark. Join iHeartMedia Chairman and CEO Bob Pittman as he analyzes the Math and Magic of marketing—sitting down with today's most gifted disruptors and compelling storytellers.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!