← Eye On College Basketball
Eye On College Basketball
Top 25 CBB Stories of the Past 25 Years, Ep. 2: Kentucky + Gonzaga almost perfect; Brad Stevens Boston bombshell, Sister Jean goes global
01:17:24
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- [00:00]
Gary Parrish
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- [01:01]
Matt Norlander
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- [03:05]
Gary Parrish
Yes. And by the way, hold on, specifying this again, this is men's college basketball, so Caitlin Clark will not be involved in this list. You would objectively, by the time we get to the top five, she'd be in there. But this is just. This is our beat, men's college basketball.
- [03:17]
Matt Norlander
We've already done 25 through 21. Norlander, would you like to add anything else before we get to number 20?
- [03:24]
Gary Parrish
Only that Parrish knows the five now. He knows the order. He doesn't know what's coming yet in the top 15. Those are going to be for other shows down the line. But. But he does know the order here. And before we get into it, before I introduce the 20th without spoiling anything here. Okay. Even though the title is giving away, like 1 or 2 of the thumbnail on this. YouTube is giving away 1 or 2. Broadly speaking. You good with the order? Everything okay? Everything copacetic with you now that you know number 16 through 25 on this list?
- [03:52]
Matt Norlander
Broadly speaking, sure. But this would be like me asking you to look at numbers 20 through 16 of the top 25 and 1. I'm not going to show you any of the top 15. But tell me how you think this part of it looks. I don't have the proper context to make a proper evaluation, but all of these stories that you have listed 20 through 16 are big, notable, memorable things. Like there's not any one of these where I have to go, hmm, I don't really remember that. Everything on this list is going to be something you remember. You might have to remind yourself with some Google searches, but by and large, these are all big things that if you live through it, you spent time talking about it. And if you were a writer at the time, you spent time writing about it.
- [04:33]
Gary Parrish
Yeah. And it was. It has been, you know, informative and, dare I say, fun even Though the first story that we're going to talk about is not exactly a fun story.
- [04:41]
Matt Norlander
Oh, I thought it was a blast.
- [04:42]
Gary Parrish
Yeah. Just to go back and, you know, I reread some stuff, coverage of things that you wrote that I wrote, that other people wrote. When there's video components on some of these stories go back, you know, down the YouTube rabbit hole. And it is fun to kind of just go back and scan across and that's as much as what this whole series is about as anything like, you know, anyone that might theoretically gripe over the placement of story 17 versus story 22. Come on, like, get a life. But, but overall it's, it's a very fun, it's a very fun exercise and I hope everyone's enjoying it. So with that in mind, let's get this rolling and let's talk about number 20 on the top 25 most important, biggest notable stories in men's college basketball the past 25 years. And it is the University of North Carolina's academic fraud case. This is a story that lasted seven years. Now from an official NCAA tournament investigation capacity. It was a little more than four, I guess, but it truly was a seven year saga. And this part I had forgotten about until I started to research it more and look back again. You know, it really, this whole, this can of worms was opened because there was a, a lesser football scandal that bubbled up at the end of the 2000s. Okay. And then from that it became known that football players were enrolled in these classes that appeared to be fraudulent in nature in the greater African and Afro American Studies division at the University of North Carolina. The story wrapped in 2017. And we can get to the ending of this because I think, I think the lack of a punishment is why it's this low on the list. If North Carolina actually had been hit with real significant punishments, whether and whether wherever you come down on that, if they had been actually punished, the story would have been even higher on the list. But they weren't. There were three different investigative stages of this process as far as the NCAA was concerned. But before I continue with any more of these details, I, I don't want to hog the mic. Gp Your thoughts on this story, what you remember from it. I have a section of your column that you wrote the day that the, the final judgment came down in 2017, so I'll share that with you as well. But floor is yours on what happened, or I guess what didn't happen with University of North Carolina.
- [07:07]
Matt Norlander
I actually think it's kind of a bigger Story because they got off. I think I could argue that like, you know, they got away with fraud. They got it out of a scandal pretty much without scars. And the way the NCAA ruled on it was they more or less like, nobody really tried to deny at the end that these were fraudulent, problematic classes. North Carolina's argument was more or less, sure, there were athletes in these classes, but these classes were available for anybody. So like, and that is basically what the NCAA co signed, that the decision stemmed from the fact that the paper courses were offered to the entire student body, not just athletes. So the NCAA could not prove that the university had specifically benefited the athletic programs from these courses. For all intents and purposes, not guilty. And that just flies in the face of common sense. And I remember arguing at the time, like, if, like, how far could you stretch this logic?
- [08:21]
Gary Parrish
Yeah. Do you remember the instance you use? I have it here in front of me.
- [08:26]
Matt Norlander
I think. I think I probably use some analogy like this. I'm a UNC booster. You just told me that even though we had athletes in fraudulent classes, it's okay because other students were in fraudulent classes as well. So how far can I stretch this? If I go and hand $500,000 to every North Carolina basketball player, let's say there's 13 of them, and then I also hand $500,000 to eight normal students, can I then argue that this is not really an extra benefit because this money is available to normal students just like it's available to. To student athletes. Now, I wouldn't actually want to try to argue that, but like, logically, that is why this made no sense to most people who college. Follow college athletics. You know what this was, you know why it was there, you know what it was doing. And you let them get away with it on what amounts to a technicality. That is why. That is why people were so angered by. Felt like one of the blue bloods of the sport and got away with something that somebody else would not have gotten away with. That's the way it felt.
- [09:32]
Gary Parrish
Whether that's true or not, the comparison you put on or the thought experiment you put in your column was 50,000. Say, okay, let's. I'm a booster. I put $50,000 on a table and two. Two stacks of them. And I have one of them go to a. To a college athlete, one of them go to a. To a student. And you're telling me that by this logic, shouldn't we get off with that? And it's actually a point. Well, point well made. Here's another Line from your column the day this all came down in October of 2017, which, by the way, when this actually came down, it was big deal that it finally got resolved. But keep in mind, we're like less than two weeks removed from the huge FBI story breaking in the press conference there. Don't worry, that's obviously coming much later on the list. But some of this was, I don't want to say muted, but. But the long awaited resolution to the North Carolina academic fraud case, the way that it was perceived and taken in, some of that impact seemed a bit dimmed by the fact that this, you know, FBI scandal, which was just unfolding and we were just trying to get a grasp on these things, were happening at the same time. Although my memory, if you would have asked me before I actually started doing this, I actually would have thought the Carolina stuff was resolved before the FBI stuff came out. That is not how it happened. This actually came to light with a final verdict of no punishment for North Carolina a couple of weeks after the FBI stuff came out. Here's what Paris wrote, Quote, but let's not pretend these classes didn't disproportionately and by large margin benefit student athletes, because they most certainly did. Only 4% of UNC students are student athletes, yet nearly 50% of the students taking the Bowie classes were student athletes. Yes, the NCAA might have technically ruled correctly based on the bylaws in place, but the idea that a school could have roughly 1,000 student athletes taking fraudulent classes for more than a decade, get caught and still go unpunished, means something is very, very wrong with the bylaws in place. And quote, Bloomberg went so far as to put a cover of a UNC basketball jersey on its cover of its magazine with an F in the middle instead of a number in the words no class and big bold font. Even Greg Sankey, who at that time was chair of the committee on Infractions, I'm not going to read you his quote here all these years later, but effectively he said this was a university wide issue. It was more of an academic issue than an athletics issue. But we, you read between the lines of what Sankey was saying it was. We clearly see how college athletes benefited from the issues here. But the policy that was in place was clear and the NCAA ultimately was going to defer to its institution whether it, if Carolina wants to say that academic fraud took place here, it's. It's on Carolina to say that and not us to, to judge and adjudicate this, which at the end of it Was in large part laughable. I mean, the chair, Julius Nyangaro, who was running that department, he retired or was forced to step down. I want to say late 2011, early 2012. And if you go, I went back over and looked at like a young Kyle Boone, handled our story@cbsports.com on the timelines of some of this stuff. And there were fits and starts with this story like it emerged in 2010. By about 2012, there was a wonder if this thing might eventually die out. But then in June of that year, GP records were revealed that showed a lot of it wasn't just a football problem. There were basketball players involved as well. These course, these paper courses dated back to at least 1997. So you are touching the Dean Smith era at North Carolina in 2012. In August of 2012, Carolina announced that it saw no violations related to academic fraud. North Carolina announced this in August of 2012. This case would not get resolved until October of 2017. And then in November, a few months later in 2012, Mary Willingham, which you haven't heard that name in a while, she was the whistleblower. She was the person who was in effect working at the university. And she went public and she said Carolina had paper classes that helped kept a number of its student athletes in football and men's basketball and a few others as well, eligible to compete. It was a major, major schedule. Eventually, a former Department of Justice official, Kenneth Weinstein, took over an investigation that triggered another set of, of. What's the term I'm looking for here with, with the NCAA notice of allegation. There were three different notice of allegations in this case, and ultimately there were five Level 1 allegations levied against North Carolina. But at the end of it, you know, that was from the enforcement end. The Committee on Infractions ultimately decided we, we're not going to punish you remember, Carolina won the national title in men's basketball in 2017 when this was all happening. It definitely suffered on the recruiting trail as a result. We wrote about that, we talked about it on this podcast at the time. A huge, huge story. And yet with. With no real big punishment. Good take by ugp. The fact that you think it's actually a bigger story because there wasn't anything. The idea of like UNC getting hit with the postseason banner, to me, that would have had a little more reverberating effects. But nonetheless, this was a huge deal. And in part because of how long this took and how long it played, I mean, it felt like forever and effectively, you know, it practically was in college sports terms. But anyway, go ahead.
- [14:54]
Matt Norlander
I remember writing about this at one point because there's no doubt it killed them in recruiting. They went a stretch where I'm gonna say the story was they had offered X amount of top 25 recruits over a several year period and gotten like none of them or one of them or the number was very small. They could not get the one and done prospects anymore because every other coach was saying you're only spending one year in college and if you go to North Carolina, they might get hit with a postseason ban any day.
- [15:25]
Gary Parrish
Yeah.
- [15:25]
Matt Norlander
So you can't go there. You might not even be able to play in the NCAA tournament. And that was a recruiting tool used against North Carolina for years. And so what's interesting, or at least I remember it this way, they couldn't get the high level recruits that say the Dukes in Kentucky's were getting the one and dones. And so their recruiting classes were largely built on guys ranked between like 25 and 125 and 75.
- [15:50]
Gary Parrish
And then yeah, they got older and.
- [15:52]
Matt Norlander
They go in national championships and they.
- [15:54]
Gary Parrish
Came close to winning two, remember? Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
- [15:57]
Matt Norlander
So I, what I remember thinking about that was it's interesting because undeniably this is hurting them in recruiting, but is it helping their program? Is it helping the program?
- [16:10]
Gary Parrish
Right.
- [16:10]
Matt Norlander
It's a little bit like you, you play golf, you like one day I left the house without my driver and I was in on one hand. You're like, jesus, I don't even have my driver with me. This is gonna suck. Turned out it helped me like I.
- [16:24]
Gary Parrish
Was better because of a lot of, a lot of amateur hacks out there.
- [16:27]
Matt Norlander
Yeah, yeah. You understand, it's like I was better off without it, even though I wanted it. And I, on some level, I think that is true with North Carolina. They wanted the, the top 10 recruits one and done guy couldn't get them because this cloud was hanging over the program. But then they got the other guys that stayed in school longer. And I think on some level the program benefited from that. One last thing I would say on this, and you can take it wherever you want. Remember, all of this was happening during a time pre nil, pre revenue sharing. And so one of the arguments from people at the NCAA office I'm certain on the North Carolina campus had always been, listen, student athletes are amateurs. They're not professionals, they're not employees. But the thing they're getting out of this is an incredible education from one of the greatest universities in our country. That's the pay, that's the compensation. And what we find out is you're actually not even getting that in some cases. And that is like really shameful. I know when you're young, if somebody tells you, hey, I'll just give you this degree, you don't really have to do anything, that sounds amazing. I'm confident in college I would have signed up for that as well. But as you get older, you realize that somebody is failing you. If I thought my children were being pushed through school just without learning anything, I would change schools. You need to be challenged, you need to be educated. And for an extended period of time on that campus, which is one of the great campuses in America, they were failing too many of their student athletes, keeping them eligible to compete, but not actually setting them up to be as equipped as they otherwise could be to enter the so called real world when this football, basketball stuff's over.
- [18:17]
Gary Parrish
Yeah, I think it's ultimately a very, it's a very impactful case because you know, say what you want about enforcement, NCAA and all that stuff and this is an issue where, you know, if you want to say they fell short, I understand that. But you know, academic fraud is, is truly one of the, one of the rails that you just, you know, in theory it should be the thing that, that really should, should punish a specific program if it's found to be true and that's actually ongoing in a program. I'd actually argue with someone who's been fortunate enough to cover the sport for, you know, more than 15, 16, 17 years now and GP even longer than that. I think you'd be naive not to think that, you know, there is some level of academic fraud happening in high level college athletics across the country with some level of consistency. Like how much work are the players actually doing, how much assistance are they doing in playing spots? It's actually legitimate, but I actually think this is something that's hard to uncover, but it's actually still ongoing and you know, affects the actual, you know, competition out there. Are you, are you earning the grades that you say you're earning? Are you eligible to compete as a result of this? And this was a, this was a major case and for Carolina, not there was, they weren't put on probation. The only thing that happened from a punishment standpoint was Nyangaro, the chair who retired. He got a, he had a five year show. Cause that's the most meaningless punishment ever. This dude didn't help them, didn't need to help them. They didn't have subpoena power. It was a meaningless punishment. That was the only punishment handed down was to a former chair of one of the studies departments at the University of North Carolina. Guy had nothing to do with athletics and that's was the he was the only person that got punished in the end which added to a lot of the the outrage if you want to call it that once it once it came to bear. 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 Viori. 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.
- [20:39]
Matt Norlander
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- [20:39]
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- [21:05]
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- [21:37]
Gary Parrish
Number 19.
- [21:40]
Matt Norlander
They've been running on adrenaline, but you get the sense now, the pace slowing. You wonder if mental and physical fatigue is starting to take over. Not from Morrison. That's 41 in a single game. Maui tournament record. Nobody has scored as many points as Adam Morrison's 41. Muhammad thought he could just go ahead and take Nelson Redick with a crossover hands. Another he does that so well. Crossover hesitation, stepping back and hit the jumper.
- [22:09]
Gary Parrish
You mentioned this last season because we had a story with Some, some similar, some similar vibes to it, but to me, this is the best player of the year race of the 21st century JJ Redick vs Adam Morrison 2005, 2006 season, the race for National Player of the Year. I'll send it right back to you. When I say Reddick vs Morrison 2006, what springs to mind? What are your thoughts about the story? What do you remember about it? GP because this was the last season that you covered college basketball and it wasn't for CBS Sports.
- [22:42]
Matt Norlander
This is the last season that I was on the Memphis beat for the Commercial Appeal newspaper and I actually covered both of these teams, both of these players in person. Memphis played both of them. Memphis played Duke at the Garden in November 2005 and lost that game 767. That was actually my oldest son's first basketball game to ever attend was that game. He's two years old at Madison Square Garden for Memphis, Duke. He has no memory of it, obviously, but he will forever be able to say, the first basketball game I ever went to was at Madison Square Garden. Memphis, duke, and yeah, J.J. redick was on that team then. Memphis played Gonzaga at FedEx Forum in December 2005, won that game 83.72. And by then Adam Morrison had become like the face star of the sport and really one of the American sports stars that had kind of like burst onto the scene. Like, even though he was a great player the year prior, he wasn't a focal point of really anything, or at least I don't remember it that way. But he comes back for, I believe, that third year of college and where it really happened was the Maui Invitational. Yep. He goes for 25 on that Monday and went over number 23, Maryland, then 43. That's the game.
- [24:08]
Gary Parrish
That's the game.
- [24:09]
Matt Norlander
Like, I remember these games. Like, I actually, you know me, I don't remember games I was at and rolled Collins about, but I remember that Maui Invitational on, watching it on tv.
- [24:17]
Gary Parrish
That's not on the list. But like, this is including in the list. And I'm not going to put specific games on the list. I'll get to that on a future episode. But the Gonzaga, Michigan State, Adam Morrison, 43.7 rebounds, forces two steals. If you were. Not that you even need to remove NCAA tournament action, but if you wanted to say regular season games, that's one of the five best regular season games of the past 25 years, unquestionably. And that's what put him into the stratosphere. Yeah.
- [24:39]
Matt Norlander
So he gets 43 against the Spartans. And then they play UConn in the title game. They lose that. He gets 18. But at that point, a star was born. The hair, the mustache. By the time they came in here in December to, like, downtown Memphis, right here where I'm at, it was. I don't mean to be hyperbolic, but, you know, this was the same time, you know, the Grizzlies would have, you know, like, we had the best basketball players in the world coming to the city. And it felt like Adam Morrison coming here was just as big as LeBron coming here. Just as big as anybody coming here. Place was packed, game was fun. I had a memory, and I just googled it to see if it would. If it, like, was real, just Google Adam Morrison and Sean Williams. There was a confrontation between them and the game, and they get face to face, and Morrison's, like, losing his mind. And I just remember John going crazy. Caliperi going crazy about that because he's, like I told every one of you, don't say a word to him. He's crazy. You start talking to him, it's not going to work for us. And sure enough, Sean Williams from South Memphis couldn't help himself. But, like, Adam Morrison coming to Memphis with that mustache was a big deal. And that whole season was just incredible. He ends up averaging 28 points a game. JJ ends up averaging 27. Correct? Correct me. Like, JJ won most of the Player of the Year awards. Is that right?
- [26:04]
Gary Parrish
Yeah. So here's how it broke down. Reddick won. So there are six, considered six major outlets. I'll say seven with cbs. Come on now. But historically, six major outlets that hand out national Player of the Year awards. Reddick won all six, but he shared the vote with two of them. With Morrison, they split the Oscar Robinson vote, which is Robertson vote, which is the United States Basketball Writers Association. I'm almost positive that's the only time ever. The end poi, if you will, has been split by the Robertson committee, and then the NABC poll as well, had them share the award. So Reddit got it with all six, but Morrison did technically get two of them.
- [26:38]
Matt Norlander
Looking back on that, is that right? Is that the way it should have gone?
- [26:43]
Gary Parrish
I feel, looking back on it, it feels like it should be and it wasn't, but it feels like it should have been three. Three or four, Two, one way or the other. You mentioned their points per game. Morrison average five and a half boards. Reddick average two, two and a half assists. Morrison was under two assists, but, you know, 1.7 per game. As for the boards, Reddick was at two boards. So like those person was better from.
- [27:03]
Matt Norlander
The field, better from three point range, Morrison.
- [27:06]
Gary Parrish
But yeah, but they were narrow. Like I have it in front of me. So Reddick was 42.1 from 3. Morrison was 42.8. Reddick was 120.2 and offensive rating Morrison.2 behind him at 120 flat. Duke was the number one offense in the country. Gonzaga was number two in offense that year. It was, it was a, it was a weekly thing. It was, yeah, it was a, it was a understandably a major deal because you also had, you had the, the Duke versus the Gonzaga. You had the big blue blood school coached by Mike Shashevsky. And remember at this point Redick is a known commodity. He, he became if not a household name by his freshman year because he had a, he had a braggadociousness about him on the floor which led to some serious and inappropriate taunting, if you. That's even putting it too lightly later on in his career. But by the time Reddick was a sophomore, he was a household name in college basketball. We're not talking about his final year of college. So you had that factor. And then you've got Gonzaga, which is like Morrison pulled Gonzaga out of its Cinderella era. Now it ends ironically and infamously for both of these players. GP in the second weekend, the sweet 16 of the tournament. And you've got the Morrison Gonzaga meltdown against ucla, which is well died. And at this point Gonzaga has atoned for that, including with, with the play that we'll get you on this very episode in just a little bit here. But that, that was, that was a game that Gonzaga should have won. They blew it. Morrison's, you know, hunched over on the floor, rolling over, he's crying before the game ends. And then meantime, Redick has his career just vaporized by LSU in the Sweet 16. That LSU team that would go on to, to make the Final Four there. So a bit ironic that the clearly, the two best players in the sport that season who were jockeying and vying with each other and remember Reddick like he went for 29 and a win at Indiana early in the season. He had a 41 point game with nine threes against Texas and a neutral. They played in Jersey. He had a. Reddick had at least 11 games with five made three pointers. I think Morrison, he only had like four or five with at least five threes. But it was, yeah, it was, it was an awesome, awesome deal. And there have been some other really good national player of the Year races. The one we just had, it's a notch below. But broom versus versus flag, I thought was. Was pretty damn awesome. And both, you know, one seeds again, a Duke player and a non Duke player getting to the final four. Zero, by the way. Those two did. Reddick and Morrison came two games short of that. It was. This was before I was covering the sport, but as a, As a fan. Yeah, it was. It was awesome to watch. And I feel like Morrison was ace. I say this like gp. I feel like he was a slightly bigger star because of the novelty of it. Yes. This dude playing for Gonzaga. Wait a second. Gonzaga's like, okay, they might actually be a thing. I'm telling you that there's been like three or four stages of Gonzaga as we knew it. And it was Gonzaga that makes. Makes the, the, the elite eight run back in the late 90s. Then there's, you know, and that run kind of continues on through. Like they played an epic game against Arizona in the early 2000s, the 0506 Morrison era. That starts 2.0 of Gonzaga. And so that's why I think he was. He slightly outshined Reddick. But this, it was back and forth, back and forth. And ultimately it might have been a, A slight Duke bias, you know, considering that was the establishment, all that. But it was a, it was a hell of a race. And the thing that this had that most other national and maybe all other national player of the year races that have been close ever in the history of the sport. These were the two best scorers in the sport. It wasn't just like, oh man, they got a big man who's incredible at rebounding, a really good player. These were dudes that could fill it up and light it up and were doing it at a time where the three point shot was obviously utilized. But it's 2006. These are reliable bucket getters. Redick is one of the best college shooters ever. And that added to the allure and the appeal and frankly the mainstream viability of this race and why it lands on a list like this, you know, 20 years on, it was college basketball's.
- [31:00]
Matt Norlander
Version of Maguire Sosa. You know, it was everybody, everybody was paying.
- [31:05]
Gary Parrish
I want to say there's no steroids involved, but yes, otherwise, yes, perhaps weed. No perhaps about it. Okay, weed. And some. And some slightly embarrassing poetry.
- [31:17]
Matt Norlander
Yes, without a doubt, definitely weed. Probably not steroids. I won't re. Litigate national player of the year race from 2006. But I. The way I remember it all these years, you know, roughly 20 years later, I remember Adam being feeling like the bigger star, regardless of who the better player was, who deserved the trophies like Adam Morrison. And it was the novelty of it. It was the hair, it was the mustache, it was, it was everybody's like he had his big moment very early and it, that put all the attention on him. And then we never stopped looking. It was just, it was a, it was a special season. Man, that was a lot of fun.
- [31:56]
Gary Parrish
Two down, three to go. We've got a break here and then we'll get to number 18. GP tipped, tipped the hand on this on the previous episode. A major, major decision early in the 2010s. But first, let's get a word from our partners.
- [32:14]
Matt Norlander
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- [33:01]
Gary Parrish
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- [33:45]
Matt Norlander
All right Norlander, we're down to number 18. What do you got for us?
- [33:51]
Gary Parrish
Okay, there are inevitably moments on this list overall where it is a remember where you were situation I actually do remember where I was watching UCLA come back in and Adam Morrison's career. I remember that night and specifically where.
- [34:06]
Matt Norlander
I was there for a second. Do you know my story for that?
- [34:09]
Gary Parrish
Yes, because you've said on the show you were working in the back writing because you were at that arena and so you were writing about Memphis and so you missed most of it happening in real.
- [34:17]
Matt Norlander
I didn't see it live. The game, the game was over and I went back to the media room and I heard. I vividly remember being in the media room at Oracle and a roar like that you can sometimes hear in an arena and you're like, what is going on out there? I remember having that feeling, what is going on out there? And by the time I got out there, Adam Morrison was already crying.
- [34:40]
Gary Parrish
Yeah, how about that? We've all been victim to those kind of moments, no doubt about it. So number 18, obviously it's an honor and a privilege to be here. You know, I certainly will have a lot of thanks to Dole out, starting with my family and Brady and Kinsley and my mom are upstairs watching this and Tracy as well and mentioned that she is my attorney and for those of you haven't heard me say this.
- [35:09]
Matt Norlander
Before, I'm the only coach in the.
- [35:11]
Gary Parrish
Country that pays 100% to his agent. So that's the way that that works and has always worked. I remember where I was because I got a text message from our buddy Jeff Borzello. I was apartment condo hunting at the time with my then wife. I had gotten married. This is 2013. No, wait, I, yeah, I had gotten married. So we are, we are less than two months married at this point and looking to move from the tiny apartment we were in to get to get another spot. It's a Friday afternoon, it's not even a Friday afternoon. We are going into the evening and I remember the place we walked into which we never wound up. That was not the place we picked to move. Jeff Borzello sends me a text, says, I'll get the Brad Stevens story. Okay. I think I said something like, okay, what story? He's going to the Celtics. What? At about 5:30pm on July 3, 2013, going into a four day holiday weekend. If that wasn't a Friday, it was a Thursday. I know everyone was about checked out for the weekend when this happened. Butler and Boston effectively jointly release a statement. This story was not scooped, this was not broken by a reporter. The number of people that knew it was happening was not many and they were able in the, you Know closing two, two and a half hours before this was publicly disclosed as I think Stevens called a meeting with his team either like he called it either when this got announced or right before it got announced. We found out after the fact. But this was entirely out of nowhere. A humble coach, a strict rule abiding coach Stevens, his name had been attached to a few college openings. He never remotely entertained ever leaving Butler to coach anywhere else. And he goes and he takes the Boston Celtics job. This is. If I was ranking the most shocking stories of the past 25 years, this would easily be in the top 10 all these years later. It obviously makes sense in terms of how good he was as a coach. And then he was the executive of the year a year ago. 2024, Boston wins the championship. He left. Even his leaving coaching of the Celtics to run the front office with the Celtics was some measure of surprise as well. I got a few nuggets and anecdotes here, but I'm sending it back to you. Do you remember where you were the night that Brad Stevens left Boston, left Butler and college basketball for the Boston Celtics?
- [37:31]
Matt Norlander
I don't remember specifically where I was at, but I have a memory of like either being on the way to the beach or the lake or, or about to leave to go to the beach or the lake. It was something like that. It was one of those moments where I think a lot of us have it, particularly those of us who are just constantly doing something like there's always a next, you know, rankings to publish. There's always another show to do. There's always another hit that's got to get done. And you reach this moment where it's like, all right, everything's done. It's a holiday, man. I'm just gonna shut, like I'm not even gonna open this computer again for two days. And you're just mentally done for a minute. Which is unusual in, in at least in my life. I feel like I've always got something to do tomorrow. And I finally. I just remember having that feeling of like, ah, this is nice. Headed to wherever I'm headed, nothing going on.
- [38:28]
Gary Parrish
This is gonna be good Stevens.
- [38:30]
Matt Norlander
And I'm like, what in the world is what. Brad Stevens is going to coach the Celtics? I remember like being surprised just, just at that period that could have happened at any point. And I would have been like, whoa. But for it to happen on July 3rd, as you have mentally sort of, you know, clocked out for a day or so, that was. I remember being like, oh, man, I gotta. We Gotta deal with this now.
- [38:53]
Gary Parrish
Yeah.
- [38:54]
Matt Norlander
I didn't want to.
- [38:54]
Gary Parrish
I want to say. And listen, I want. Because here's what I remember from that Rosella text me. Like, I can. I can still remember the place we were in. I never even lived there. But I remember because we were talking to the, you know, one of the condo association people that's just like showing you around or whatever. Right. And I was supposed to go get dinner with my wife. Like, we were gonna go check this place out, and then we were gonna go get dinner at this spot. And I was like, we can't do it. Like, I have to go back. I have to go back home. Like, I have to go handle this story. And so I. I want to say, not that this matters. All this yesterday. We're now, Gosh, we're almost 12 years on from this thing. I think we linked up and Borzella and I were like, gp, you're clear for the night. Like, because I think you probably wrote a call on, like, Saturday or Sunday. But in the here and now, I remember being like, babe, sorry, night's done. Like, we're leave right now. Like, we can't continue to go and check out the square footage of that. That closet and that bedroom. Like, I got to get back to the house immediately to take care of this.
- [39:49]
Matt Norlander
Yeah. Like, I might have genuinely been somewhere between here and Florida, you know, in a car. I don't remember, but I remember something like that. It's just sort of wild to think about this entire, like, career, how it started. Like, and they're promoting Brad Stevens and it's just like, how old is he?
- [40:08]
Gary Parrish
36.
- [40:09]
Matt Norlander
Yeah. Yeah. And looks 26.
- [40:12]
Gary Parrish
Yes. And an Acts 46.
- [40:15]
Matt Norlander
Yes.
- [40:16]
Gary Parrish
Right.
- [40:17]
Matt Norlander
So. And then he spent six seasons there. Obviously goes to back to back title games out of the Horizon League.
- [40:24]
Gary Parrish
Yeah.
- [40:25]
Matt Norlander
He is also the man responsible for getting Butler from the Horizon league to the A10, to the big East. He changed that athletic department's entire everything. He did that. Like, that's when you know you've really done something. A lot of people can win conference championships and stuff. Can you change an entire athletic department, by extension an entire university? He did that. And like, Greg Marshall did that to some degree at Wichita State as well. Not to this degree.
- [40:55]
Gary Parrish
Right.
- [40:56]
Matt Norlander
But like, got. Got Wichita State from one place to another in terms of conference affiliations, just based on how awesome he was at that job for a while. And Brad did that for Butler. Like, Butler will forever be where it's at because Brad Stevens was amazing in those six years at you know, in.
- [41:12]
Gary Parrish
Indianapolis, he won 166 games to 49 losses. He was 12 and 5 in the tournament at the time. I don't know if this has been surpassed. I don't think it has. Although Shire's got a good chance at it. At the time of Stevens's departure, his 166 wins were the most for any D1 coach in the first six wins six seasons of their career. 166 over three years later that year. How about this? It's 2025 right now. Barry Collier, then the athletic director, he just retired from Butler a year ago. He revealed that in 2013, because Butler's private institution, this contract wasn't known publicly. Brad Stevens's contract ran through 2025, so his contract when he left Butler 12 years ago would have it. You know, we know how these things work. But it expired this year.
- [41:58]
Matt Norlander
This year.
- [41:59]
Gary Parrish
Parish, that's incredible.
- [42:02]
Matt Norlander
Do you think, how long do you think it would, how many more years would it have taken for him to leave Butler for one of the big college jobs?
- [42:16]
Gary Parrish
I really. Okay, if, if honestly, I. This is just, this is, this is my guess. And I remember talking to folks, I guess after this, let's say he never gets that he never gets off from the Boston job. My guess, this is a guess, is that he would have remained at Butler and then he would have been the one guy, the one guy who would have gotten serious consideration over someone outside the family and might have taken over for Roy Williams at North Carolina. That might have been the one. But he, I mean, he insisted as this was going on before he left for the Celtics and then after, like, Butler is just the place for me. You know, the Indiana stuff has never really gotten real and all that. So anyway, to answer your question, that's my guess.
- [43:05]
Matt Norlander
I think he would have eventually left Butler for another college job.
- [43:08]
Gary Parrish
I. I remember different though. I know, I know. Like, I know he is dead. Yeah, he really is wired differently. Parrish.
- [43:14]
Matt Norlander
No question. Like, I didn't really know him until he became a head coach. Then I got to know him just like to the extent that he's different. There was one time very early in his career where he was either getting ready to coach against Bob Knight or he had just coached against Bob Knight. But I was like, this is a neat little, like, geez, you're this young and you're coaching against like an all time great, arguably the greatest. And I think Bob Knight had actually said some nice things about him. Like I'm really. And I just wanted to Talk to him about that. And when we connected, he was out running errands for his wife, like on a, like on a. Right in the middle of the season. And I was like, I don't know many college basketball coaches that are running errands for anybody right in the middle of the season. But he's just a different guy. And so who knows? But I, I remember. I don't think he would mind me sharing this conversation. I hope not, right. If so, I apologize. I remember having a conversation one time. I believe it was after one of whichever Zeller he heavily recruited at Butler and didn't get it done. And I remember him saying, that's one that, like, you need to pay attention to that when I'm paraphrasing here. But it was like, I'm coming off some of the best stuff in the history of the sport. This, this, this kid loves me, his family loves me. But at the end of the day, I still couldn't get it done. I still couldn't tell him. I still couldn't get him to not go to Indiana or the big boy school, wherever it was. I still couldn't win that. So I think that one got him a little bit like, okay, this is. But I'm always going to be fighting a fight that's tough.
- [44:54]
Gary Parrish
Yeah. In the Big east. But.
- [44:56]
Matt Norlander
Yes, yeah, yeah. But like, that would have got. You know, Butler ain't been the same since it got to the Big East.
- [45:02]
Gary Parrish
Oh, I have the numbers. You want the numbers?
- [45:04]
Matt Norlander
Yeah.
- [45:04]
Gary Parrish
Okay. Butler made five NCAA tournaments and won 12 tournament games in six years under Brad Stevens. And that was six years. So we've had double the amount of time since then. 12 seasons since he left. They have had five NCAA tournament level teams in twice the amount of time. They only went to four tournaments because one of them was in 2020. And they have won just so. They won 12 tournament games under Stevens. They've won five since he left. Butler was 42nd or better at Ken Palm in five of his six seasons. In the 12 years since, they've been 42nd or better just five times overall. So he got them to a place and Chris Holtman had some good years there. They hired Brandon Miller, who was not the guy for the job. He's left the business entirely. Sort of an. An enigmatic figure in general.
- [45:47]
Matt Norlander
There's like, anybody, like, I don't mean to get off track.
- [45:49]
Gary Parrish
I think he just wanted to. He got a good payout, wanted to live a private life and get away from basketball. So, yeah, there's. There were A couple writers that went.
- [45:57]
Matt Norlander
I think it's a little more. I think it's a little more complicated.
- [46:00]
Gary Parrish
A little more complicated than that. But. But he wants. Yeah. Anyway, we don't have to get off course. But he was the one who took over, did not work out. Holtman was on staff. He left his head coaching job at Gardner Webb. Did a good job there. Laval Jordan gets the job after Holtman goes to Ohio State. Laval does a good, not great job, but they aren't hitting those heights. And now here with that mod and the Big east, they have not been able to make an impact. I'm told Butler's. I'm told Butler going into next season, their money situation because Rev share is like, it just blows away anything that they've had the past three, four years. So maybe, maybe they're set up to be a little bit better. But yeah, man, the guy who could have been the face or one of the three or four faces of college basketball for a forthcoming generation, instead, you know, he left the college game behind. I remember being super bummed. Like, I remember writing like, this is a huge loss for college basketball. And I believed it then and I do believe it now. I mean, the sports, fine, but it would have been better to have Brad Stevens in it as opposed to not. And he became one of the very few success stories that took a chance, took an NBA job with zero NBA experience whatsoever, and that proved ultimately to be a good decision. There have been plenty of guys who have done that and have come out worse for it. Not Brad Stevens.
- [47:08]
Matt Norlander
Last question for you on this topic. Then we can move on. Do you think he ever coaches again at any level of the sport?
- [47:15]
Gary Parrish
This is a wonderful question because of how he's wired. If you told me it never happened, I would completely believe it. But if you made me guess today because he's what, he's 48. I. I will say. I will say Brad Stevens eventually coaches again in some capacity, whether that's in the NBA. The thing is, like, he is really one of the few guys where can have almost any job he wants, you know, So I may never say never with him now, but I'm not confident on it. But if you made me pick, I would say yes, but I wouldn't. If we come to find out that this guy just gave up coaching altogether in 2021 with the Celtics and then that was it. It wouldn't surprise me, but I'd love to see him coach again. I'll be optimistic. So I'll say yes. What do you say?
- [48:05]
Matt Norlander
Life long, man. You know, I guess. Unless it's not. But he's only 48 years old. He is still younger than you.
- [48:13]
Gary Parrish
I mean, come on.
- [48:14]
Matt Norlander
Like, I think Brad Underwood was still an assistant at 48.
- [48:18]
Gary Parrish
Yeah. Okay.
- [48:20]
Matt Norlander
He's still younger than Brad Underwood was when Brad Underwood got his first Division 1 head coaching job. So, you know, like, there's a lot of life is filled with your own.
- [48:29]
Gary Parrish
Tang, all those kind of coaches. Yeah.
- [48:31]
Matt Norlander
Yeah. So, like, I, I just wouldn't rule anything out, but he does, and I haven't talked to him in a long time, but he, he, from a distance, he seems like he's pretty comfortable running one of the best franchises in the world. And, you know, if you told me he's just going to keep doing that for a pretty long time, that wouldn't. I guess that wouldn't shock me either.
- [48:49]
Gary Parrish
No doubt about it. Yeah, I haven't talked to him in a minute, but he's always been just amazing to deal with and. Yeah, I will. We'll see where it goes. All right, number 17. Oh. If you've been watching on YouTube, give a little hint at the top of the show. 2018, Loyola Chicago makes the Final Four. And in the process, Sister Jean. Sister Jean becomes a national, if not global, sports celebrity. The reason this is on the list is because of Sister Jean, Loyola should make Chicago. Making the Final Four was awesome. That run, you know, they beat they. First of all. They get to. They are an 11 seed that gets in the tournament after being 28 and 5 and winning the Missouri Valley. And I remember even there being a little of. Once they make the Final Four, maybe before. That's like, man, how lame is it that a team like this, if they had not won their automatic bid, probably wouldn't have even been the tournament because they wouldn't have gotten in as at large. But they do it nonetheless. They beat Miami, coincidentally enough, coached by Jim Laranega, who was in that spot 12 years prior. That story is still to come. Oh, by the way, on the list, they beat them 64, 62 in the first round because Lonnie Walker. I went back and watched all these games. Parish, it was. Dude, I. I found I'm. It's the middle of June and I'm getting myself freaking hyped up on the tournament. No joke, man. Got the juices flowing. Lonnie Walker missed the front end of a 1 and 1 when Miami was up 62 to 61 with 9.3 to go on the clock. Dante Ingram then buried a triple. Nothing but Net from the logo with 0.3 to go. So they move on, and they beat Miami. I remember I was in Pittsburgh because I was covering Trey Young, which was there. That was Dan Hurley, his final year at Rhode Island. I want to say Duke was there. I might be misremembering that, but I remember being in Pittsburgh, being in the media room and going nuts. Watching loyal Chicago in that first game. Two days later, they beat Tennessee. 63, 62. Clayton Custer makes this off balance just next to the wing, falling down. It hits as much rim and glass as you possibly could ask for. I had actually forgotten the cosmetics of this shot. I'm like, dude, that shot could have so easily just never gone in. This doesn't become a story, but it sinks in. With 3.6 to go. Tennessee almost made. I think it was Jordan Bone. He almost makes the three. It doesn't make a back room. They're done. Next round. 69, 68 over. Over Nevada and Eric Musselman. Marcus Towns hit a corner three with 6.2 to go. And then Caleb Martin actually went down the floor and had a three, but they ran out of time. That was another good game. They beat Kansas State by 16 in the Elite Eight. They make the Final Four. Comes to an end. 69, 57 against Michigan. But it's because of Sister Jean that this is a story. The fact that, I mean, you've got this. You've got a cheery nonagenarian nun in a wheelchair being One of the 25 biggest stories of the century in college basketball. That is a true statement and a glorious reflection Parish of how amazing the.
- [51:46]
Matt Norlander
Sport can be because it can create these things.
- [51:48]
Gary Parrish
Yes.
- [51:50]
Matt Norlander
Gene Dolores Schmidt still with us.
- [51:54]
Gary Parrish
105 set to turn 106 in August. She's still with us. God bless this woman.
- [52:00]
Matt Norlander
She still goes to basketball games. I sent in studio this past season. Like, we're carrying loyal Chicago game. There she is just sitting there. Like 105. Just sitting there.
- [52:08]
Gary Parrish
Hey, it's more than that. If you're watching on YouTube some of these pictures I sent to Nada. This is the press conference at the Alamo Dome. I have never experienced anything like it. Okay. We're talking dozens and dozens and dozens of cameras, hundreds of media members, people from across the country, international outlets. This you could make. I actually. I Parrish. I debated if I had this too low. This was a massive story. Just the fact that you had this team chaplain that had become this. This symbol of. Of, you know, of what college basketball March Madness can be. It Was incredible. To your point, continue with it. She has an office at the facilities and goes in there most days throughout the season. She's not just, like, showing up just to. To be a mascot at the game. She's actively involved in loyal Chicago athletics, particularly specifically with the men's basketball program. It has been for a long time. It's. It's unbelievable. I mean, she's an angel on this planet.
- [53:02]
Matt Norlander
Not to get philosophical or whatever, but as you're saying, she's 105 and she's still going to the office. I'm like, man, I would never go to any office when I'm 105. But I wonder, like, staying busy can be helpful, you know? I wonder if going to the. I wonder if just, like, living life every day helps you live a little longer. There's so many people who retire and they're dead three years later. Like, I. I'm a believer in, like, keep doing stuff. Have things on your calendar, have things on your schedule. Have things to do. And so that's. That's just a neat component to the story. You ready for this? Am I. Is this right? The most famous nun in the world?
- [53:41]
Gary Parrish
Yeah. I mean, how about this? You know what? I can't definitively claim that because I'm gonna claim it. We just gotta. We just got a new Pope, also with Chicago connections. Oh, by the way, that's also got to be so badass, by the way, that, like, Sister Jean can confidently claim and knows that the two most recent popes know. Know who she is. Like, I don't think she ever met Pope Francis, but 100% he knew who she was. And as. As right as the day is long, new Pope Leo, who has Chicago roots, knows who Sister Gene is, so that's really cool. But there might be a. There might be a nun or two. There's more than a billion Catholics in the world, so perhaps there's a. If there's a super famous nun out there that I'm unaware of, apologies, but I think it's likely that she might be the most famous.
- [54:28]
Matt Norlander
She's the most famous nun in the world. She's taking the title. She's taking the title from the great. The late, great Mother Teresa.
- [54:34]
Gary Parrish
Okay.
- [54:34]
Matt Norlander
I think she's taking that title from the late, great Mother Teresa.
- [54:38]
Gary Parrish
Well, all time, I'm still. All time power rankings. I'm still gonna have Mother Teresa ahead of Sister Jean. All time.
- [54:44]
Matt Norlander
Yeah, all the time. All time power rankings.
- [54:46]
Gary Parrish
But in the moment, power rankings, like.
- [54:49]
Matt Norlander
Right now, if we had to rank nuns I'm ranking Sister Gene number one.
- [54:53]
Gary Parrish
I, I. Well, you know what I'm not gonna do? I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna rank nuns. I'm not gonna rank women.
- [55:00]
Matt Norlander
I can rank 26 basketball teams every morning. You think? I can't just randomly rank nuns in the middle of the off season.
- [55:06]
Gary Parrish
I could get a lightning bolt right there, strike it down.
- [55:09]
Matt Norlander
I could get you a nun ranking by. Man, I could get you a non ranking by. Give me till noon. I get you a none ranking.
- [55:16]
Gary Parrish
Can you get five deep on a nun ranking? Yeah.
- [55:20]
Matt Norlander
Not off the top of my head. I don't know. I don't know nuns. I don't, I like, I don't know any nuns. I really don't think I know a single nun.
- [55:28]
Gary Parrish
Not surprising whatsoever. Yeah, not at all. You, by the way, you got a Sister gene. Bobblehead. Loyal Chicago.
- [55:35]
Matt Norlander
I, I don't have a sister gene. Bobblehead. I'm a little jealous of that.
- [55:38]
Gary Parrish
There we go. Yeah. There she is. Awesome. It was just. Yeah. She was 98 when this happened. 105 now 106.
- [55:44]
Matt Norlander
I need to get some nuns in my life. I need to get some nuns in my life. I don't. I genuinely don't. If you said gp, call a nun right now. I don't think I could do it. I need some. No, you need some nuns in my life.
- [55:56]
Gary Parrish
Yes, you do. That was covering that press conference, man. Just. It was the. It was. I'm not even kidding you, like, that's a bigger press conference than, than Florida had like this past season in the same building after they won the national championship. More people attended the Sister Gene press conference on the Thursday before the Final Four. Then the Gators. Chomp, chomp, winning it, winning it all after that. Just a surreal thing and really cool. And it's. How awesome is. She's still with us. That's just, that's amazing. That's number 17 on the list. Let's go to 16. The final one for this episode won the Big Ten Conference tournament.
- [56:32]
Matt Norlander
And he said, Grant or Mr. Hill, rather.
- [56:37]
Gary Parrish
We want Kentucky. They got Kentucky and now they got a chance for a championship Monday night.
- [56:42]
Matt Norlander
Great half of basketball, the way they bounce back at the start. Some tough situations. A lot of stunned faces in the Kentucky fan section as the shot is launched. There will be no undefeated champion on Wisconsin. With an unbelievable stretch drive to the.
- [57:01]
Gary Parrish
Championship game.
- [57:05]
Matt Norlander
Gonzaga huddles together one last time as a team. The heartbreak they must feel. But they just went into a. Ran into a buzz saw this team. Jesus Christ. Talk about Butler or any of the others. The preparation, the defensive scheme. Not afraid of a moment, any of them.
- [57:29]
Gary Parrish
Not afraid at all. The contrast and emotions on display here.
- [57:33]
Matt Norlander
The celebration, the feeling of dejection from Gonzaga.
- [57:37]
Gary Parrish
We have a new champion and Scott Drew said he found the calling on Friday. He is a champion indeed here. Monday night we came to win games. I'm typically averse to this, but in the spirit of trying to get as much on this list as possible and maybe connecting some stuff as just as a quasi spoiler, like we didn't really talk much about Butler and Gordon Hayward shot and all that stuff that's still to come on the list. Brad Stevens taking the Celtics shop. That's a separate story altogether. But this one, I'm going to combine two different teams from two different seasons because what they were chasing was something that really don't know if we're ever going to see, and that is Kentucky and Gonzaga being one, or in Kentucky's case, two wins away from sports immortality in 2015. Kentucky goes 38. 1. Gonzaga goes 31. 1. Let's go, let's go. These in the order of the seasons that they took place, because these are, these are the kind of stories that do transcend the sport. If you can get into the NCAA tournament without having a scratch to your name, that is a big time story. You know, is anyone going to be able to become the first team since Indiana and 76 to do it? There have only been seven teams ever that have run the table and won a national championship in the NCAA tournament in men's college basketball. Kentucky 2015. That team had Cat, it had the Harrison twins, it had Willie Collie Stein, it had Trey Lyles, and it had Devin Booker coming off the bench with Tyler Ulis. Notable regular season wins over the likes of Kansas, Texas, UNC and Louisville. Here's the surprising thing about this GP the SEC that season, number five in Ken Palm. Not a single game Kentucky played in league play that season was against the top 25 team. And at the end of the season, here's how they finished in Ken Palm. Kentucky, obviously number one, even though it didn't win the national championship. The second best team per the rankings, Arkansas, 29, was a five seed. Then it was Florida, which didn't even make the tournament. It was 34 overall. Georgia was a 10 seed and 35th in Ken Palm. I think I was thinking back to it, I was like, I do remember a little bit about the, the strength or lack thereof in the SEC with Kentucky, I Remember that being a little bit. But I think most of that is faded on here. 10 years post GP in the tournament. They beat Hampton by 23, Cincinnati by 13. I was in Cleveland when they demolished West Virginia. 7839. And then there was a thriller against Notre Dame. 68, 66. The Irish could have won that. That is one of the better tournament games I've ever covered in person. It all comes to an end. 64 against Wisconsin in Indianapolis in the Final Four. We'll get to that in just a second. I want GP to talk on this, but I do remember. I remember talking about it on the pod. I remember remember it being segments on the likes of Game Day or PTI or whatever throughout the season. Inside college Basketball. Okay, Kentucky, they're this undefeated behemoth. They've got. This is the Calipari team. What teams are able to. What teams are built to beat them consistently? The team that came up the most often was the team that had the most efficient offense in the country, and that was Wisconsin. That came to bear. Came to be with the Final Four win over Kentucky. What do you remember about that team in that story?
- [60:36]
Matt Norlander
I don't mind that you grouped these together. I think they work together and they're perfectly. It's a good place to talk about both because when I look at 20, 21 Gonzaga, I go, man, that's pretty amazing that they were 31 and oh. In a national title game, and then they just lost and got beat by a team that was. It looked better than them. When I look at 2015 Kentucky, I go, what are you doing? Like, what were you doing? What were you doing? It's hard to call a 381 team a disappointment, but they should have been 40 0. And I really think the way John utilized that roster cost them. I mean, do you realize just trivia time, where did Devin Booker and Carl Anthony Towns rank in minutes per game on 2015? Kentucky.
- [61:26]
Gary Parrish
I'm gonna say Booker was seven and I'll say Cat was four.
- [61:30]
Matt Norlander
Booker was six and Cat was seventh.
- [61:33]
Gary Parrish
Cat was seventh. Wow.
- [61:35]
Matt Norlander
They were second and third in scoring, but sixth and seventh in minutes per game. So they were awesome. Just underused. Trey Lyles played most. Played more minutes per game than both on average. Like, you want me to give. You mean give Kentucky the national championship? This is all you have to do. Throw the Harrison twins away.
- [61:54]
Gary Parrish
I know this was a thing. The entire season, they were. They. They had not lost Parrish. They were winning in spite of this. And it came back to bite them.
- [62:02]
Matt Norlander
Throw them Away and start Tyler Ulis, Devin Booker, Trey Lyles, Cat and Willie Collinstein. And you're winning the national championship. If you don't want to throw the Harrison twins away, because that sounds cruel, start Tyler Eulis. Throw one of the Harrison twins in there. Start Devin Booker, Cat, Willie Collinstein. You're winning the national championship. Devin Booker played 19 minutes in the, in the. In that final four game against Wisconsin. He was three of six from the field. Carlton's played 31 minutes. Frank Kaminsky played 37. Nigel Hayes played 37. Sam Decker played 34. Wisconsin Stars all played at least 34 minutes. Two of them played 37. Devin Booker played 19. I mean, it's just like that is one of the great. Like I'm confident if you could ever get John to sit down and be candid with you, he would acknowledge if he's. If it's in there somewhere, he would have to acknowledge it felt right doing it the way we were doing it. But looking back on it, my God, how was Carl Anthony Town seventh on my team in minutes per game. I think he would have to acknowledge that.
- [63:02]
Gary Parrish
Here's a quote from Calipari that night after the game, I mean, they out rebounded us by 12 rebounds. That doesn't happen. You think about this. We had six turnovers for the game. We shot 90 from the free throw line, 60 from 3 and 48 from the field. And we lost. What does that mean? They did end quote. I wrote that night from Lucas Oil. I remember writing this. I remember writing this late in the arena. I wrote wisconsin stabbed a sword into Kentucky's heart, giving this incredible team its one and only loss of the season. 24 years after undefeated UNLV was taken down by a talented underdog team headed to its first national championship. Wisconsin provided a similar script. Both games took place in Indianapolis. Both games were national semifinal rematches and revenge wins. Remember these two teams met the year before with Kentucky and Wisconsin. I continue. Wisconsin will close out the circle if it does to Duke what Duke did in 91. Ironically enough, needing now to beat the Blue Devils. That of course did not happen. Duke beat Wisconsin two nights later in the national championship game. I also wrote they'll sell 38 1T shirts in Madison for the next 100 years. Pause interjection by me. I'm actually genuinely curious. Do they sell? There were definitely 38 and 1T shirts that came out in. In the days after that. I'm wondering if that is at remotely a thing anymore 10 years on in Madison. But. But I said for Kentucky. It's a season that's exceptional and for every rule there's an exception, the modern one in college basketball, simply going undefeated is impossible. Wisconsin is the exception to Kentucky. My, my final thought on Kentucky and Cal and then I'll get to Gonzaga here. I think this has an effect on Caliperi's career. I think, I think as a head coach in this sport, first of all, winning any national championship insanely hard two is different than one. Ask Jay Wright, ask Dan Hurley, ask Bill Self, ask Rick Patino, ask Dean Smith, who only had two. Winning two is different than winning one. And for Cal to not get the second and to not have Immortal. If he has a 400 season on his resume, I think now he's considered a great coach. He's in the hall of Fame. I get all that. But I'm telling you to be the coach with a 40:0 mark in 2014-15. I wonder if it means so much that he never even leaves Kentucky now. Maybe he would have regardless. Who knows what the ripple effects mean with all that and sliding door factor. But 38 and one kind of to what you said GP to me it came to signify something bigger. He had all. He would have these star studded teams but way more often than not there would be just something sometime of his own volition that would get in the way and prevent ultimate glory happening. And this is the biggest and worst and slash best example there is man 400 would have seriously changed. I don't his reputation. He's a good coach. I think he's truly on another notch. If he has that, he doesn't have it, you know, because he was going to play the guys he was going to play and run the deployments that he ran. And it came back to get him in a big way.
- [65:46]
Matt Norlander
Against Wisconsin you had the number one pick in the draft. I mean you played him 21 minutes a game. I mean it's just I understand how he got himself into that position of doing it and thinking it was best and I, and I guess when you're just winning one game after another and you're like quite literally 38, no, it's like, well, this is working. But you, you, you, I don't care what your record is. You will never convince me that you are maximizing your team with Devin Booker and Carl Anthony Towns ranking 6th and 7th in minutes per game. All right. You're not maximizing your team. Congrats on your win. Congrats on your winning streak. You are playing the wrong people. You're playing the wrong people and if you ever lose that will be the main reason and that's what happened.
- [66:27]
Gary Parrish
This is ghost of chasing 76 Indiana as well. Okay, so let's go to Gonzaga 2021. This is the COVID Bubble Tournament. This is what I wrote the morning of the title game. Don't know what's going to happen that night. I said Should Gonzaga lose at the hands of the sport's second best squad, then they still should be considered among the greatest teams ever. Put them alongside the likes of 1991 UNLV, 1999 Duke and 2015. Kentucky is the best not to win a championship. Those were amazing teams and are still referred to as much. We should do the same with Gonzaga should Baylor become the first team in 36 games to knock off the zags. I also wrote from a practical viewpoint, Gonzaga's path on Monday night also needs to be considered within the conditions of the season. There's never been an NCAA Tournament champion that's lived through and competed under the cloud of a pandemic. Changes to everyday life around the globe had micro and macro impacts on how college basketball season was held. Gonzaga not playing an as usual schedule inventory is offset by the rigors and restrictions of the pandemic. If you want to put an asterisk on this year's champion, that asterisk can only signify a bonus as it would be a reflection on the most challenging season in history. Parrish Some things that are forgotten about that 21 title game other than Baylor came out roaring. Gonzaga never had a lead and the Bears just dominated. It was the highest combined winning percentage for a national championship game in the history of the sport. Gonzaga and Baylor combined for two losses which was the fewest tie for the fewest ever with 57 and 66 by two teams entering a national title game. It was the first title game since 05 that featured the two top seeds by the selection committee going into the tournament there and they were also this is this is also forgotten after the fact that preseason Gonzaga and Baylor were number one and number two heading into the season. So they lived up to all of their anticipation, all of their hype. Gonzaga's coming off the Suggs 37 footer to beat UCLA in overtime. After that it was only the second game the entire season. I believe that they were held to a single digit margin. Gonzaga beat teams by 22.4 points that season GP one of the all time dominant teams. It easily finished number one at Kenpom even though it lost to Baylor there. I I that was, that was an incredible team. And I do feel now we're only four years on, but I feel like its greatness is a little bit diminished four years later. Maybe people listening will disagree. I know Gonzaga fans won't disagree.
- [68:45]
Matt Norlander
People do not think of them the way you describe them in that.
- [68:47]
Gary Parrish
And they. And well, this is part of why I want to do this podcast in this series because that Gonzaga team was absurdly dominant. Take the, take the mic here, GP but if you're wondering, okay, who was on the team. Refresh my memory. He had Suggs. Yeah. Drew, Timmy at the height of his powers. Anton Watson, Joel Ay, Corey Kisper, Andrew Nemhard and Julian Strother came off the bench. They were outrageously, outrageously dominant that season. They rolled through every high major team they played in the non conference and again they had two games I think total that season that were decided by single digits.
- [69:16]
Matt Norlander
You look back on that roster, it, it feels a little more talented in hindsight because like, have you watched Andrew Nimhard lately?
- [69:24]
Gary Parrish
Right.
- [69:26]
Matt Norlander
Kispert's in the NBA. Suggs is in the NBA. Timmy was an all American. Julian Strother's in the NBA. I mean, super talented. But I think the way it ended shapes the way we remember it. They got smacked.
- [69:40]
Gary Parrish
They got absolutely rolled. Yeah.
- [69:43]
Matt Norlander
And right from the jump, I remember.
- [69:46]
Gary Parrish
Because you were outside the seating for that was different than all the other final Fours, of course. So I'm in the end zone seating and I remember it was like at the under 12 of the first half being like, is this gonna go this way? Like, is it. Is. Is an all time great team gonna not be competitive in the national championship game and is this going to alter? Because when we talked about it that morning or GP the Sunday night before, my whole thing was like, even if they lose, this is an all time great team. I don't care how it goes, I actually still hold that opinion. But. And I remember and now it's all coming back to me real time. I remember you talking to me on the show being like, you lose like this, like, can you really say it? Like, do they deserve to have this attached to him moving forward if you lose the way that they lost because Baylor, it was just, I mean that, that Baylor team was also extremely good and it was just, it was varsity versus JV that night. So if people don't want to put him on that tier, I'm not going to fight you on that. Personally, I look at the data, I look at what they did across 32 games. In a coveted season, I still put them on the list of, like, the four or five best teams ever not to win a national championship. But yet again, we were fortunate enough in this sport to have a team get to the final four. In this case, literally the last game of the season without a loss. That's a blessing. But I don't know if we're ever seeing a team run the table again in our lifetime. Parish. It's just now that. And that was a Covid. Shortened season. Gonzaga only had to get to 32 games. Typically, now it's going to be 40. In the future, it's going to be 41, 42. Never say never. Going back to what we said earlier, but I would. I would pick no. That we're. If you say yes or no, are we going to see a national champion that's undefeated between now and the end of our lives? I would actually lean. Now. There's.
- [71:15]
Matt Norlander
I'd never say never.
- [71:16]
Gary Parrish
But which way would you lean?
- [71:18]
Matt Norlander
I would. I would lean toward. I won't see it with my own eyes. Yeah, maybe my. Maybe my future grandkids could, but I don't know that I'll see it with my own. I. I can appreciate all the data. I won't argue with it. I think if you decided next week to put out a list of the best teams to ever not win a national championship in college basketball and you had them in the top five, people would call you stupid even if you supported it brilliantly. Because still, people. I don't even know if this is true anymore, but it was still kind of true then. Folks are just skeptical of the WCC team. They just, you know, they just are. And any opportunity to say, see, I told you so, folks are going to take that. There's one thing, Mark, few had subsequently said to all this, that I think it's just always stuck with me, and I believe there's some truth to it. If not, it's entirely true. They were supposed to play at the Pentagon early in that season, and it got canceled. Like, I want to say, like, 30 minutes before.
- [72:11]
Gary Parrish
It was, oh, gosh, it was like a CBS game. It was a CBS game. Was it the Pentagon or was it, like. I want to say it was Indianapolis? I could be wrong. I remember the whole thing like, oh, God, yeah, that. Like, we were about to go to air and it was like, we don't know if we can play this. And they had to cancel. Good. Good recall on that. Paris.
- [72:29]
Matt Norlander
Yeah. So then. But the point I remember Mark making, and I hope he made this point, I hope I'm not just making this up, was that he wishes they would have played that game even if they would have lost that game. Because when they got on the court with Baylor, they were not ready for what was coming. And if they'd have felt that in November or December, whenever that previous game was scheduled, they, it wouldn't have been a shock to the system. Like Marcus said, like, we thought we were just playing a basketball game. He said something like this. We thought we had a basketball game and they thought they had a fight. Like I, he said, I, I looked, I looked down there and I could see in their eyes like they were ready to come get us. And my guys didn't look that way. And the truth is, I think if you go back and just look at the play by play, after a while the game just sort of played out even from a point perspective. But they just jumped them so big the zags could never catch up even if you played them, even from that point. That's the way math works. I don't have to explain that to you, but it just got out of hand very quickly. Once they settled in, they, they could play them possession for possession basically, but by the time they settled in, the game was over.
- [73:39]
Gary Parrish
Yeah, that's a good point. On how they met. They met him would have affected it. I don't know.
- [73:44]
Matt Norlander
You just know. You just know then, all right, like these guys are trying to kill us.
- [73:48]
Gary Parrish
Yeah.
- [73:49]
Matt Norlander
This dude is never gonna let you catch the ball. You, you would just be better equipped to like, know what you're dealing with. By the time they figured out, by the time Gonzaga understood what it was dealing with on that night, the game was over.
- [74:02]
Gary Parrish
Yep. And Gonzaga's coming off that. Just thrilling, but exhausting. They had the second game with the win over ucla and Baylor's pounced. Two more stats on that Gonzaga team. It's the best two point shooting team in the history of college basketball. They made 63.9% of their shots inside the arc. There's never been a team in a season that's been more accurate than Gonzaga was that season. And they also did something that hadn't been done in at least 60 years. According to Elias, they won 23 straight games by double digits that had not been done in 60 plus years by any men's Division 1 team. It was an incredibly dominant team that hit the wrong team on the wrong night and, and could never recover there. And so as a result, Gonzaga and Kentucky, they have distinct legacies that are a notch or Two below what they otherwise would have been. Because if you can win a national championship and go undefeated, you are really for the ages there. But, but they, they got too close to the sun and Gopper learned.
- [74:53]
Matt Norlander
I like this little thing you put together.
- [74:55]
Gary Parrish
Thanks, bud.
- [74:56]
Matt Norlander
Man, I wish, I wish, I mean, I wish it had Bob Knight's termination in it, but other than that, I'm enjoying this. In all, seriously, we talked on previous episode about this is what happens when people die. Like Brian Wilson died and I just immediately like turn on Pet Sounds and start reading and I just go, it takes me down memory lane and I enjoy that experience. I hate that somebody had to pass for me to have this experience. But I, once I sit like, I hear Brian Wilson is dead at 82 and I go, okay, let me get into this. And I, and I find myself having, enjoying spending time doing what I'm doing. And this is similar. Like I would never go back and look at this stuff ever. Like maybe ever. But this forces me to go back and look at it. And when I go back and look at it, I, I, these memories get conjured up and I don't know, I'm just enjoying the exercise. So thank you for doing it, no doubt.
- [75:44]
Gary Parrish
And I hope our viewers and listeners are enjoying it as well. We're not even halfway through. We're going to extend this on, on throughout the rest of June and then even in July. So our next, I think our next edition, our episode three, if you will. I think that's, I think that will come after the NBA draft. We'll get some draft content going later this week as well. And then next week we've got the draft and GP and I will react to the first round and all that stuff. So we're going to lean into some, some prospect stuff, but we'll continue on with this close to the end of June and bring it on in July. And yeah, GP that is a show.
- [76:13]
Matt Norlander
Let's get out of here. Shouts to Devin Downey. Shouts to Chester, South Carolina. Shells to Terry Teagle. He's a legend. Hook Larnell. Thank you guys once again for watching listening to the Ion College Basketball podcast. If you're not subscribed, please go subscribe any way you subscribe to podcast. Apple Spotify, more of us than there are of them. That needs to be reflected in the comments. So do that. We'll talk to you again real soon. Till then, take care.
- [76:45]
Gary Parrish
I you can be anything this I.
- [77:15]
Matt Norlander
Paramount podcasts.
- [77:18]
Gary Parrish
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