← Eye On College Basketball
Eye On College Basketball
Summer Shootaround '25: BYU with Richie Saunders and AJ Dybantsa are poised to have the best year in program history
00:33:14
Loading summary
Transcript40 lines
- [00:00]
Gary Parish
This show is sponsored by Liquid iv. Hey there, it's Gary Parish from the Ion College Basketball Podcast and I sure hope you're enjoying your summer as much as I'm enjoying mine. Few days at the beach, weekends on the golf course. Needless to say, it's important to stay hydrated and a great way to do it is with the Orange Vanilla Dream Multiplier from Liquid iv. This nostalgic vanilla flavor with notes of candied orange can help keep you hydrated better than water alone. And my favorite thing about Liquid IV is how convenient it is to throw a stick in your pool bag, throw another in your golf bag, then just tear, pour and enjoy. Liquid IV provides three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink. There are eight essential vitamins and nutrients. It's always gluten free and sugar free options are available. Savor the last bits of summer with Liquid iv. Tear poor Live more Go to Liquid icon and get 20% off your first order with code I. That's E Y E at checkout. That's 20% off your first order with code I and@liquidiv.com ready to level up.
- [01:00]
Chumba Casino
Chumba Casino is your playbook to fun. It's free to play with no purchase necessary. Enjoy hundreds of online social games like blackjack, slots and Solitaire anytime, anywhere. With fresh releases every week. Whether you're at home or on the go, let Chumba Casino bring the excitement to you. Plus get free daily login bonuses and a free welcome bonus. Join now for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. Play Chumba Casino today. No purchase necessary. VGW Group Void Board Prohibited by law 21 TNCs apply.
- [01:29]
Global Poker
Ready to bring your competitive spirit to the table. Global Poker is packed with social poker and slots games plus regular tournaments like the Global Poker Championships and fast paced series you won't want to miss challenge your friends, play poker or slots and experience the thrill of competition from anywhere. Sign up now for your free welcome offer and play for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. No purchase necessary. VGW Group void where prohibited by law 21/TNC supply.
- [02:12]
Gary Parish
Hey there Gary Parish. Welcome back to the CBS Sports I own College Basketball podcast where we sometimes discuss camel fighting, dodo birds and leaky black. If you're watching on YouTube, you know what to do to that like button shouts to Brandon Davies. And if you haven't yet subscribed to the CBS Sports college basketball YouTube channel, please also do that while you're here. Let's get into it. Today we are continuing our summer shoot around series. As I hope you know, we've already published episodes on St. John's and Houston and those are the teams we have ranked first and second in the top 25 and one. So now we're turning our attention to the team we've got third of the top 25 and one and that is the BYU Cougars. Quick recap on last season they went 26 and 10, including 14 and six in the Big 12, finished tied for third with Arizona in the league standings. They were five games back of first place Houston. They then lost to Houston in their second game in the Big 12 tournament, got a six seed in the NCAA tournament, beat VCU, beat Wisconsin to advance to the Sweet 16. Then they lost to Alabama 11388 to end their season on March 27th. All things considered, it was a nice first season for first year coach Kevin Young. Three of the top four scores from that team, they're gone, but leading score Richie Saunders is back as is fellow starter Cavea Keda. And the Cougars added nice pieces via the transfer portal and they also enrolled AJ DeBonsa, a five star freshman I projected to be the number one overall pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. Simply put, in my opinion, BYU's got one of the best rosters in the sport. That's among the reasons I had The Cougars ranked third in the top 25 and 1. Am I off base or onto something? Evan Miyakawa runs Evanmia.com a college basketball analytics site that's truly terrific. He's going to join me to help us discuss byu. We're going to do that next, but first, let's get a word from our partners.
- [04:04]
Vuori
First off, what I love the most about my gear from Vuori is its versatility because it's designed to look great. Beyond the gym, though. Wait, hold up. Actually, I might have to change that answer because what I also love the most is how incredibly comfortable everything is. Because it's designed to feel great all of the time. Like the core short, which is the short that started it all for Vuori one short every sport. It's ideal for all types of fitness and running and training, but also stylish enough to wear all day. Honestly, every time I hit a Vuori store, I have to add another pair to my collection because Vuori is an investment in your happiness. So for our listeners, they are offering 20% off your first purchase.
- [04:44]
Evan Miyakawa
That's right.
- [04:44]
Vuori
Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet. Planet@vuori.com sports that's V U-O-R-I.com sports exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions and not only will you receive 20% off your first purchase, but enjoy free shipping on any US orders over $75 and free returns. So go to Vuori.com sports and discover the versatility of Vuori. Clothing exclusions apply. Visit the website for full terms and conditions.
- [05:10]
Gary Parish
As promised, I'm now joined by Evan Miyakawa, who of course created and runs evanmia.com evidence gp I can't thank you enough for spending time with me. Before we discuss byu, which is the point of this episode, why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself? I know you're from Indianapolis. I know you grew up a big college basketball fan, but how did you go from that to being a man who runs a site a lot of us look at daily?
- [05:35]
Evan Miyakawa
Yeah, so my background is in stats and sports analytics, but my my favorite sport, my entire life has been college basketball. I ended up getting my PhD in statistics from Baylor Big 12 country, and while I was in school I ended up creating this advanced college basketball analytics website, initially just kind of as a side project as I was learning things in school. But it's kind of just organically grown over the years to the point where now there's over 100 different Division 1 teams and coaches and staffs who are using it on a regular basis for all sorts of things. But it's also really popular with fans and with people in the media like yourself. And so it's just been really cool to see it grow over the last couple of years. And I ended up leaving my previous job doing analytics for NBA teams to focus on this full time a little over a year ago, which has been really cool. So for anyone who hasn't visited it before, you can find a lot of stuff there. There's a lot of different ways to engage, but it's mainly focused on, you know, team and player performance lineup analysis, transfer portal projections, and a lot of other tools used by coaches for roster building and things like that.
- [06:40]
Gary Parish
Obviously, analytics is now big, and I don't want to say every sport because I'm not familiar with every sport, but certainly lots of sports, you hear about it in basketball, baseball, so on and so forth. When did you recognize that it was going to be very difficult, bordering on impossible, or at the at the very least, unintelligent for college basketball programs, NBA franchises, to be operating without these tools available to them? Because I can just tell you as somebody who, you know, has this job, but also also Works for an NBA franchise. I don't want to say they live and die with this stuff, but it, it undeniably influences decisions.
- [07:18]
Evan Miyakawa
I think basketball sets itself up as a sport that is very easily quantifiable by data because you have, you know, individual possessions and you can track stuff that happens and you can break it down into these small stints. Similar to baseball, which has obviously been kind of the sport that's promoted analytics first as being a kind of a really diving deep there. I think college basketball specifically, and why I am drawn to college basketball from a sort of data driven, problem solving perspective is because there is so much uncertainty in this sport. That's why these summer shoot around episodes are so popular, because no one really knows exactly what's going to happen. You have over 360 teams and yet you're only going to play, you know, max 35 games in a year for most seasons. So most teams aren't going to play most other good teams. And there's so much roster turnover every single year, especially now with the way things work with the Portal and with nil, that there's just. We can't actually make reasonable guesses at the stuff with actual without actually being informed by data, informed by things that are more objective and quantifiable. Because otherwise how are we supposed to know, you know, how much better the SEC than the Big 12 is if we're not actually using the small data points that we have to make these comparisons? Because otherwise everyone's just going to say that their team's the best, right? So I'm really drawn to college basketball specifically for that reason. And I think that's why from a coaching perspective, coaches have leaned more and more into this. Because any little edge that you can gain in today's modern, you know, portal era, both in terms of recruitment and in terms of game strategy and lineup rotations and things like that, Any little edge that you can gain, coaches are actively burning the candle at both ends to find these things. And so the more stuff that they can lean into like that from a data driven, objective perspective, the better.
- [09:05]
Gary Parish
One last thing on this, then we'll move on to byu. You mentioned that there's more roster turnover than ever, and obviously that's true. There's data to support it. I want you to take off your evanmia.com hat and just put on your lifelong college basketball fan hat. You know, Norlander and I do this podcast. We talk to each other a lot. We don't talk to quote fans very often. I want to hear from A fan's perspective, your perspective. Constant roster turnover, Nil. Making millionaires out of college basketball players. We do hear from fans sometimes and some of them are comfortable with everything. Others are turned off. They don't recognize their teams. They don't really like the idea that the only reason this player went to this school is because he was given $5 million. As a basketball fan, what do you make of the current state of college hoops?
- [09:56]
Evan Miyakawa
Yeah, it's really important to distinguish the fan side of things because I think for, for me personally this, this change has been. Been great for my business and for my website because it's made people need the stuff like I do more than ever. But from a fan perspective, I think there's one obvious pro and one obvious con. For me personally, the biggest con is I do not think that it is easier to follow your own team when you have all this roster turnover. I'm a Baylor fan, right? I. The two teams I follow close, most close, they're Baylor because I went to graduate school there and Butler because I grew about 10 minutes, grew up about 10 minutes from Hinkle Field House in Indianapolis. Baylor's roster is pretty much entirely different this year. And I don't know personally, hardly any of these players before having watched some film of them this off season learning that they were going to come to Baylor, does that make me as excited to watch them than if this was 10 years ago and they're returning five or six players just by default. It does make it harder. So I think that by and large is a really, really hard thing to track. I think the positive though is that we've talked about this. NIL has kept some of the best players in the sport around longer and I think that's huge. So I'm a big fan of that side of things because we get to see star players staying in college longer when they would have easily dipped a year or two prior just because there's not really much more for them to gain in college. Whereas now there is a lot for them to gain because of the money that's still on the table. And so I think that's a huge plus.
- [11:18]
Gary Parish
Those are both good points and I would, I would co sign both of them. Let's talk BYU. I have the Cougars third in my top 25 and one this off season. My argument in favor of that is basically this. BYU ranked 7th top 10 in some computers over the final 8 weeks of last season. That's, you know, not the entire season, but it's not an insignificant amount of Time they became elite right up until Alabama, you know, destroyed them in the Sweet 16. Two starters from that team are back, including the leading score. And with the additions of Baylor transfer Rob Wright, SIU transfer Canard Davis and five star freshman A.J. deBonsa, I think you can reasonably argue that the Cougars might have upgraded at the other three starting spots. What do you make of that assessment? Am I off base or possibly onto something?
- [12:08]
Evan Miyakawa
I absolutely agree with you that, with that. I think one thing I want to point out about last season coming into this year that I think is, is a pretty big swing point for how we would be viewing this BYU team is when you looked at last year, I think there was a lot of hype because they were bringing, starting to bring in some international players like Jaeger Demin and other players like that. But when you looked at this seat, this team, middle of the season last year, they were like on January 11, they had just lost three Big 12 games in a row. Trivia time. What is the lowest that you think BYU got last year on my site nationally in terms of their ranking around January 11th before they turned on the jets the second half of the year?
- [12:49]
Gary Parish
Obviously only a guess, but my guess is going to be 31, 48. Okay, 48th.
- [12:56]
Evan Miyakawa
So we're talking about a team that was outside the tournament picture was floundering. And I know I had an interview with BYU media at some point in that range and I said, I'm putting my, if I have to put my money on it, I don't think this team is making the tournament. Obviously that turned out very wrong. And Kevin Young really, you know, changed this team around. But we're talking about an incredible improvement from that team. And now a team that, that went into the tournament was probably the most exciting team in the first two rounds last year and is now bringing in all this talent. So I think you really have to give credit to the coaching staff because even if they had just improved a little bit in that second half of the year last year, I don't think we would have anywhere near the confidence in this team. Yeah, exactly.
- [13:36]
Gary Parish
No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. But like, do you have a sense for what clicked for them? How did they go from 48 to performing like a top 10 in the country?
- [13:44]
Evan Miyakawa
Well, I think something that sticks out to me about the team last year was there were a couple players that people really thought would be the stars and would carry this team. I think Jaeger Demin was the player that a lot of people felt like had the most potential to be all Big 12 caliber player. I think what the team realized as they went down the season and to me this was their biggest strength was not focusing on any one player but the depth that they had. So when you actually look at the eight or nine players that they had consistently in their rotation by the end of the season and you look at where they were ranked on my website, their, their ninth best player was Moat Mag and he was a top 500, 500 player nationally. There were only three other teams in the country that had better nine man depth last year than BYU. That was Duke, Alabama and Gonzaga. So I think the fact that they had nine quality players that they were able to equally kind of rely on and then you of course you have a guy like Richie Saunders having an incredible improvement from I think under 10 points per game to being by far their, their leading scorer and their most important player last year, I think really speaks to this team finding themselves as a whole. And when you look at now the roster this year, I think they really do have the perfect balance. When you talk about what the the formula is for teams in this modern portal era to be successful, it's important to have key returning players coming back. They have that. They have Richie Saunders coming back, they have Kayba Kading coming back. They have other players like Dawson Baker. And then you get that fresh talent through the portal through the high school ranks. Obviously Aja Debanza is going to draw a lot of headlines, but also players like Rob Wright and Kennard Davis from the Portal are huge ads. So they've kind of got all three different avenues here. And so I think when you put all of that together, this roster looks really, really strong.
- [15:29]
Gary Parish
I saw an interview with you and a BYU centric show that you recorded at some point during last season and one of the things they were talking to you about was roster continuity year over year. Now I think this time last year it was pretty inarguable that if you brought in X amount of transfers, didn't bring back X amount of meaningful players. There wasn't a lot of data in this era of transfer waivers to support the idea that you were going to be good. In fact, the year prior, almost every team that brought in seven or more transfers was, was not a good basketball team. I noticed that changing a little bit last season where there were actually some examples of teams that were overwhelmed with transfers but still very, very good. Kentucky, Louisville both fit that has your opinion over the past 12 months changed at all on how much roster continuity matters? It clearly matters. But has it? Does it matter less than we thought a year ago?
- [16:30]
Evan Miyakawa
That's a great question. I think my stance is still the same in that teams that are equally talented, but you have one team that is a much more reliant on returning players on that that continuity from the previous year versus another team that is almost entirely fresh faces but equal talent level. When you still look at the data from last year, even the teams that have more roster continuity are typically going to perform much better than the teams that are similar talent but all new fresh faces. With that being said, I think it's inevitable that we're going to see more cases of teams with entirely different rosters like Kentucky, like Louisville last year, just because I think in this day and age you don't have as much ability to retain players, especially if you're a new coach. It's just kind of natural for most, if not all of your roster to leave. And so last year, I think prior to last year we had maybe seen one or two teams ever that had had an entirely new roster from one year to the next. And last year we had seven high majors in and of themselves that did that. Out of those seven, I think only Kentucky and Louisville were the really successful ones. So there were four or five others that that didn't meet their goals necessarily. So I think you're going to still have some, but you look at why those two teams were successful. Both have incredible coaches who had really good track records and definitely showed that in their first year with those programs with Kentucky and Louisville. So I think when you look at this year, and part of why I'm excited about BYU is because their fresh faces are more exciting than arguably anyone. AJ Da Banta is going to be arguably the best freshman or one of the best freshmen in the country. Certainly one of the most exciting players to watch. I'm super high on Rob Wright, especially offensively in terms of what he's going to bring at the point guard spot coming from Baylor. But when you look at the returning core of players on my website, something you can do is see the predicted percentage of minutes that are going to be played by returning players for a team next year. And BYU is at 47% predicted minutes played by returning players next year, even with all of these big new pieces that they're adding that have raised the talent level. So to me I think they, they still, they have that roster continuity that's really important. And there may be some other teams that are of similar talent level but that are lacking that, that I think may struggle more, at least early in the season.
- [18:40]
Gary Parish
You mentioned AJ debon, so let's focus on him for a second. He is the five star freshman. It appears right now there's three players that reasonable minds could disagree on as it pertains to who's going to be the number one pick in the 2026 NBA draft. It's A.J. devons is one of them. Darren Peterson at Kansas would be another. Cameron Boozer at Duke would be the third. Put them in any order, you might end up right. But I tell you Evan, I was at Peach Jam a few summers ago. First time I'd seen AJ in person. It was after his freshman year of high school and immediately like you don't have to be a recruiting analyst or an NBA scout to see there's something different here. This guy's not like the rest of these guys and not unique to me. But I think a lot of people, the first time you put your eyes on him, that's what they look like. That's what a number one pick in the draft looks like. I know that his place sort of plateaued over the past year, at least according to people who'd seen him more often than I had. But still, if I were picking tonight, he's the guy I would select number one overall in a draft. He's a wing with size, incredible score. I'm sure you saw it. BYU tweeted out a link over the past week of him, you know, vertically and I don't know that we put a number on it, but his feet are way up there. It just like everything else he does, it doesn't look normal. What do you make of him? How much have you seen of him?
- [20:08]
Evan Miyakawa
Well, I'm certainly excited to see him in this BYU team. You know, I think the, the biggest thing that, that people talk about is just he's, he's a very gifted scorer and I think when you talk about a player like that who is built for an NBA style offense, I think BYU fits him perfectly because not only do is there a very sort of NBA centric scheme being run by this coaching staff, you know, with Kevin Young coming from the NBA ranks recently, but also I think this team has a lot of other capable players who are going to be able to share the load. And, and I don't think that there's going to have to be so much attention on him from day one because he's going to be far and away the team's best player. I think by the end of the season he will be that But I think the fact that there's going to be so many other weapons on the court for this team is going to allow him to really have the space to operate and to grow in his game. And by the end of the season I think he'll be thriving because, you know, I just think this is a really good fit for him. There's a lot of other pieces around. You've got he's going to be playing with a very gifted, talented, playmaking point guard and Rob Wright who's going to be able to set him up well. So I think there might be other freshmen who are, you know, just as talented this year, in previous years, but may not have quite the setup that he's going to have. And I think that's going to really bode well for him.
- [21:21]
Gary Parish
Earlier I said that you bring back Keda, you bring back Saunders and I think you can reasonably argue BYU might have upgraded at the other three starting spots. I know there's somebody out there going, hold on. One of the other starters was a guy who was selected in the first round of the 2020 NBA Draft. That's Jaeger Demon. How did they really upgrade that? I think I can argue that Rob Wright as a sophomore will be a better college basketball player than Jaeger Dimond as a freshman, if only because I've had a long standing belief that if you can ever get a borderline five star, top 25 prospect back to school for a second year, the likelihood of them becoming, if they haven't already been a really impactful college player increases to some degree. But that's just something I conjured up in my head. Do you have data to support that, that guys like this actually do make a significant jump from their freshman to sophomore seasons?
- [22:15]
Evan Miyakawa
As always, you are right. And when you look, when you look at the data from, from specifically highly talented freshmen who have, were highly recruited out of high school, five star and stay in college, whether they were great in their freshman year or a little disappointing. Oftentimes it's that freshman to sophomore year jump that can really bring the best out of someone. We've certainly seen this with a lot of transfers in the last several years. I think Rob Wright absolutely fits that when you look at what he did, especially offensively for Baylor a lot of times last year. I mean, Vijay Edgecombe was the first face on the Baylor team sheet. He was taken in the lottery and all that stuff. But often early in the season when Baylor was struggling, they would turn to Rob Wright to really change games around when their offense wasn't clicking because he had the ability to create both for himself and for other people as a freshman in a way that no one else in their team was able to. When you're bringing that back and you're talking about this freshman, the sophomore year, Leap, BYU is obviously heavily invested in him. They paid him a lot of money to leave a great situation at Baylor and come to byu. I think he's going to be given the keys to drive this offense. And when you look at from a data perspective on my website, I have him as the fifth best transfer transfer in the entire portal this offseason with the best offensive projection of any player in the portal. So when you're talking about his offensive skills, he's an incredible playmaker for a point guard who has the ball in his hands a lot. He doesn't turn the ball over very much. He's a very capable scorer. He can shoot from three. He's really got everything that you want in a point guard. And that was all just in his freshman year. I think that freshman to sophomore leap is coming and I'm very, very high on what he could do.
- [23:56]
Gary Parish
You mentioned Kevin Young earlier. He obviously is BYU second year coach. He was hired out of the NBA with very little experience working on a college campus. Year one successful, year two should be better, at least on paper. This is looking like a smart, outside the box hire. You're a smart guy. So I want to ask you this. Do you have a sense for whether this is and there's no one place to hire coaches from, let us be clear. But, but do you have a sense for whether there's like sound logic behind going this route? Particularly in the era of revenue sharing and nil, where quote unquote relationships with grassroots coaches in the world of recruiting aren't nearly as important as they used to be. They might not be important at all. Can you think we'll see more schools doing stuff like this? Hiring people who are brilliant, respected basketball minds from the professional ranks, bringing them to college and then giving them the resources to just run a basketball program?
- [24:54]
Evan Miyakawa
With the college basketball landscape changing so much in the last couple of years, I think every team and coaching staff and athletic department is looking for, you know, these sort of cutting edge, edge trends that they can latch onto. I think hiring a coach from the NBA ranks is one of them. Getting international guys from, from Europe is another one of them. But I think there's something about the Kevin Young situation in particular that really just suited him and BYU well. I mean, for starters, he was almost took other NBA head coaching jobs prior to taking the BYU job. That already shows the caliber of coach and how respected he is at the NBA level. And then you talk about his ties to byu. It's not just a random school plucking him out of the blue. He actually had really strong ties there and understands BYU and its culture. I think that's why it's worked so well. Is that prescriptive for what other schools can do? I'm not sure because, you know, just getting any old assistant coach from the NBA to be a head coach is, is probably more risky than what the Kevin Young situation was. So I do think that there is a blueprint there in a sense. But I don't think that you can just expect every other NBA assistant to go just magically work at the college level. Because I think the Kevin Young at BYU sort of relationship had a lot of chemistry there and I think that's part of why it's worked so well.
- [26:14]
Gary Parish
One last thing on byu, I had John Fanta on the other day to help me discuss St. John's which is the team I have number one in the top 25 and one. And I asked him, among other things, what will be the reason if St. John's actually underperforms relative to, if nothing else, the expectations I placed upon them. He mentioned things like the lack of a proven high major point guard on the roster. He mentioned the health of Bryce Hopkins, which I guess is a question mark until we see it on the court. Let me ask you the same question about byu. If you and I are talking in February and it's like, man, Evan, I was high on them and I know you like them too, but it's just not working out. What's the most likely scenario, most likely reason rather that it doesn't work the way we think it will.
- [26:57]
Evan Miyakawa
I could see two potential pitfalls. I think the most obvious one for me is just the, the volatility that you get in a guy like AJ Debanta and wanting him to be the best team, the best player team and all Big 12 caliber player. Because what I've seen in looking at the data from these, you know, top five top 10 freshmen over the last really 10 years is that there are a lot of them who hit and are some of the best players in the country, but a lot of them also who will still maybe put up stats but just aren't quite as impactful at the college level in that freshman season as you think they still may end up going top three or top five in the NBA draft, but they just don't quite hit the potential people think they have. And so I think that there's just for any player, not, I'm not, not just talking about A.J. i'm talking about Darren Peterson and Cam Boozer. Any of these talented freshmen, some are going to be awesome and some might just be a little bit worse than we think. And so if BYU were to not be one of the top five teams in the country, I think that's a certain possibility. I think the other two is just looking at this roster, you know, their starting center K baked as only 6, 8. You've got Mahalo Boskovic as a 610 senior. But like there's not really a ton of proven, you know, really tall skill on this team. And so they were able to work with that fine last year. But that could be something that, that is more of an area of concern. So if either of those were potential issues, I could see that being a bit of a factor.
- [28:19]
Gary Parish
Last thing before I get you out of here, Forget the top 25 and 1, forget the betting markets. I want to know because rosters are pretty much set at this point. Evanmia.com if that website was projecting your 2026 national champion right now, what direction would it lean?
- [28:37]
Evan Miyakawa
So I have not done my official preseason computations for, for what's going to go on my site in the preseason, but based on everything that I've looked at, I think the team that is going to be number one on my site if I had to put a bet on it right now would be Purdue. I think Purdue, both from a returning talent perspective and players that they're bringing in. And you know, you talk about the importance of roster continuity. They're doing that better than anybody this year in bringing back their best three players and other important role guys and then filling in a couple key spots with talent upgrades. I just think Purdue, you know, ticks all the boxes from the stuff that I look at in terms of a team that's going to be the front runner for the national title. So again, I don't know that for sure, but that's where my guess would be right now.
- [29:21]
Gary Parish
It's a fine guess and coincidentally the next episode of the summer shoot around is going to be on Purdue. Matt Painter, the five time Big Ten coach of the year is going to join me to discuss them. But to your point, they bring back their top four scores. Top five if you include Daniel Jacobson, he only appeared in two games last season. They have an all American in their back court. They have an All American in their front court. They are bringing in a transfer big from South Dakota State who averaged monster numbers last season. And then they've got another point guard that they're going to put right beside Braden Smith, a young man from Omar Meyer from Israel who was terrific this summer. They've got him on campus now. The early reviews are great. I have Purdue fourth in the top 25 and one, but after diving in into them a little more closely and seeing what Omer Meyer did this summer for his country, it makes me think that fourth is too low and maybe three spots too low. So I'm I'm with you. I I could certainly see Purdue being the preseason number one. Houston obviously another candidate for that as well. Evan Miyakawa you you run evanmia.com for people out there listening, watching. If you're not a subs, you should be your favorite college basketball coach probably is. Your favorite college basketball writer analyst probably is. Evan, I appreciate your time today. Per usual. I'm sure I'll be direct messaging you totally random questions throughout the season about stuff. You can maybe help me with that, make me sound smarter on television. So thank you in advance for answering those. And again, I appreciate your time today, buddy. I'll check in with you again real soon.
- [31:01]
Evan Miyakawa
Sounds good. It was really great to be here. I've been listening to this podcast for probably close to a decade, so to be on this is a full circle moment for me. This is really great.
- [31:09]
Chumba Casino
Possibility means you have a chance.
- [31:12]
Evan Miyakawa
Passion opens the door to all possibilities. When I feel like anything's possible, I feel kind of giddy. I want to be an astronaut, an artist, be an actress to visit another country. All I need is a backpack and a pair of shoes and I'll find a way I'm able to do anything I set my mind to. I've never felt like more things are possible than right now.
- [31:32]
Chumba Casino
In the right shoes, anything's possible.
- [31:35]
Gary Parish
Dsw Countless shoes at brag worthy prices. Imagine the possibilities.
- [31:39]
Chumba Casino
Ready to level up? Champa Casino is your playbook to fun. It's free to play with no purchase necessary. Enjoy hundreds of online social games like blackjack, slots and Solitaire anytime, anywhere with fresh releases every week. Whether you are at home or on the go, let Chumba Casino bring the excitement to you. Plus get free daily login bonuses and a free welcome bonus. Join now for your chance to redeem some serious prizes. Play Chumba Casino today. No purchase necessary. VGW Group Void where prohibited by law. 21/TNCs apply.
- [32:10]
Gary Parish
Big thanks to Evan Miyakawa for hanging out with me for this episode. Our next episode in the Summer Shoot around series, it's going to be on Purdue. That's going to be me and Matt Painter. Yes, Matt Painter, the five time Big Ten Coach of the Year. He's going to join me to discuss his bolo makers. Hopefully you'll check that one out that's scheduled to drop on Monday. Shouts to Devin Downey shouts to Chester, S.C. shouts to Terry Teagle. He's a legend. Huck Larnell thank you guys once again for watching and listening to the I Own College Basketball Podcast. If you're not subscribed, please go subscribe anywhere you subscribe to podcasts including Apple and Spotify. There's more of us than there are of them that should be reflected in the comments, so please make sure you're doing that. We'll talk to you again real soon. Until then, take wow. Foreign.
- [33:35]
Collars and Company
Guys. By now you've heard me talk about Collars and company makers of the Dress Collar Polo. They've already sold over a million of these amazing shirts. Well, Collars and Co just came out with the new Maverick Performance Blazer. This blazer is sharp and wrinkle resistant so you can travel anywhere with it. Just throw it in your bag and it will remain wrinkle free. It even comes with security zip pocket pockets, a sunglasses loop, and an optional pocket Square. So visit collarsandco.com and use code TIKI for 20% off@collarsandco.com.