March 6, 2025 • 14 mins
Chad Brendel of Bearcat Journal joined us to talk UC Basketball. There's frustration in his voice.
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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):
I'm moegor, thank you for listening. More on the latest
(00:04):
Bengals news, which there's a news item every single day.
Trey Hendrickson has been given permission to seek a trade.
This according to ESPN's Adam Schefter. And we have a
lot of time to talk about this, but first, it's Thursday.
It's three forty five. Chad Brendel joins us from Bearcat
Journal dot com, and god knows, there's a lot to
(00:25):
talk about as it relates to UC basketball right now.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hi, Chad, I would also like permission to seek a trade.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Which bear cap players do you want to trade?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
No? Me? Oh? Me? Oh? I would like to seek
a trade.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
To a different school's website.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah, I'm not having fun anymore.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
No.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I said this at the top of the show that
the I think the real damning thing to me about
last night was not that they lost a basketball game. Fine,
it was that the effort's been a consistent theme this year.
Wes Miller talked about, well, the last four weeks we've
played hard. That's a problem because for four weeks they
(01:11):
did play hard, but you have to like slice that
out of the rest of the season, where for the
majority of it. We've been talking about this team's lack
of effort, So the fact that we've done this already
this year, that the fact that we did it last
night not that surprising. That's really damning.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
That's really damning. What really like stuck in my crawl
was that was a Kansas State team that did not
care whether they won that game or not. Mm h,
they like you, you were sitting two feet from it though. Yeah,
they were yelling at each other like they weren't playing hard,
and Cincinnati was like, Oh, that's we're gonna do that today. Awesome.
(01:51):
I'm in no, you beat the crap out of that
team because they were begging you to do it and
they just weren't interested in doing so. Like, that's the thing.
If those two teams played a good game, like Kansas
State's got a bunch of talent, it's reasonable to think,
like I thought the first time those two teams played,
Kansas State played well, Cincinnati didn't. But like, if we
(02:14):
walked out of there and they both teams played well
and Cincinnati lost, it would be disappointing because what was
on the line. I don't think either team the team
played well. I thought they both created and played like crap.
Cincinnati just played more like crap with everything to lose
and they lost it.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
How many of these guys should we want to be
here next year?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
If if I can't get guys to show up and
care in March, I don't care who comes back.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
How many of these guys am I? No, you're not
wrong at all?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Are You're not wrong? You know?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I mean, I know the focus of the conversation is
about Wes and we're going to talk to him, but like,
what I saw was a damning indictment against the collection
of players and most of them individually. And if we're
doing that with what was on the line last night
against that opponent, and it's not the first time we're
doing it, you know, I know everybody frets about who
(03:12):
comes and goes in the portal. I'm I'm good with
mostly cleaning house.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
What last night told me MO was got the wrong guys.
If my guys don't look at that game as out
for blood, come out with my hair on fire and
put Kansas State away before the ten minute mark in
the first half, Like, I don't those aren't guys I
want like and you know there have been hints if
(03:40):
You've listened to West and I know you hear him
the postgame show, like the postgame interview, you hear him
listening back to the coaches shows. He's talked about not
being able to coach these guys hard. Then those aren't
your guys. Like if you can't coach, yes, you have
to adjust in it apt to you know, each individual personality,
(04:03):
right Like maybe this guy doesn't respond to it. This
guy responds to this, that guy responds to that. I
understand that collective, my team doesn't like to be coach hard.
Then then it's your job to get a new team.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
The response to that is going to be that's all
well and good, but these are his guys, and you've
born the doing. And I know what you get on
your message boards, and I know what you see on
social media. This is this is a coach who is
a tough sell. Right now, it's four years and it's
ending the way it's ending this year in an extraordinarily
(04:39):
dissatisfaction dissatisfying manner. How do you sell your average Bearcat fan,
especially one who is a season ticket holder and has
to make a decision about next year on Wes Miller,
so a heck of a question.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
I mean, it's a tough sell right now, and people
w you know, the reality is, I think there was
an underestimation of how easy hard the transition would be
to this league. They're not far off, but they're not
good enough. Like that's an awful place to be, right
(05:17):
because it's hard to sell we're close because people don't
want to hear that. They want to hear we're there.
But when I look at you know, we talked about this,
what's the right when we were going into the season.
You said, if they don't meet their expectations, why they
don't have a top one hundred player. They don't have
(05:38):
They have a good collection of talent, but they don't
have what you know last night, what for sure Coleman
Hawkins for you know, the David Gasson, maybe Doug McDaniel
before you get to the first bear Cat that I
would say was the best player on the floor last night.
And that's a common theme throughout most of these games
(06:00):
that they've played, so that part of it, they've got
to figure that out. Some of it is internal, some
of it is money revenue. You know, these teams are
paying more for better players than what you've got you've
got to figure out a way to be good in
spite of that, and they haven't figured that out. So
(06:21):
in terms of like selling Wes Miller for next year,
he's going to have to do it probably through this
is what we got in the portal, and people are
gonna be skeptical until they see it on the floor.
And that's reasonable, that's understandable.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Does Cincinnati basketball under west Miller have an identity?
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Not a not a every night in, night out one.
I think when it's going well, it's easy to see like, Okay,
this is what they want it to be. But the
problem is it's not that enough. It's not that consistently enough.
And that falls on the head coach. That's the head
(07:04):
coach's responsibility to develop that identity and develop that culture
and you know, to ensure that it shows up every night.
It can't be showed up for five games, didn't show
up for three games, showed up for two games, didn't
show up for a month. Like that's that's how you
end up where they're at right now, best case scenario,
(07:26):
they're gonna essentially be the same team as last year.
Right they were seven and eleven in the Big twelve
last year. Yeah, and it's a big If they win
at Oklahoma State, they'll be eight and twelve. So they
added two games, Cincinnati would go one and one in
those extra two games. The progression that everybody believed was
in store for this year didn't deliver. So why are
(07:49):
people now going to believe that it's just inherently going
to happen next year? With what sounds like is probably
going to have to be a fairly new ross at
least the top of it.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
In your approximation in the five biggest college basketball conferences,
how many of those schools have a general manager?
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Uh, it's not as many as you think. In basketball,
it's getting there. I've been wrestling with this myself today.
Mo I do think it's something because of the scope
of how large a football roster is that it is
something you need. I don't. I'm torn on whether it
(08:32):
is like a necessity in college basketball because that generally,
like at most you're dealing with what adding six seven
new guys a year. You've got to go out of
house to have six or seven new guys. You need
somebody to come in and manage. That's small of a
(08:55):
you know, football, they're having thirty forty new guys a year.
I I understand like the thought process of it. I
just don't know that in basketball it's it's super necessary.
You're gonna see it. Everybody's gonna do it eventually, just
out of you know, keeping up with the Jones is.
(09:18):
But shouldn't your staff of one head coach and five
assistant coaches and you know, a recruiting director and guys
on the support staff, you're adding five or six new guys.
And here's the thing, most of the time, you're adding
three or four of those guys in like a five
week window. So if your argument is, you know, maybe
(09:41):
the GM is the guy that is the guy scouring
through all the tapes and going through all the guys
that might be in the portal, I can see a
need for that. But I don't. I'm I'm I'm fifty
to fifty on a general manager in college basketball, and
some of that is probably it's just not that prevalent yet.
So I need to see more situations where it's in
(10:04):
use than effective. I don't know that there's a lot
of that yet in the sport.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
It looks like they're a very good bet to play
in something called the College Basketball Crown, which is this
new event in Vegas that starts on the last day
of March. What is this and what is this going
to look like for programs where there could be a
roster overhall are those are they gonna if they're in
that event? Are they gonna have enough guys there to
(10:30):
play in it?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
So the Crown is owned by Fox. Fox owns the
rights to the Big Ten, the Biggies, and the Big Twelve.
The way that this is going to work is there
are six spots in this sixteen sixteen team tournament that
are guaranteed to those three leagues, and the way they
select those three to those six teams, it's the top
(10:56):
two teams in the net that didn't make the NC
Tournament from those three leagues. Cincinnati in the net is
twenty two spots clear of falling out of that tournament.
And the two teams that are that are down there,
Utah and Arizona State. Cincinnati is not dropping far enough.
(11:17):
Those two teams are not climbing high enough. I can't
imagine for Cincinnati to fall out of this tournament. So
they're gonna be in the Crown, and you're contractually obligated
to play in it. Are they gonna have enough guys?
The Transfer portal opens March twenty fourth, The Crown starts
March thirty first, So if Cincinnati's gonna have anyone in
(11:43):
the transfer portal, it is almost a certainty it's gonna
happen before March thirty first, I would imagine. So will
those guys play what? I need to know what? I
don't know. There's been talks of like there's nil there's
money in this tournament for the players. How much like
(12:04):
that's gonna determine whether guys are going to be willing
to go to Vegas and play in this thing, right
if there's no money involved or a you know, if
it's like ten thousand dollars, Because these guys are making
a crap ton of money right now. Are they really
gonna not get in the portal and start taking visits
and trying to determine their future over ten thousand dollars?
(12:27):
I can't. I wouldn't. I'd be looking out for my
next bag. No, who knows. I have no answer to
this because we haven't seen it. I don't know what
it looks like.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It's rare that I hear more frustration in your voice
than mine. But I think we've achieved that today.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
It's annoying. It is like that that team that came
out last night defies logic. There's no there's nothing you
could say would make me understand why it looked like that.
And it looked like that immediately Mo, immediately we saw
(13:08):
each other at halftime and both of us were like,
what was that? Crap? What was that? And then they
didn't get They got worse in the second half. They
scored twenty four points in one half and twenty five
in the other. Good God.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
I'll be listening tomorrow. You're on in this time slot.
Thank you as always.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
I'm sure that the dcjpot will be fun tonight. If
you want to listen to that too, I will listen to.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
I will. I will not participate, but I but I will.
I will most definitely listen.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
No, I was just hoping you would come on and
save me some talking, but I'm gonna have to talk
a lot man.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Thank you. Chad Brendel bearcat Journal dot Com on Twitter
at Chad Brendle all right, it's coming up on four o'clock.
Adam Scheffer reports Bengals have given and Trey Hendrickson permission
to explore a trade, which I guess to a degree,
(14:08):
this is good news. If your biggest Bengals off season
priority is Joe Burrow's biggest Bengals off season priority. We'll
discuss next four o'clock ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports Station,
I'm moegor, thank you for listening. More on the latest
(00:04):
Bengals news, which there's a news item every single day.
Trey Hendrickson has been given permission to seek a trade.
This according to ESPN's Adam Schefter. And we have a
lot of time to talk about this, but first, it's Thursday.
It's three forty five. Chad Brendel joins us from Bearcat
Journal dot com, and god knows, there's a lot to
(00:25):
talk about as it relates to UC basketball right now.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hi, Chad, I would also like permission to seek a trade.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Which bear cap players do you want to trade?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
No? Me? Oh? Me? Oh? I would like to seek
a trade.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
To a different school's website.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah, I'm not having fun anymore.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
No.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
I said this at the top of the show that
the I think the real damning thing to me about
last night was not that they lost a basketball game. Fine,
it was that the effort's been a consistent theme this year.
Wes Miller talked about, well, the last four weeks we've
played hard. That's a problem because for four weeks they
(01:11):
did play hard, but you have to like slice that
out of the rest of the season, where for the
majority of it. We've been talking about this team's lack
of effort, So the fact that we've done this already
this year, that the fact that we did it last
night not that surprising. That's really damning.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
That's really damning. What really like stuck in my crawl
was that was a Kansas State team that did not
care whether they won that game or not. Mm h,
they like you, you were sitting two feet from it though. Yeah,
they were yelling at each other like they weren't playing hard,
and Cincinnati was like, Oh, that's we're gonna do that today. Awesome.
(01:51):
I'm in no, you beat the crap out of that
team because they were begging you to do it and
they just weren't interested in doing so. Like, that's the thing.
If those two teams played a good game, like Kansas
State's got a bunch of talent, it's reasonable to think,
like I thought the first time those two teams played,
Kansas State played well, Cincinnati didn't. But like, if we
(02:14):
walked out of there and they both teams played well
and Cincinnati lost, it would be disappointing because what was
on the line. I don't think either team the team
played well. I thought they both created and played like crap.
Cincinnati just played more like crap with everything to lose
and they lost it.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
How many of these guys should we want to be
here next year?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
If if I can't get guys to show up and
care in March, I don't care who comes back.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
How many of these guys am I? No, you're not
wrong at all?
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Are You're not wrong? You know?
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I mean, I know the focus of the conversation is
about Wes and we're going to talk to him, but like,
what I saw was a damning indictment against the collection
of players and most of them individually. And if we're
doing that with what was on the line last night
against that opponent, and it's not the first time we're
doing it, you know, I know everybody frets about who
(03:12):
comes and goes in the portal. I'm I'm good with
mostly cleaning house.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
What last night told me MO was got the wrong guys.
If my guys don't look at that game as out
for blood, come out with my hair on fire and
put Kansas State away before the ten minute mark in
the first half, Like, I don't those aren't guys I
want like and you know there have been hints if
(03:40):
You've listened to West and I know you hear him
the postgame show, like the postgame interview, you hear him
listening back to the coaches shows. He's talked about not
being able to coach these guys hard. Then those aren't
your guys. Like if you can't coach, yes, you have
to adjust in it apt to you know, each individual personality,
(04:03):
right Like maybe this guy doesn't respond to it. This
guy responds to this, that guy responds to that. I
understand that collective, my team doesn't like to be coach hard.
Then then it's your job to get a new team.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
The response to that is going to be that's all
well and good, but these are his guys, and you've
born the doing. And I know what you get on
your message boards, and I know what you see on
social media. This is this is a coach who is
a tough sell. Right now, it's four years and it's
ending the way it's ending this year in an extraordinarily
(04:39):
dissatisfaction dissatisfying manner. How do you sell your average Bearcat fan,
especially one who is a season ticket holder and has
to make a decision about next year on Wes Miller,
so a heck of a question.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
I mean, it's a tough sell right now, and people
w you know, the reality is, I think there was
an underestimation of how easy hard the transition would be
to this league. They're not far off, but they're not
good enough. Like that's an awful place to be, right
(05:17):
because it's hard to sell we're close because people don't
want to hear that. They want to hear we're there.
But when I look at you know, we talked about this,
what's the right when we were going into the season.
You said, if they don't meet their expectations, why they
don't have a top one hundred player. They don't have
(05:38):
They have a good collection of talent, but they don't
have what you know last night, what for sure Coleman
Hawkins for you know, the David Gasson, maybe Doug McDaniel
before you get to the first bear Cat that I
would say was the best player on the floor last night.
And that's a common theme throughout most of these games
(06:00):
that they've played, so that part of it, they've got
to figure that out. Some of it is internal, some
of it is money revenue. You know, these teams are
paying more for better players than what you've got you've
got to figure out a way to be good in
spite of that, and they haven't figured that out. So
(06:21):
in terms of like selling Wes Miller for next year,
he's going to have to do it probably through this
is what we got in the portal, and people are
gonna be skeptical until they see it on the floor.
And that's reasonable, that's understandable.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Does Cincinnati basketball under west Miller have an identity?
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Not a not a every night in, night out one.
I think when it's going well, it's easy to see like, Okay,
this is what they want it to be. But the
problem is it's not that enough. It's not that consistently enough.
And that falls on the head coach. That's the head
(07:04):
coach's responsibility to develop that identity and develop that culture
and you know, to ensure that it shows up every night.
It can't be showed up for five games, didn't show
up for three games, showed up for two games, didn't
show up for a month. Like that's that's how you
end up where they're at right now, best case scenario,
(07:26):
they're gonna essentially be the same team as last year.
Right they were seven and eleven in the Big twelve
last year. Yeah, and it's a big If they win
at Oklahoma State, they'll be eight and twelve. So they
added two games, Cincinnati would go one and one in
those extra two games. The progression that everybody believed was
in store for this year didn't deliver. So why are
(07:49):
people now going to believe that it's just inherently going
to happen next year? With what sounds like is probably
going to have to be a fairly new ross at
least the top of it.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
In your approximation in the five biggest college basketball conferences,
how many of those schools have a general manager?
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Uh, it's not as many as you think. In basketball,
it's getting there. I've been wrestling with this myself today.
Mo I do think it's something because of the scope
of how large a football roster is that it is
something you need. I don't. I'm torn on whether it
(08:32):
is like a necessity in college basketball because that generally,
like at most you're dealing with what adding six seven
new guys a year. You've got to go out of
house to have six or seven new guys. You need
somebody to come in and manage. That's small of a
(08:55):
you know, football, they're having thirty forty new guys a year.
I I understand like the thought process of it. I
just don't know that in basketball it's it's super necessary.
You're gonna see it. Everybody's gonna do it eventually, just
out of you know, keeping up with the Jones is.
(09:18):
But shouldn't your staff of one head coach and five
assistant coaches and you know, a recruiting director and guys
on the support staff, you're adding five or six new guys.
And here's the thing, most of the time, you're adding
three or four of those guys in like a five
week window. So if your argument is, you know, maybe
(09:41):
the GM is the guy that is the guy scouring
through all the tapes and going through all the guys
that might be in the portal, I can see a
need for that. But I don't. I'm I'm I'm fifty
to fifty on a general manager in college basketball, and
some of that is probably it's just not that prevalent yet.
So I need to see more situations where it's in
(10:04):
use than effective. I don't know that there's a lot
of that yet in the sport.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
It looks like they're a very good bet to play
in something called the College Basketball Crown, which is this
new event in Vegas that starts on the last day
of March. What is this and what is this going
to look like for programs where there could be a
roster overhall are those are they gonna if they're in
that event? Are they gonna have enough guys there to
(10:30):
play in it?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
So the Crown is owned by Fox. Fox owns the
rights to the Big Ten, the Biggies, and the Big Twelve.
The way that this is going to work is there
are six spots in this sixteen sixteen team tournament that
are guaranteed to those three leagues, and the way they
select those three to those six teams, it's the top
(10:56):
two teams in the net that didn't make the NC
Tournament from those three leagues. Cincinnati in the net is
twenty two spots clear of falling out of that tournament.
And the two teams that are that are down there,
Utah and Arizona State. Cincinnati is not dropping far enough.
(11:17):
Those two teams are not climbing high enough. I can't
imagine for Cincinnati to fall out of this tournament. So
they're gonna be in the Crown, and you're contractually obligated
to play in it. Are they gonna have enough guys?
The Transfer portal opens March twenty fourth, The Crown starts
March thirty first, So if Cincinnati's gonna have anyone in
(11:43):
the transfer portal, it is almost a certainty it's gonna
happen before March thirty first, I would imagine. So will
those guys play what? I need to know what? I
don't know. There's been talks of like there's nil there's
money in this tournament for the players. How much like
(12:04):
that's gonna determine whether guys are going to be willing
to go to Vegas and play in this thing, right
if there's no money involved or a you know, if
it's like ten thousand dollars, Because these guys are making
a crap ton of money right now. Are they really
gonna not get in the portal and start taking visits
and trying to determine their future over ten thousand dollars?
(12:27):
I can't. I wouldn't. I'd be looking out for my
next bag. No, who knows. I have no answer to
this because we haven't seen it. I don't know what
it looks like.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
It's rare that I hear more frustration in your voice
than mine. But I think we've achieved that today.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
It's annoying. It is like that that team that came
out last night defies logic. There's no there's nothing you
could say would make me understand why it looked like that.
And it looked like that immediately Mo, immediately we saw
(13:08):
each other at halftime and both of us were like,
what was that? Crap? What was that? And then they
didn't get They got worse in the second half. They
scored twenty four points in one half and twenty five
in the other. Good God.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
I'll be listening tomorrow. You're on in this time slot.
Thank you as always.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
I'm sure that the dcjpot will be fun tonight. If
you want to listen to that too, I will listen to.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
I will. I will not participate, but I but I will.
I will most definitely listen.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
No, I was just hoping you would come on and
save me some talking, but I'm gonna have to talk
a lot man.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Thank you. Chad Brendel bearcat Journal dot Com on Twitter
at Chad Brendle all right, it's coming up on four o'clock.
Adam Scheffer reports Bengals have given and Trey Hendrickson permission
to explore a trade, which I guess to a degree,
(14:08):
this is good news. If your biggest Bengals off season
priority is Joe Burrow's biggest Bengals off season priority. We'll
discuss next four o'clock ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports Station,
Mo Egger News
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