Tuesday, February 18, Hour2

This is I on the Ball with Steve Rivera on Fox Sports fourteen fifty. Subscribe now to the podcast on the iHeartRadio while just search Ie.

On the Ball.

Hey, welcome back to Eye the Ball here on Fox Sports fourteen fifty. I'm Steve Rivera. In today with me is Dave Silver. Now we have Kobe with breaking news.

This is Eye on the Ball Breaking news on Fox Sports fourteen fifty.

Arizona baseball ends opening weekend winless after lost of Louisville, but is currently beating New Mexico eight to nothing in the bottom of the seventh inning.

Welcome to the competition that you can kill home games against New Mexico. Yes, yes, no, they those games in Arlington were not even close. I don't think. I don't know what the third game was. The first two was were not But here we are kind of recalibrating, right, Yeah, okay.

Short handed Arizona women's baseball gives number ten ranked TCU a game you'd have a basketball, oh basketball, yes, yes, yes, but runs out. I guess losing my score of eighty five to seventy three.

I guess they played. Yeah, she paid without two two players players. Every every game is like a different deal. It's kind of been difficult.

I don't know what the deal is.

Plus TCU has got what Maddy Connor who played in Arizona, Yeah, you scored like eighteen or.

A lot of a lot of the girls or the women who left this place have done fantastically well a lot of other places. Although although I thought, I don't know if you did you pay attention to last year's season with it with the U.

Bank, I mean's not that much.

She did a fantastic job under the conditions because they were playing with six seven.

Yeah, girl, that was like the highlight of the year was the fact that they didn't have enough.

Players and they almost they took USC to the brink on one game. It was like, holy crap, how you doing this? Yeah, but you know, another year of she's hurt, she's not hurt, she's sick, blah blah blah. Well, there's got to be, you know, some reckoning. I would I would think, I don't know her contract. I think has been a story coming to you, so that could be something you know, again, in this the budget crisis of the U of A, who knows how that's gonna play out? Right,

Arizona Softball completes bear Down Fiesta sweep with win over cal State Fullerton.

Yeah.

And I think they have another tournament this weekend, right, the Hilli Brand Tournament. Yes, I believe so, with the Thursday fight Saturday or something like that. Yeah, yeah, okay, he's They usually stock up pretty well in the in these early season games. You know, get a chance to get some of these teams from the Midwest it can barely practice probably to come out to the Sunshine. I don't know about perspective, but but it looks like they

And it's going to be interesting too because they're again dipping into a new conference. Who are they going to be playing? Oklahoma State? It's always pretty good. I don't know if there's a lot of depth in women's softball, is there? Not nearly what they were facing in the pact. But well, the Texas.

Tech girl who left Stanford for a million dollars, Oh, yeah, she's she's the picture there. So there's you know, they're sprinkled around some there.

Yeah, it's that's a sport that really has changed in the last decade with some of these programs coming into play, especially in the SEC. And I guess, you know, maybe we'll see this in the Big twelve.

I don't know, I blame I blame Mike Candrea, the godfather of softball. Easter turned everybody else into a jugernaut. Yeah, because they had to catch up right, build stadiums and get the women to go there.

And here they are giving all kinds of women opportunities to come to colleges around the country that you know, back in the day, it was like, oh, you know, if you're great, you're gonna go here, You're gonna go to UCLA, maybe Fresno State, whatever, but that was it.

Do you remember softball specific the field they played on back and then I remember it, well, do you really? It was?

Yeah, because I got here in eighty seven and and Teresa Cherry I think was a pouture and some of the it was just a backstop, a backstop, and there was facing west. Yeah, it was facing west and bleacher seats and it was like and now you look back, says Mike Kntrea is obviously the loud Olson of this because you know, he brought this thing into a And if there's a guy that should be deserving on the Mount Rushmore, oh for sure, it's it's Mike Kntrea.

We in TV paid little attention in those years, and we just didn't. I mean, there was no no reason to go out there. There was no like, oh we're gonna go. I mean there had to be a reason to go. But when they broke through and won a national championship, all of a sudden, we all just like, WHOA what just happened? And then we all jumped on that bandwagon and we started going to Oklahoma every year and it was again, that was where some of the highlights of my time on TV was just going to

It was a different league.

It was all different you know, organization kind of running women's sports.

I'm sure you dealt with Mary Roby at that time when she kind of the title nine started and all that.

Yeah, So, I mean softball was was just a you know, like a club sport, I'm sure up until you know, Mike really built it up and it got it just changed nationally as well. I mean, we were going side by side with you CLA for so many years and that was basically it. And then next thing, you know, the SEC gets all this big football money. They start building these beautiful facilities down there in Florida and Alabama and Tennessee, and teams like that just started popping up.

Yes, Texas was always good as well for softball. Oh yeah, yeah they yeah, yeah, lucky. I was lucky enough to go with USA Today to the Olympics in two thousand and two thousand and four. And yeah, Cat and the Mendoza and all these people were coached by coach by Mike and Tram. Yeah, so it was. It was a lot of fun. Those girls unbelievably good.

Joe Buck to call Brewers Yankees, Brewers Yankees opening Day game on ESPN. Buck's last national broadcast was with Fox in twenty twenty one, when he covered his twenty fourth World Series for the network. He joined Chip Carry last year on the local broadcast of a Saint Louis Cardinals game.

Yeah, that's good, good news. If you're a baseball fan, you want to hear his voice. He's one of the all time greats, him and his dad act. I was kind of surprised when he went to ESPN to begin with it. That didn't wasn't part of the deal that he'd get some baseball. But apparently he just didn't want to step on the toes of others who've been doing it. ESPN and baseball is another story that we'll have to watch here soon.

There's some talk that they're going to be not doing Major.

League Baseball play by play here, possibly in the next round of contracts.

With with with that, so spending too much money in the NBA, And yeah, the NBA.

Is a whole nother craziness with Amazon coming on board and NBC coming back, and you know, basketball is going to be a different watch in the.

Next four years or so. Did you watch it?

I'm trying to interrupt your breaking news, but did you watch a Law Star game?

Yeah?

I watched it. It wasn't that great.

I was going to say, why did you watch watch? I did not watch a single thing I did.

I watched the So they played like these two semi finals. I watched the first one just to kind of see how they were playing, and it was just as bad as was played a regular game. I mean, they play to forty points. Yeah, and then you know, I don't know if you saw the comments from Draymond Green. He was doing, uh the stuff up with with with Charte, well, I guess with the other you know, analyst group outside the arena in San Francisco, and he just ripped it.

He was saying, the players can't stand this. This is terrible.

I'm I'm just thinking, you know, the NBA has got to be going what is he saying? But that's been the consensus I think from.

The right, the whole, and the whole. You're just about basketball itself. You watch NBA games, Yeah, why because you're like the only one.

Yeah, because I've always been a diehard Nick fan, So i watch all the Knicks games. And yeah, it's just something I've always been doing. But there's definitely a problem. What do you what do you think why there's no like culture, people the players like sit out a lot, and like you see the four Nations in hockey right now, like they're all playing, and.

Yeah, the NBA just wouldn't do that. Well it's that little management. I'm getting paid. I don't need to do this exactly.

Yeah, I mean, there's no reason for them to play. It really isn't. And well even in the I'm talking about regular season. Yeah, just you know, I'm not feeling like it today. Yeah.

And what about Phoenix, God, they're not they're out of the playoffs right now.

Well, they sold their whole future eleven seed right now.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Yeah, but they are gonna They're changing the name of their arena again for about the tenth TIMEO rerints going away.

Oh really, now they're looking for a contracts over, I guess. Yeah, so, I don't know. It's always been.

US Airways, not even around the north. Yeah, America West first. Yeah, Okay, those are the glory years.

I remember those.

Some great men's college basketball matchups. Today, Number five Houston travels to face the Arizona State.

That's that's a great matchup.

Yeah, great, there's some. There's some more. Number twenty one ranked Mississippi State will host number seven Texas A and M good one. Yeah, and number thirteen ranked Purdue will travel to face the number fourteen ranked Michigan State.

Yeah.

Big ten is pretty good too. SEC is obviously really really good. I know where I'm gonna go with the national championship team. Let's hear it, drummer, oll please no Lolorida Florida nine to one, nine to one. I think it's a good number. They've beaten the number one team in the country. Already. Give me an odds on Arizona. I'll tell you what it is, but I want you to guess. For the odds of Arizona winning the national title.

I think I looked at the other nine thousand it no.

Oh no, not that much.

No, I'm going to say like twenty five to one, forty five, forty.

Five, yeah, down from seventy. Yeah. So if you're saying you have a chance, you have a chance eight if.

The eight man roster can do it, let's yeah, they hold up over six games.

Well, you know, people don't talk about that often enough. And I say, you know, they're eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old, this is what they do. But after seeing them in this league getting crushed and just you know, thirty nine minutes, please, it's like a price. It's like the Hearns Hagler fight. Please let this round get finished with.

Where's the bell? Yeah, I don't know.

It's yeah, you gotta you gotta get stamminy, you get lucky, and you gotta be good and get good matchups.

I mean, there's so much that goes into that.

Yeah.

And I think that was one of the Tommy's things I asked him. I think he got a little little upset with My question, was you know Houston is notorious for running teams down. Did you feel like that? And he kind of answered the question then he kind of then he got kind of like his eyes lit up like that. Yeah, but you know, you know, well you look at.

You like, well, you don't think we knew that was gonna happen.

What do you mean? It's just a question.

I'm a coach, I'm making all this money. I'm paid to know all that's gonna happen.

To us, Right? Could you write this down?

Hold On cam Mood states that he'll remember the teams that won't draft him. Ward hasn't decided if he will throw at the NFL combine next week.

That's funny.

I read that too over the weekend, and I'm thinking, Okay, so you don't get drafted, you gotta what are you gonna miss out on?

He says, not the first guy.

Pick, isn't he? It's not gonna be too many teams. He's gonna be upset with rich people getting upset.

Yeah, I don't.

Yeah, who's he gonna Who's I don't even know. I should know who's the number one? Who is the number one? Who's the Raiders?

Titans have number one? Okay, then who's two?

Two?

Mm? I know Patriots are three?

So there's quarterbacks should do?

Or what and I will Hunter right, Hunters, the the guy t Mac in the top five.

It's right, you can, you can.

The Titans said they might not draft a quarterback.

It's all smoke screen Tennessee, Cleveland, Oh Giants, Patriots, Giants, Giants quarterback Raiders are six Cleveland is a quarterback.

The other dudes are talking about t Mac.

At one point, I thought, it's whatever Tom Brady wants, right, tom Brady's.

Running the show.

Dallas, Maverick star Kiier Irving says he wants to play for Team Australia at the twenty twenty eight Olympics. Irving was who was born in Over in Australia, was asked during All Star Weekend whether you would consider making a switch from Team USA.

Or he hasn't played on that team for a couple Olympics. I don't think, or.

Yeah, it wasn't on this last team. See the world of spot guy. Who is he the guy that says the world is playing? Oh yes, yes, no, oh yeah, it's just not around. But we got a call.

You gonna call.

Let's take the straight line to Melbourne, take the bus. You're in the air. Night of the ball. Who's this? Hey?

This is Rob.

Rob. How are you doing? You sound like a first time caller.

I am a first time college How are you doing?

Thanks for calling in, Thanks for listening. What do you have to say to us? Hey?

I was just curious. Uh, do you think that Lloyd's gonna do kind of the same thing with high school recruiting at Arizona, just like Patino's doing at Saint John's.

Which would be what forget about it?

Well, it looks like he's he's gonna focus on the transfer portal and not so much on high school with so.

I was I was right. I think you go with what you can, and he's not. That'll have to happen after beyond this next year, because he's got some high school kids coming in. But yes, I think that's everybody's case where you have to go with that to fill the holes that are leaving. I think everybody's doing that. I think, don't you think, Yeah, that's the way it's been working, that you have no choice but to do

Hey, Rob, are you a U a grad? You follow them or whatever?

I don't think you'll appreciate my Uh it's a different no no.

No conference.

But yeah I I follow Arizona basketball. Uh big Caleb love fan, which he came to Syracuse though. Uh, kind of a hint of my favorite college team.

But yeah, but don't you think you I'm sure you called into asked our opinion, but you probably already knew the answer to your situation.

It's gonna be I'm just I'm I'm concerned. It's gonna curtail development of new players, and it's just going to be a farming of the transfer portal.

Yeah, no question, Rob. If you listen to us a lot, the JC people, they're going to be shut out. The high school people are going to be shut out because now it's just a kind of rent to rent a transfer pretty much.

Yep, yep, exactly. Yeah, it would be interesting, should be interesting.

It is it? Interesting is a good word? But is it? Is it? Okay with you? I mean, okay, that's the right word.

I'll be honest with you. It's not I went to college in an era where kids were just getting scholarships to school and they you know, the playing field was more pure. You know, these kids were really fighting to get to the NBA. And I think now it's it's just a whole different atmosphere with you know, NIL and now revenue sharing and everything that college sports has turned into.

Yeah, it's gonna make a lot of panic to people here in the next few years.

It's already has. You know, how are you gonna come up with all this money?

Well, I mean, look at especially in college football, is incredible turnover.

I mean even the U of A.

And it's talking with like forty forty new players already have kind of signed up for next this next season.

So I mean it's a turnover.

And I mean Dion basically turned over the entire Colorado rosters first year.

And then and then the second year and then they look at look at here locally, Brent had to do the same thing.

That's what I'm saying that, you know, Arizona's just kind of just bringing in everybody.

Rob, Rob, thanks for coming and bringing us down.

You know, yeah, I worry about that.

Guy.

Hey keep calling. Thank you very much for the call. We got to go.

Yeah, thank you time take guy.

We got to go and take a break.

Get ahold of Evan min cowill get some smart people on the show with not that Rob isn't I mean with us? Obviously He's gonna tell us a lot what's going on with this analytics to this point in the season.

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Breaking down all the xs at ohs. This is I on the Ball with Steve Rivera on Box Sports fourteen fifty.

Hey, welcome back to I on the Ball here on Fox Sports fourteen fifty. I'm Steve Rivera and with me today is Dave Silver Now and I phonely have Evan Maya Kawa.

Give us your website. Evan at that great website of yours.

Yeah, so, Evan mia Kawa is one of the more popular or college basketball analytics websites that's used.

By a lot of fans for analyzing the sport, but.

It's really become popular with a lot of coaches. There's about one hundred different Division one teams, their coaches staffs have subscriptions on my website and it's used for a lot of things like lineup analysis and deciding player rotations, but also during the portal, especially in the off season, a lot of portal evaluation stuff. So there's a lot of stuff there really for anybody kind of no matter what level of fan or if you're all the way up at kind of the coach level in the sport.

I would assume to me this would be and you can correct me if I'm wrong or just what I'm thinking. This is a cheat sheet when the NCAA tournament comes and you know you want to beat the secretary because the purple color is favorite, turn they win the title that they can kind of, Yeah, I evaluate teams this way and analytically.

Yes, absolutely, I think.

Really the key to building a good bracket is.

Not just looking at what has a team done in their.

Season so far, but it's actually using some of these advanced analytics to predict how good they're.

Going to be going forward. And that's really where I find a lot of value in what I do on my website because it doesn't overreact to things that are kind of more of the commonly stated narratives kind of

Draws that they have. You can even stimulate different bracket outcomes based on the realistic game probabilities of potential matchups that teams could find. So there's gonna be a treasure trove of things that you can use when it comes to filling out your bracket once we get that. On the election Sunday, I want.

To We've had you had a number of times.

You're one of my favorite guys to talk to because you're so good at this and it's intriguing. We'll talk at the back end of how in the hell you decided to do this because you were like a computer whiz somewhere in Texas and probably working for the FBI or something. Well, we'll get to that later. Go ahead day with any of questions, I was just.

Going to say, So, you're you're watching a game saying in February, and you're you've been working with a team and you see them kind of using your formulas.

Is that gratifying to you or does it happen all the time or how does that work for you?

Yes, it really does.

I see it all the time.

I'm constantly communicating with different coaches. I mean, an example somewhat recently was I won't necessarily name the team, but there's a team, a high major team who's going to be in the tournament, who basically was kind of having a discussion with me throughout the season of identifying their best lineups.

And basically they have a lineup that they was not their starting.

Lineup, but with a lineup that had been very successful for them throughout the duration of the season. It's one of the best performing lineups in the country and sort of out of necessity. They were forced to use that lineup starting in a game recently. It was amazing and they won the game, and they've decided to stick with

Is that coach does his initials start with T and end with LL.

I'm not going to say, I'm not going to say no.

I mean, I'm looking at the Arizona page and you know, Steve he's got his five man lineup and his fore man lineup that you know includes Carter Bryant who never never starts, has he has he started maybe once.

Or two's league twice.

He's got Jayden, Bradley, Carter, Brian kJ who does the start, Caleb and Henry.

Yeah, so you know, well, what do you think about Aris? What do you think about Arizona? Because here in town, the world was ending Saturday afternoon. They lose to Houston, But no, no shakes, because you know, Houston's a heck of a team. They just played really well in Arizona, adam on the brink and then they go back and back.

I do not think, yeah, I do not think people realize have come.

To grips with how good this Houston team is.

And I think a lot of that was because they lost a bunch of really close.

Games to good teams early in the season and so people kind of counted them out. But they are an absolute juggernaut. I have them ranked second in the country.

Actually have them ranked just.

A tad ahead of Auburn right now in terms of how well they're going to do going forward. Now, granted, do Houston and Auburn are way ahead of everyone else, but but basically Houston winning, you know, on the road against Arizona, that's that's not really that big of a deal. And for Arizona to follow that up with their win last night, you know, pretty comfortably handling Baylor down the street in Waco does speak to just the resilience of

See, you know, players like Henry Vsar, who you know, was just kind of a bit player to.

Start the year, but because of injuries and things like that, he has really blossom to be one of the most impactful big men in the country and certainly in the Big twelve. And when you can get meaningful minutes out of him and Toby lock on the court together. That really says something.

So I love the depth of this team that.

They don't need to rely on a Caleb Glove or a Jaden Bradley to kind of dig them out of a hole. And they they've experimented. Tommy Lloyd has had enough flexibility to experiment with that starting lineup and with rotations, and so I really like the tinkering that they've been doing. I think it's positive thing. And I've always been high

I was going to say, I saw you on I guess in the X and Twitter yesterday in the day before you were really talking about Gonzaga and UCLA, if I'm correct, Can you just your thoughts on them and Arizona because you talked about the Sweet sixteen that you wouldn't be surprised.

Yeah, yeah, I was specifically highlighting Gunzaga in Kansas.

Actually as two teams at two teams that basically.

I'm buying low on compared to where public sentiment is on them. Godzag, I think is a little bit more straightforward Gonzag It's sort of similar to Houston kind of early in the season. They Gonzaga has a lot been like zero to seven in all close games against good teams.

This year, and a lot of times that's not really a predictive.

Stat that will carry forward.

And in the past Mark Few has been.

Really great in close games. So I'm not super worried about this Gonzaga team. They're blowing out a lot of teams, they have one of the best offenses in the country. They've made you know, nine consecutive Sweet sixteen, So I think when they get into the bracket they're going to be a much better team than what they're seed is going to indicate. And so I still have a lot

They the transfers hasn't been great.

Obviously this team.

Kansas was the number one team.

In the preseason according to the eight People they're certainly miles below that. So yeah, they're not necessarily a national title contender. But I still think my analytics have them as a top fifteen team in the country. That's still a team good enough to make a Sweet sixteen or further. And I really think if you sort of, you know, bigger scope on the season, I still think roster strength wise, the veteran leadership they have on this team, I still

And so you know, if Kansas suddenly wins two or three games in a row, I won't be surprised. But if they do that all of a sudden, the public sentiment will be back on their side. And so I'm just trying to identify these trends a little bit earlier, you know, so that people aren't overreacting too much to you know, just one single game or two single games.

You know, it's interesting too with a lot of these schools have shifted conferences and stuff like that, but it still sort of seems to remain the same. You still have an Arizona in the top ten, even go they're in a brand new conference. Have you noticed anything, you know, with these conference switches affecting college basketball in general.

Yeah, that's a great point. I think a lot of people thought when you have your your Houston's and Arizonas and BYUS, especially the Houston BYU coming from we incur conferences in the American and the WCC to the Big twelve, sort of thinking, hey, like, these teams are really going to have a tough time transitioning. And the reality is that Houston has been the best team in the Big Twelve every single season they've been in the Big Twelve, and BYU is more than holding their own in the

On how some of these West Coast teams like.

A UCLA and a USC are performing when they're all the way on in the West Coast and they're having to travel all the way to the East coast multiple times a year. I do think we have to work a little bit more to see how that plays out, because that travel is certainly a big factor that you know. I don't think Arizona has to do the same thing because of their you know, closer proximity relatively speaking to

Yeah, you have no question.

I was gonna ask you about the teams that that kind of fill off, I'll fill off North Carolina and Indiana. Indiana had the best money a team money can buy, and look what happened. Ballo was with them in North Carolina, which you know is North Carolina. What's up with that?

Yeah? Man, Honestly, at what it really goes to show is that, you know, just having money and throwing it at players in the transfer portal does not mean that you're going to have a great team.

It's all about identifying the right fit and not just going for the biggest names. You know, you could throw Kansas State.

In here as well. Obviously they've been a bit better recently, but they've just lost two games in a row and that's kind of mostly crushed their chances of an at large bid. And from from what we know, Indiana and Kansas State where you know, to the two of the teams that.

Had top five nil war.

Chest naziason based on kind of publicly you know, publicly known numbers about what they were spending. And the reality is you can't just throw a bunch of guys you know, who are worth a lot in the name, image of licen of space on your roster and expected to gel. There's there's more that you have to do there, and so you know, you look at there's there are other teams who have done this much better and have spent

Talking about coaches who have, you know, they they'll get good players.

From the portal, from the high school ranks, but then the way that these guys develop and start to finish at a program. Tommy Lloyd at Arizona, you know, in his time there has been exceptional.

In this regard where the guys that he's getting.

I mean look at it like a you know, Jaden Bradley, he was a highly toadded player out of high school, did was used pretty sparingly at Alabama his freshman year, and then comes to Arizona and is content enough to you know, play behind Kylon Boswell, but has slowly been groomed into being one of the most consistent, reliable players

Do you this might be a dumb question, but when you do your analytics and it's just some fantastic self because you have a lot of different categories, do coaching factor into that? Do you conclude all that with a good coach, bad coach, or mediocre coach?

Yeah?

I don't explicitly measure that, although I have been working behind the scenes on developed and kind of of a private coaching metric that could basically tell you how good as a coach at using extracting more out of their roster than than what's there. But generally speaking, there was kind of a hidden variable four teams. When I'm doing the preseason rankings of preseason projections.

For teams that basically looks at essentially how good is your roster.

And then how good has your coaching staff.

Been at extracting value out of rosters.

You've had in previous years, and so, you know, an example of that might be like in Indiana where I think they in the preseason, based on the talent that they had, they had a top ten roster in the sport, but their actual preseason projection was closer to twentieth.

Because it was basically identifying that.

Hey, in previous years, you know, Mike Woods and his staff have not done a great job of getting their teams to perform up to the level of the talent they have on their roster. And a flip, you know side of that would be a team like Yukon where everyone identified coming into the year, their team was going to be roster wise much worse than what they've out in previous years.

But because of Dan Hurley and what his staff.

Has done, their team gets a little bit more benefit of the doubt, and so I had them ranked more like in the top ten than if we've just been purely going off the roster talent would have been in more in the twenties there. So it definitely does take that into account.

It's interesting too, you have coaches.

Is there any evidence that coaches are looking at your ratings as they're making decisions on players they may go after in the transfer portal?

You know, oh, absolutely, yeah, that's that's one of the most popular uses.

For coaches, and really a lot of that has So I have a whole transfer portal set of tools where it ranks every transfer based on if this player goes to any school, what is his projected value next year to your team on offense and defense, And it looks at, you know, all of the saint information we have available. How efficient are you in terms of your stats? How

Players very quickly, sometimes within.

Two weeks or a week or even a couple of days to decide, Hey, this guy entered his name in the portal, is this someone that we want to pursue. And so being able to kind of even just filter your list down initially of saying does this guy meet the criteria of what we're looking for in terms of his skill set, in terms of his overall value, is really really beneficial. And so yeah, it's very very popular with coaches during during.

The transfer portal cycle because it's essential to use kind of objective data driven tools like mind to kind of go along with your own individual scouts of those players when you're looking at video and.

Things like that.

I love that stuff. Just to me, it's just an intriguing thing. Real quick.

We got about a minute, give me, give me how this all started, because I think you're in college getting your degree, your master's or something, and then you got a job and then this came about.

Yeah, so I have my PhD in statistics from Baylor, and I think the first time I came on the show with you guys. Was still while I was in Texas and Waco finishing that degree. So I graduated with my PhD in twenty two and had already started this website kind of as a fun side project where you know, I was just working on player and team ratings and just because I love college basketball, and that was an

Awesome, fantastic. Are you going to go to college football? Could you?

You know, I've been askled by a lot of people for that, and my current answer to.

That is no.

And I think a lot of that is because I'm a fan of college basketball, but I'm not an expert on college basketball, and I really do think it's important that you don't just throw mass at a sport and expect it to spit out accurate results. I really understand the spoort of college basketball and really plugged into the sport of college basketball, and I think, you know, having an expert knowledge of that and then bringing.

In all of this statistical know how, I think is an important.

Combination in order to be successful in the space. And so I'm a little resident retident to just start in another sport that I'm not as comfortable in, because I do think you have to be very careful and mature about your approach with these days, I would.

Think baseball might be the best comparison. Seems like they're always talking about the analytics of baseball. Still baseball topic, you know, that could be something that you know, hey, we need a you know, a lightening shortstop, or with something I don't know throwing it out there.

So yeah, baseball is definitely the most.

Advanced for in terms of using analytics for sure.

So give us your website one more time, one more time.

Yeah, evanmeia dot com. That's where you can find all the stuff player ratings, team ratings, lineups, game predictions, lineup analysis. When March Madness comes around, a lot.

Of stuff will be there on to help your bracket. Also links to all of my other social media platforms on their Twitter, Instagram, all that stuff, so you can find everything at evanmeia dot com, e v A n M i ya dot com.

Great Evan, thanks a bunch as always your great love to have you on the show.

Yeah, I appreciate you guys.

Thank you taking over with mind Cal Just just cool stuff to me, I know, amazing.

Yeah, well go take a break, maybe take a call to talk more about this crazy stuff. It's good stuff.

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Steve Rivera, He's got his eye on the ball on Tucson Sports Station yet Fox Sports fourteenth fifty.

Hey, welcome back to I in the back here on Fox Sports fourteen fifty. I'm Steve Rivera, you're Dave Silvert, got Kobe till the end, got about ten minutes, yeap, about seven minutes, seven minutes. If you guys want to give us a quick call, please do five to two zero four one six seventy four forty will take the call or two talk about what's going on. I love to listen to Eavan. I gotta subscribe to that. It's not pretty expensive now, it's fun if you if you're

Yeah, I mean Arizona's ranked tenth in his UH in his rankings.

And it's interesting because I don't know what what the OBPR and the DBPR. Yeah, we got an offensive player, defensive whatever. And it's interesting because of the ten players that he lists, and they only play really eight. The last two are Toby Waka and Trey Townsend.

On this list.

I mean, his best players according to these ratings are Vassar Bryant kJ Caleb Crevius who doesn't play it's done, and then then Bradley and del Orso and Conrad Martinez and then Toby and.

Trey Y and Bradley's what seventh in that group. I remember last year when I was the tournament and I used him for a story and I gave I asked Tommy a question about did you realize that Bradley was the like the like, the strawest sturgs and he's the most valuable We don't need, we don't need analytics and tell us that. But now he's not even this year, he's part of it. Okay, we got Hello, you're.

On the r nine of the ball.

Who's this?

Yes, Brian, how's it going, Brian?

What's the word?

Well, it was a good game last night.

Yeah, you know what, Brian, let me say this. Can I poopoo all over this? Baylor didn't have their best big guy. He didn't play at all.

I know, I know, I know, I know they didn't.

But you know it's part of the game, the game.

You're exactly right, Okay, go ahead.

I mean you know, I mean you look at the game we lost with Kansas State. We didn't have Townsend lost by two. I mean, you know, he might have made a difference in the middle. Who knows. Yeah, but you know after you know, you watched last night's game, and I was at the Houston game, and Houston's a good team. Are they a great team?

I don't.

I just don't see it. You know, they're going to have a problem if they get stuck with a referee, with referees who don't allow that kind of play.

They're not going to do well at all.

Yeah, yeah, they you know, I mean, Arizona should have won that game, should have could or whatever. It can't make a free throw, you know, they lost. You know, announcers, you know, they kept on saying, well they lost four points on the free throws at the end, Well they lost five points on their pre throws because they look, they missed the first end of a one and one in that game.

Yep.

And that last night's game, you know, it was nice to see a really nice balanced game by the team.

Yeah, you know, what not to poop it again, but Baylor is not a good offensive team. They couldn't score and they're not and there's nothing the great defense, but they but they survived it, you know, right, but they went on the road. Yeah, huge, huge deal, I'll give you that. Yes, that's a.

Big that's so big because you know, that just makes that makes us look better when it comes to the tournament and where they're gonna put it low. Arizona won all these games in the conference on the road, which will help us out a great deal.

So, Brian, I know you're realistic. I don't even know why you call us because you're too realistic. But but Houston, you watch Houston game. You're at the Houston game. They played Houston. You know they're up. They just kind of lost it at the end. To me, not that it's a win, but it's near a damn win because Houston is not not an easy team to be anyway.

No, it's not, you know, it's they're not you know. Somehow we have to get ourselves out of the idea that when we drive down on that baseline, that for some reason we get stuck down there, you know, and then all of a sudden there's two guys guarding one guy. Well, and you count the baseline two as three guys guarding one guy, and we just put ourselves in difficult spots. We can't get the ball back out. You know, I thought we took ourselves away from working the ball inside

Yeah, I do think though, I do you think that they're going to try to free up or so more for the catch and shoot, you know, because he can just get open and shoot.

Don't even he said that. I think, yes, this morning and the last night. Just get open and we get to the ball. I don't even think. Just shoot, Yeah, just get it and shot.

As long as as long as he didn't at the dribble, we're fine. Yeah, right, Okay, he's he's a terrible ballhander.

Yeah no. And he's not a good defensively. Yeah.

If teams are playing zone, he's got to be a factor. I mean that's kind of why he's here, is to be able to make that shot over the zone.

So right, right, you know, I thought Love played a good game last night and I missed some shots but penetrated real well.

Move the ball around.

Bradley played better, you know, I thought Theaysart played really well.

But yeah, I thought maybe the difference lately watch was that Caleb wasn't jacking them up near the end like in the last maybe six minutes. Every time he had the ball. My thought was, just don't don't shoot it from there now, you know, bring it inside.

You know he no can was it?

You know, just don't don't fire it up from twenty five feet now you can drive in and maybe you know he's so effective that way too. He's good and he's a good passer when he gets in the lane. So he has two or three turn was that he should never It was just yeah, he know that one he had that one segment where he had like a turnover, a steal and a turnover like in fifteen seconds.

It was.

It was graazy, right, you know, also too of it. You know, they had what five games left? I guess it is, Yeah, yeah, they have three home and two away. Yeah you know I'll take a three and two.

Yeah, Well you might have to, And it depends on the circumstances. But yeah, if they could steal one with the big guys, that's even better.

You know, because you know you was playing better ball too.

Yeah yeah, yeah, you know they bea Kansas the other night.

Yeah, they're playing them at Michale, so they have that you little right thing for us. Yeah, Brian, thanks, we got to go. Appreciate your call. Thanks for listening. Yeah, a couple of quick comments. People love the interview with Evan. He was just he's the smarter one in the room. If you're if you're a college basketball fan, I would want to be his friend.

Yeah. I was just gonnask him.

I think he do this is by himself, but it seems like he had we he said we. I'm sure he's How are you going to I don't know, put that baby together.

I don't know.

It'd be fun to watch him in action. You should go down and do a story. Yeah, sure, yeah, give you the money. I'll go to Baylor. I could have done that last week.

Are we good? We've got no time or we got time to break?

Yeah?

Okay, thanks Dave Dune. Yeah, David goes back quickly when you have a good show. Thank you Kobe for getting us.

Through this, and we'll talk to you guys tomorrow with more stuff to talk about. Thanks guys,