11-13-25 Roundtable Show with Chad Brendel

Chad talks with Rocky and Lance about UC's upcoming conference matchup against Arizona.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:43):
CHOLDN five one three five one three t oph on
seven hundred WLW, the home of the best Bengals coverage.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Anyway, we go second hour of two underway tonight flew
through that first one man, Do we have some grand
to cover? And our second one and we will lead
into the Wes Miller show coming up at eight. Right
here on seven hundred wlwware long Necks in hebren got
a drawing coming up at the end of the hour.
If you're in house or on your way, be sure
and sign up We have tickets in front of us
set our broadcast setup. Just need your name and you

(01:15):
got to be here at eight we'll draw for the
Sean Volker Bengal Tiger print we're giving away this week.
All right, let's talk to some you see Bearcats off
last week hosting Arizona this week. There's one man to
turn two to do such things. Bearcat Journal, bearcatjournal dot com. Chadbrendle,
how are you tonight?

Speaker 3 (01:35):
Good? I am. You saved me from ten minutes of
a volleyball postseason banquet, so I thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Oh I see?

Speaker 3 (01:44):
All right, Well.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Let's get to it. Bounce back opportunity and really, as
much as the Utah loss may have shaken some to
you need to win. This is a big one this
week to keep next week as a really big for
the Bearcats.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
I don't think they can look at it like this.
I think that look at it like that. I think
you have to solely focus on Arizona here because this
is an Arizona team that you can play well and lose.
That they do a lot of things that give Cincinnati problems. Mainly,
you can start with Noah Fafita. Their their excellent quarterback.

(02:24):
He is the best quarterback in the Big Twelve with
a clean pocket. Cincinnati is the worst defense in the
Big Twelve getting pressure. He is also third in the
Big Twelve against zone defense. Cincinnati runs more zone defense
than any Power five program in the country, so that
alone is reason to be scared of Arizona's offense. Defensively,

(02:50):
they play a lot of man a man defense. Now,
they don't get after the quarterback the way Utah did,
but they look a lot more like Nebraska and Brendan's sours.
We had a lot of problems with Nebraska. So Cincinnati's
going to have to play really well to beat this
Arizona team. And it's Scott Saderfield pointed out, they're sitting

(03:11):
at six and three. They had YU down by ten
with four minutes left in that game, and they lost
to Houston on a walk off field goal could very
well be eight and one.

Speaker 4 (03:21):
Wow, So chey, are there any more? I mean I
had to buy week, but any more remnants still, you know,
kind of present from from the Utah loss that makes
people nervous of I guess in terms of how they
played compared to the previous weeks where they're just rattling
winds off.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
I mean, the biggest thing, Rocky is they were sloppy
against Utah. They missed a field goal, they turned it over,
they gave up a punt return touchdown. Like this is
not you know, this is not the twenty twenty one
Bearcats where they were so supremely talented that it didn't
really matter if they weren't on their a game at

(04:00):
all times. This is a team that's talented and has
some very good pieces, but there's not a lot of
separation between them and the other teams that they're playing
in the league. So they have to play well. They
have to play clean. They can't turn the ball over,
they can't be you know, they've been great on special
teams all the way up until that Utah game. They've

(04:20):
got to get back to that. They've got to value
the football. They've got to get moving on offense. They're
way too many three and outs against Utah. You know,
those are just the things that kind of you know,
have bogged this team down in their two losses and
things that they've been excellent at in their seven wins.
Like there's no middle ground. It doesn't feel like with

(04:41):
this team they're either really clean or boy, it's a mess.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
What are the chances we see any chance we see
Evan Pryor.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
I think there's a chance. I mean, I think it's
going to be one of those true like get them
out there Saturday morning and see how the ankle feels
and see if he can go. If I had to
guess just from being around this forever, it feels like
one of those. He was close, but we're gonna hold
him out until next week situations right, Like it's an ankle.

(05:17):
I think it's one of those. You know, you're probably
rushing him back if you are little if you play
him this week, so and you know it's gonna help that.
I think Kylie Walker should be back to one hundred percent.
That should help out. He wasn't against Utah. That's why
he only had one carry in the second half. But

(05:38):
I would say I would say probably thirty forty percent
chance we see Evan, But you know that's going to
depend on how it how it progresses the rest of
the week, and how it feels Saturday morning.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Chad, as you know, and I highly recommend those listening
check it out. Kegan Nicholson wrote an outstanding piece for
Bearcat Journal Dot com about the Bearcat general manager Zach Grant,
the director of player personnel Jack Griffith, kind of you know,
the impact they've had in the approach they've taken looking
to find an edge in this day and age of

(06:12):
the changing landscape of college football. What has impressed you
about the impact and the fingerprints they have on this program.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
I think the most impressive thing to me is there's
not the ego factor in that job that you get
with a lot of people that are casked with doing
that right, A lot of people just full bravado, come in,
We're gonna compete, and we're gonna we're gonna go after
the same players that Ohio State and Georgia and Alabama

(06:42):
and LSU were going after. You're not gonna win. You're
not gonna win those battles, and then you're gonna spend
your time spending your tires on getting involved with kids
that ultimately aren't gonna play at your school. So they said, Okay,
let's go a little bit of a different direction. Let's
figure out the kids that we think through. I think

(07:04):
the number was they evaluated this is a crazy number guys.
From the time the twenty twenty four portal cycle ended
to the time the twenty twenty five portal cycle opened.
As a staff, they watched twenty one thousand prospects with
no guarantee that a single one of them was ever

(07:26):
going to go into the portal. But they wanted to
be ready because what happens in a lot of places
is their reactionary. Okay, this kid's name comes up in
the portal. All right, let's start doing our research and
then you're making quick, rash decisions. These guys are saying, Okay,
that kid's name popped up in the portal. Okay, here's

(07:48):
the file that we have on that kid. Is he
somebody we're interested in? Yes? No? Do we go? Do
we not go? So they did all the backwork and
they put in all the legwork, and Zach Grant talks
about a great kid that in there was like a
lot of people use like Jack Griffith. They use them
as like an advanced scout, and he spends all his
time every week preparing this file for the coaching staff

(08:13):
and an advanced scout for the game that you're going
to play. The coaching staff takes the file, sets it
on the death sets thank you, never opens it you're
just wasting time. So instead of wasting time, let's get
into the weeds and watch these kids that we feel
like can help us. And the number is crazy that
twenty one portal guys in the twenty twenty five portal class,

(08:34):
eighteen of them are contributing on this roster this year.
That's an insane hit rate.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Wow, you can absolutely all right. I got to ask
you about the basketball side of this and the performance
over dayton a win. We know the storyline, it's a win.
It's twenty four turnovers as well. I know, and I
don't have a time for another headache with the most
free throws. Here's what jumped out to me. And I
get I get some of the turn by some of

(09:00):
the players, But when you have Cresa and dayda A Thomas,
who have a combined five thousand minutes of Division one basketball,
how did they combine to turn it over eight times
in that game? That's what joed out to me. Like
that can't happen, big man, Okay, turnovers, freshmen, maybe turnovers.
Those experienced guys they should be turning it over eight times.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
They shouldn't be. But to be fair, they're also playing
on a team that is new and these guys have
never played together. That was you know, you would hope,
here's the thing that disappointed me a little bit. You
would hope that some of that got worked out in
those two high level exhibition games that you scheduled against
Arkansas and Michigan. It didn't seem like it did. But

(09:41):
less his teams have not been turnover pro so that
at least to me, is a sign that he is
going to be able to coach some of that out
of them. You know what it felt like to me,
Lance It felt like they were trying to skip steps
in the offense, didn't it. Like you've got the ball
on the left wing, the goal is to get the
ball to the right corner, and instead of going through

(10:01):
the steps to get the ball to the right corner,
they were just throwing one handed passes to the right
corner and there's a Dayton defender standing there waiting on it.
Like that is something I think that is going to
come with a little bit of time. But also those
guys are way too experienced to be throwing passes that stupid,
Like they were just dumb on probably eight of the

(10:21):
twenty four turnovers. Like I just scratched my head and said,
what what did you think was gonna happen right when
you tried to make that pass? So, yes, it needs
to get better. Here's the thing I think that impressed
me Lance the most about that game, The main thing
I will take away from it. They had a pretty

(10:41):
good lead the entire night, and then Dayton gets the
two and ones and then the Alijub dunk they cut
it to two. Last year's team would have crumbled, yes, agreed,
they would have fallen apart almost instantly. And instead, in
the next two minutes since and Natty went on a
twelve to two run, they made smart plays, they were aggressive,

(11:05):
they attacked, and all of a sudden, that two point
game was back to a twelve point game, and it
was never really in doubt the rest of the way.
The big differentiator that they looked for in this offseason
was getting some of that toughness, that bearcat toughness back,
and that to me showed some of it. It showed
that they weren't gonna wilt when things got tough, and

(11:28):
they showed some of that in that Michigan exhibition too,
where they had a big lead, Michigan storm back and
Cincinnatty was able to hold him off. So that's at
least a little bit of a good sign for me
that there's a little bit more intestinal fortitude in this
group than the one we saw a year ago.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
All Right, So listeners should check out Keegan's piece on
Zach Grant and Jack Grippa. Tell everybody what else you
got going on at Bearcat Journal dot com.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
I signed him a new one last night. It's going
to be in the work, so I don't know when
exactly it's going to come out, but I'm gonna have
Keegan dig into the story of Tyler McKinley because I
think he has been a really pleasant surprise for fans
this year with how he has played in his first
action as a red shirt freshman. He's always wanted to

(12:15):
be a Bearcat. He got his chance. He was almost
there last year, got hurt in the preseason, missed the
entire year. I don't know what his minutes would have
looked like if Jalen Haynes was still healthy. So the
door opened for Tyler McKinley and he's kicking it in
and I love that kid. It went to Walnut Hills.

(12:35):
He's just an awesome, awesome young man, and I'm excited
for Kegan to get to tell that story. So that
one's coming up here, probably in the next couple weeks.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
Excellent, look forward to it. He is Chad Brendel, Bearcat Journal,
bearcat Journal dot com. Thank you, sir, We'll talk next week.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
Thanks gentlemen, talk to you. So do it.