This is I on the Ball with Steve Rivera on Fox Sports fourteen fifth Day, powered by Nova Insurance Services Ensure your most prized possessions.
Thank good luck everybody to us. I'm Steve Rivera, You're Dave Silver. Welcome to I on the Ball here on Fox Sports fourteen fifty Welcome to Wednesday.
I'm behind the.
Board here, so there could be a mishappurtuo, but enjoy the show. I hope you do. I'm Doug Dave with me A big show. Sports wise, no gibbish wise, I will talk about gibberish wise.
We can always do gibberish. Yes, yeah, we do. Jibbish.
Well, I've got Brian Peterson here in about fifteen seventeen minutes talking about you a of course, you a football, you a basketball catching up kind of like we did with Michael lev yesterday with recruiting and then the basketball program.
He was at the press conference.
Yesterdady asked Tommy a few good questions about the situation and maybe do this Does this team have too much too much control over their situation and not enough structured control. I thought Tommy gave a pretty good answer, and we'll talk to Brian about that. And then at the four seventeen hour, we're going to talk to Dustin And I just spaced his first name our last name. I'm sorry.
He's from the Indianapolis Star. He covers the Pacers, and I think he'll be well, I know he'll be in Phoenix somewhere, but we'll see if he comes in today for the TJ. McConnell dedication on the on the wall there, not the wall, but the ringo batter.
Yeah, it's nice. There's no way, no way you would have thought this. He came in, you know as a transfer, and I think a lot of people kind of were just hoping he would fill in and do okay. And he was, you know, he was one of Sean Miller's favorites.
He was the guy from Pittsburgh, I guess, right, So he knew the family and he had some kind of connections with Miller and got to town and you know, had a nice run for a few years and goes in the pros and again one of these players has just managed to get in the right place at the right time, I think, and some good teams and they needed they needed his talent in those situations. Philadelphia Indiana things like that. Yeah, no, and he plays.
He's the dude you want on your team, dude you wanted to I won't say Judd Buschler because I want to say he's probaby better than Jeded Butchler. But Jed Busherd looks Judd Butschler, Steve Kerr, I'm sure there's Tolbert. Yeah, dudes who were like overwhelmingly gifted, but gifted enough to land a long time in the NBA.
It talked about glue guys that Arizona maybe this year doesn't have that type of player. The TJ was that kind of a player that he made the guys better and uh, you know, the leadership things like that that are kind of intangible. It's just kind of fun to watch how he's partlay that into a long career.
No question, no question. And of all the NBA guys, I think that he's well Steve. Steve's one of the probably at the top of the list of how long he'd lasted and how well he did. Uh. Buschler finally got paid to leave, and Tolbert landed as long as he could. Right, So this guy, by his second most second Sean Rooks, Sean Rooks right and right for a long but he was a big man who could play, you know, just but t J self made, self made and uh smart. I think he's gonna be a heck
of a coach. I was gonna say, yeah, if he coach decides to coach, he's gonna be heck of a coach next.
I mean, you know what these guys, uh, you know, he's made a lot of money too, so who knows if he even wants to wants to bother with that. Like some of the other guys that wound up being coaches, it was kind of like, well, I needed another job, so I'll get back into coaching, whether it's college or pro. But TJ wasn't he the son of a coach? I believe his dad, So he's you know, he's been around that world.
I would bet my life, Dave, for what it's worth ten bucks that uh that he becomes an assistant for Sean when okay, and then and then branches out eventually.
Yeah, it gets a couple of years maybe just as you know, learning how to how this whole thing works and not the whole anil thing is is is a factor.
And more power to you decided to come in because of that, I mean because or as a result, you know, you go in.
Do I have to deal with that? Never mind, I don't need to go Yeah, I mean I was just looking just randomly before today today's shows, looking at Samford's roster and stuff. I know, we're playing Stanford Samford this week tonight, I should say. You know, they've got like five or six people who are general managers or behind the scenes kind of people like what is that exactly job? So there's even they're dealing with the ni L in the Southern Conference. Well, well, you know it's a problem.
You saw you talking them then administratively. Yes, yeah, so let me say this to your point. And I forgot his name, not woj Right, yeah, he went he went to say where has graduated?
Blah blah.
He's the GM there. Yeah, and he was probably making a ton of money at ESPN. I'm sure he's getting paid well here. But that's that's the decisions the people are making.
Right right, and those positions are now available on these basketball coaching staffs. Arizona has a guy who's a you know, quote unquote general manager. Came out of business and I think he had some some coaching experience, but he was more of a business guy. It's kind of what you have to have as far as the background goes and money management and just you know, evaluating players and stuff.
And all this time I was criticizing uh someonin uh Somelan and other baby schools that had.
What's the guy?
He was an assistant. He it was his right hand man. Uh. I forget his dad was in the NFL. And somebody who's listening, maybe Brian will come up with the name.
Uh.
He was his kind of driver, if you will, is right. I had to keep someone out of trouble, and I guess he did. But he was, you know, don't interview here, don't interview there, Uh don't what's the story?
You know.
We kind of had to tell him the story before we actual which made no sense to me in the journalism world.
Well, you know, HERM. Edwards caught a lot of flak when he got to a s U and kind of set up, you know, a pro organization there. Oh, I've got a general manager and I've got somebody doing player personnel and like wait a minute, that just that just was the thing. And he was, you know, he got a lot of heat for that. But you know what, I think a lot of programs have gone that down that road.
Yeah, no question now because you have to yeah, uh and maybe they were just ahead of their time because pretty much, I'm sure there are coaches, but there are a lot of There are coaches who coach and then kind of like their coaches who are CEOs, right, and that Jed was at least you could kind of think that. I'm not sure if that's accurate with Jeded. Maybe he did coach him, yeah, but if he did good for you.
Yeah, I mean pretty good.
Yeah.
We lived through you know, the dic Tomy era where he was literally on the field with his hat on backwards and going through drills with the players.
Yeah.
Obviously Mike stoops I was pretty dynamic with that as well, but others. You're right, Mackovic pretty much kind of stood off to the side and did his thing. But Jed kind of the same same approach. Yeah, And I've never seen Brennan in practice yet, so I don't know how that. I think he looks like he runs around a little bit. Yeah, probably does what impact he has, who knows, ye, as a former player, he probably you know, has the juices flowing.
Uh yeah, yeah, well Putty needed to have it more more flowing. There was something that was said on on What's his Name show?
Today?
Uh romy And I can't remember what he said, but it struck me as just how.
Coaches need to be that guy.
They need to be that guy and dynamic and and I wanted to ask you this in your time as a sports guy on TV and following it, Now, what do you what do you what you take away the most from what you noticed?
Uh?
From teams like it just not a quiz, a trick question, but it's a quiz.
I think they reflected their coach, you know, like Luke was very stoic most of the time, and the team was serious and they were disciplined. So I think I think there is something to that. You know, they're a reflection of their leader. And sometimes the leader maybe is a little out of control and maybe the players are control yeah, undisciplined or whatever. Yeah yeah yeah.
If there's no discipline, you have none, So why why I pretend.
That there is? Yeah? So, I mean I think definitely, you know, I'm really curious to see how Belichick relates to the eighteen to twenty three year olds, with his with his way of doing things and his mannerisms, and how he's gonna deal with the media, there's gonna be a lot to just observe.
I would assume that he's probably gonna be the same, and the kids will be, I'm not sure, better or worse, because they know that they have to respect the hell out of him because and play hard for him, because if they don't, they're gone. This year though this year to me here it was more of a it doesn't matter if I play hard or not, I'll be gone anyway.
Right.
That makes he said thirty Yeah, yeah, that just doesn't happen.
Yeah, thirty people.
And guess what he and as much as we could talk about they didn't have talent, or they had talent. The more kid went to Tennessee, I saw that, and a few of them might be going to Washington. So there was talent. It's whether that talent. Let me ask you, whether that talent played for you or didn't play for you. I'm sure Again, I go to your history and my history. I'm sure you sts of talented people in your business.
Ye that didn't dive a crap And you said, kind if this guy was just apply himself, he'd be very good.
Yeah, but you we definitely had that. We had people who were I don't want to call them, well Prima Donna's no lazy. Is that maybe that's okay, that's a good word. Sometimes you go, man, you know, maybe you should have done a little bit more with that story or done a little bit and that's just that's I think in general.
Is that because they thought they were better that did he need to?
Yeah? Sometimes they didn't or they didn't like to be told what to do. You know, they weren't, if you will, coachable. Sometimes that even comes in in real life experiences where it's like, you know, I need you to do this for me, and you know, just just do what it's going to help out the story. Are you talking about people who work for you?
Yeah?
Okay, yeah, and that makes sense. Yeah, because you're kind of the coach exactly. Sometimes you go out on a story and you knew what you wanted from a storytelling standpoint visual, and you had to convey that to everybody involved in the story. Sure, and then you come back to this to the station, look at it. We just
kind of didn't missed what I wanted. You missed that happens. Yeah, but it's you know again, you want to compare it to sports, it's kind of the same thing and telling these guys what to do and the results aren't always there.
The thing that I learned, I learned a few things. The emotions play a lot into the game. If you're not up, you're not up and you're not gonna win. But the one thing that I can say is coaching matters. Coaching matters. I know talent matters, but to me, coaching matters the most because if you don't have a good coach, he's not gonna get on your ass to play harder. Or if he does and you don't listen, that's not the player. But you can tell. And I was spoiled.
I covered some pretty good coaches, not very many bad ones, if any, bad ones who got the most out of their people, because bad coaches can kind of survive with talent, but they're not gonna win.
They're not gonna win.
If you don't have a good coach, you're not gonna win, even though you have talent. How many teams have talent don't go win. Could we be seeing one right now?
Well?
I mean I think especially in baduball and football, the coach is important. How many you know, all the great teams of the NBA, they all had a great coach ween going back to Red hour Back and Mike Krzyzewski, all those great teams, uh, you know were led by a leader who just you know, had the respect of the players and was able to evaluate talent and did
all the right things. So when there's usually a team having a rough patch, sometimes you got to look at who's who's running the shows running the show right right?
Uh. And the one thing with Luke, he commanded respect just because of you know, even walking.
To the room, right, people in the room kind of stood up straighter, you know. Yeah. Uh and and and that's just the way it was. Yeah.
Uh. Dick Tony was more of a casual dude. He was a buddy, but he also commanded the respect of his players.
Yeah. And I saw him and you saw him get on people on the sidelines. Oh yeah. Rich Rod was that guy. You know, he got on him if you didn't if you weren't working hard.
And that's what there's there's a reason why rich is a pretty good coach.
Yeah, there are those two guys are pretty similar. I think, you know, maybe separate by you know, thirty years or so. Rich rich and Dick. I think we're somewhat similar their approach, the way the way they dealt with the media, and I know that coach Tomy would there be times where we will be a practice, which was pretty rare even later later on, we were hardly ever allowed in practice.
We could watch the first ten minutes or so. But for Richard, for Tony, Yeah, in those years, we were we were pretty much we were allowed for most of the most of the practice, but every once in a while he would come over and kind of give us a dirty look like, hey, you know, we're going to do some stuff we don't want we don't want anybody to see remember those days. And it was fine because we by then we usually had enough. But he would go, yeah, and then we and you know, they'd run some trick
plays and things like that. They you know, wind up playing on you know, game seven of the season.
Yeah.
But he was good about you know, he's a good sport. He understood what we were. You know, we had a job to do too, which a lot of coaches Don'tald's understand that.
He was not he was not even half the guy Rich was in animations though, Oh no, you.
Know, like.
In fact, last night, Rich said that he might have melted a little. Okay, that's December seventeenth. He's saying this, tell me that in the September fifteenth when they're playing somebody. Yeah, that doesn't change. That doesn't change. But that's what makes some kind of a good coach.
Yeah. I mean he's got personality that's for sure. Gets him on TV. And you know, had that had a you know the times and success in some big time programs, goes to TV, does pretty well, kind of takes a Breakah, goes down to Jacksonville States. You know, does anybody know where that is? And it's in Alabama some point. Yeah, and he did really well there, did well. Yeah, and back he is. You know he can just you know, be a good be a good citizen and making three
and a half million dollars a year. Yeah, going back to his home state. So it's you know, he's got a lot of a lot of incentive this time around.
For sure.
Man, if this prodigal son could go back to Santa Fe and live, I'd be doing it right now. You know, you grew up in towards San Diego. No, he a, yeah, if I can go back to Cooper Tina right now. Yeah, just kind of put your feet up, Dave, aren't you, Dave? I mean I was there before Apple was even at Ubertino. I was going high school, junior high there, right, they were building that.
That's when just was like really running. That's very fun. Yeah, that was just a big city like everybody else. Yeah, Okay, let's take the break. We'll come back in about three or so minutes and talk to Brian Peterson from Azy Disert Warm.
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Streaming live on the iHeartRadio WAB, This is I on the Ball with Steve Rivera on Fox Sports fourteen fifty.
Are you there brain yep? Theyam okay, Brian goodhear from you. Welcome up, Brian Peterson from Easy Desert Swarm. Busy week, I guess for you high and every week now the rest of the season with recruiting and then basketball. Let's start with recruiting, because yeah, has happened today? Come with people coming in? You like the people coming in.
I mean, it remains to be seen.
All I can do is look at numbers, snap counts, ratings, things like that. They're either players that were very successful at a lower level or didn't play much at a comparable level. In terms of Arizona, So you don't know how that's going to translate to Arizona. But these are guys that this staff wants, which is different than the players that they were given last year. And they showed that they weren't able to do well with the group that they were given, so maybe they needed their own players.
And that's kind of the direction I'm looking at it is you really shouldn't judge a coach on what they do with someone else's players, because more often than not, especially if they were successful, it's hard to replicate that.
Usually when you have a coach that does better with someone's players, it's because there was an underachieving, Like maybe what you saw going from Sean Miller to Tommy Lloyd, but there was some regression was likely, maybe not as much as Arizona had, but those were someone else's players, and you got to see what this group can do with its own, with the guys it wants.
So let me ask you, so thirty guys or so left the program of that give me maybe the good ones, you know, the thirty, how many were really good that could I'll just ask that question first.
Yeah, I mean six to eight of them were ones that were that they would really like to have back. Only one of them has committed elsewhere. Wendell Moway, the starting left guard, is going to Tennessee, and it would be great to have had him back. All the other kind of big names are guys on the defense, particularly the three defensive starters excuse me caption the captains who suffered those season ending knee injuries, as well as to Carrio Davis and Dalton Johnson and Genesis Smith.
And Tayi tay Ukalele.
All those guys, those are the ones.
That they would like to have back.
And there was something that I noticed when it came to all of those defensive departures that it might just be a formality. But none of them have made any public posts themselves about entering the portal, saying thank you to Tucson, goodbye, the usual stuff you see when somebody announced the transfer, with the long winded with that being said, I.
Have entered, blah blah blah. These have all just.
Been kind of announcements that have probably been coming through their agents and whatnot, and they're in the portal, but none of them have essentially to me that looks like they've left the door open to come back to Arizona.
You know, they were all coached by Jed Fish too, and it seems like and from what we've been reading, a lot of these guys have you know, either made the pilgrimage to Seattle or at least taking a look again. Do you think that's gonna happen where maybe you know, four or five go up to Seattle and play for the Huskies.
It's it's very possible because I mean, these are all guys that.
That Jed would have liked to have had come with him last.
Offseason to go to Washington, and.
They made the decision to stay together and kind of finish what they started at Arizona. Well, it didn't really work out, and maybe they'd like to see if they should have gone with their first instinct if it was to go to Washington for guys like Manu and Trade and Stukes and Gunnar Maldonado, that might be even a better idea, simply for the fact that all three of them having these knee injuries are probably going to be unavailable in the spring and maybe limited even in the preseason camp.
And if you have coaches.
That are familiar with your game, not just from seeing it on film that maybe you can work well into their system while still trying to rehab, whereas if you're going to a brand new school, they're taking a big risk on you because they don't know when you're going to be healthy and if you can actually fit. It's also a big reason why coming back to Arizona with the advitageous for such kind of players, because these coaches already know what they can do, so it wouldn't surprise
me in one bit. In fact, even one of Arizona's top transfer targets, a safety from NAU.
He signed with Washington, So you know, it's just like when Jay Johnson left Arizona for LSU and baseball.
And he brought some players along, and then he still he grabbed a transfer away from Arizona a year after that as well as.
Some of the signees.
There's a familiarity and you're going to go with players who already know something about especially in this quick process of the portal of trying to grab guys without having much time to evaluate.
So you talked about eight of them, so I'm assuming that all a will lend somewhere good like the TENNESSEEO Washington or someone above. I think, did someone go where does Speed? Did you already commit?
Speedy has not committed, and he's been.
Visiting UCLA and I believe Fresno and Miami of Ohio and maybe one other school is interested in him. Speedy is It was one of those weird ones that they could never really find a good spot for him of what would work well in both JED system and then this last system because he's not a typical running back, because he's very small, and he's not a typical receiver. He's kind of that hybrid type thing, and you need
to find a spot for him. So it made sense for him to look elsewhere because he's given two different coaching staff t and it really couldn't find something for him.
I would expect most of the guys who had started or were notable contributors to Arizona, if they're moving on, they're going somewhere where it's not so much that they're going to play more, but that somebody is going to provide them either with the money they're looking for or the chance to compete for a title that they're looking for. I don't see any of them going down a step.
In any ways.
That's the guys that.
Really haven't played very much.
Like the first guy to commit was an offensive lineman named JT Hand who has been here three or four years and has hardly played. He went to Oregon State. That's a good fit for him. It's actually it's Kyle Devan as the offensive line coach there. Who was the guy who recruited him to Arizona when on the Kevin Sulmom staff.
Yeah, and I think his dad played at the U of A. Right, Who was it, Brian Hand? It played for.
Yeah, which is what got him to Arizona, but it never really worked out for him, and you have that familiarity.
The other guy that is it was Demetrius.
Freney, the cornerback that they had gotten.
At the junior college who had started his career at Miami. He's now up at Boise State. What he's going to do up there?
Who knows.
I mean that looks big because Boise is in the playoffs. But Boise also doesn't recruit at the same kind of level as let all the other teams that are in the playoffs, right.
I mean, what's it going to be like for Brent and his coaches now? Because number one school is ending like this week, So the players are going to scatter, They're not going to be hanging around, you know, the football facility or anything like that. If they are thinking of staying. What do you think the holiday break is going to be for these coaches? You know, just maybe chasing down some of these guys to see if they would want to come back.
Yeah.
I mean the portal as far as going into it is still there till the twenty eighth, so there is still that that possibility of once they're away from you and maybe someone who's gotten in their ear, you could see some last few guys dip in. But I imagine that the coaches are going to be They're gonna be sticking around and constantly. You know, they're going to be bringing in guys that they're looking at to try to add, and you have to kind of recruit over these guys.
You can't sit and wait to see if they'll come back, because I think for some of them it's it's really a matter of will they get a better offer than what Arizona gave them. It's not I don't see it as some people think that all these guys jumped in because they can't stand the coaching staff and all of that. I don't see it that way as much as you know.
This is for most of them, they've got one year left, and it's like, maybe I got to see what else is out there because most of those guys, with the exception.
Maybe to Carrio Davis, are probably.
Not NFL players, So this is their.
Last chance to get some sort of value out of their playing. So but I think they're going to stay in constant contact with them. I mean, Duyna Kina, I'm sure is in constant contact with a lot of these defensive.
Acts, and.
I really wouldn't be surprised to see two or three of them come back.
Okay, let's switch gears to basketball. Now, more pressing issues. Right, Is this the last chance to get it right? They got two games that don't belong to the Big twelve, so at least the are two games to at least get better.
Yes, And I mean this first one tonight against Sanford is not the.
Kind of walkover that you either the get right game. Sanford's got this frenetic pressing style constantly. They call it Bucky Ball. It almost beat Kansas last year in the tournaments, and it's big on playing fast and forcing turnovers, and
the turnover part could be very damaging for Arizona. I think the difference is compared to UCLA is that is, forcing turnovers in an eighty possession game instead of forty turnovers in a sixty possession game, to where then Samford is the kind of team where if they don't get
the turnover, they're probably giving up the basket. Arizona had plenty of struggles in the half court as well, so there's there's opportunities in this game and then Saturday against Central Michigan to pinker and figure things out a little bit more before it starts to get really real. I mean, nobody expected this team to be four and five at this point. But I also think that they they haven't lost any bad teams, they just haven't been able to beat the good ones.
That's true, all those turnovers with UCLA the other day. I mean, if they can fix that problem, you know, things will probably go better tonight. As you mentioned, Stamford did have some pretty good success in the postseason last year, so they're not maybe your typical maybe they're just your typical mid major. Some every once in a while they'll rise up, and you know, give somebody a hard time. Do you think that could happen tonight?
It's entirely possible.
I mean, it really comes down to just how much that they get frustrated by the turnovers. They're going to have a lot of turnovers. That's just the nature of this kind of game. It could be another twenty turnover game. But in an eighty possession game, that's a big difference than in a sixty five possession game. If they're scoring on two thirds of the time that they don't turn the ball over, they're still going to score a lot.
And as long as their defense when turnovers don't happen is strong, you know, when they're playing after a made basket, they should be fine in this. You know, the whole team that just it's felt like something has been off in all of these games, but there's also been good stretches. They were up by thirteen midway through the second half against a very good UCLA team, so like this isn't haven't been a situation where even the Wisconsin game where they were down a lot and then they came back
and tied it in the second half. I don't think they've been completely just like blown out of the water or completely outmatched. It's if there have been a handful of things that have have If they've gone the other way, they'd be sitting here at maybe seven and two.
So you asked a couple of pretty good questions to Tommy this week. I know the first one I wanted to ask. You asked him about the free flowing or more more, more leeway or what sing.
His use of the word freedom and that he gives his players freedom in this offense, And I just wondered.
Well, wait, wait, I thought it was a great question because we know how he coaches, but his answer was just as good.
What did you think?
Yeah, what he said essentially was it may look like it's free landing, but it's a matter of there there's a certain level of randomness that it appears that way, but there is still structure and concepts. I was asking more just because I wonder if there have been times where the message has been, you know, go out and do your thing, but then if your thing isn't working, step back more into a system. And I guess their system it had like it to us, it looks like
it's very broad and open. But what Tommy is saying is that there is still particulars to it. It's made to look random so that it's hard to predict. But I was just wondering because a game like Ucla, most of UCLA's steals were just straight up taking the ball out of Arizona player's hands. It wasn't intercepting passes, it was grabbing the ball. And I wonder if they were
playing right into UCLA's hands in that respect. For a while they were drawing a lot of fouls because they know that reach ins can lead to fouls, and so that they were dribbling directly at UCLA players instead of trying to pass around them. And I just I had wondered if would it have made more sense to try to go away from what Ucla was baiting them into.
Yeah.
No, it was a bizarre game, how they played it, how they reacted to it, all that. But you know just as well as me, Brian, that the Arizona since you were in school has not played well in the half court under any coach.
Mm hmmm. Yeah.
This has never been a walk it up, pass it around and you know, take a good shot with five seconds left in the shot clock. It's a it's they are forced to into that shot clock. They better try to get a good shot in the first ten to fifteen seconds because the later it gets into it, it becomes a little bit more of a panicking. And I mean,
I don't know how you practice. I don't know how they practice exactly the half court because you're doing it against yes walk ons, So I don't know how you properly ever prepare for it.
No, No, that's spot on, because that's exactly it. They don't practice this very often because they'll they've never had to. They transition moved by defense, and that's the other thing because invariably, if you play strong defense, you can create the turnover and go in transition. They did that for the for the final minutes of the first half, and then the second half they they look like Arizona all of a sudden, right, they looked very good and then they stopped.
It says, what the hell just happened?
Yeah, I mean you have to give credit to the opponent as well, Like UCLA figured out, okay, we need.
To change some stuff, and Arizona was still.
Just doing what they had been doing before, especially on offense. But what led to Arizona taking the lead and building.
The lead was offense off of defense, and once they stopped.
Having that, they failed in the ability to do it to create for themselves.
And no crevious. Still we don't know anything more about his injury.
I would be surprised if he comes back anytime soon, and I'd say there's a non zero chance he might not play again this year. When you've got big men with foot injuries, I mean, that's that's just a super scary thing.
And the fact that.
They dressed Emmanuel Stephan the freshman who hasn't played, and Tommy pretty much said yeah, he's going to get in there now when they were looking to red shirt him. You don't do that if you think he's coming back in a couple of weeks, because you don't waste this guy's red shirt for the possibility of a couple of minutes in a couple of games. I'd be very surprised if if he's back within the next month.
Well here's here's another thing.
Okay, so he was injured before the season started, right he limited, he came back, and how long did.
It take him to get to this point? So even if he came back.
He'd have to kind of re reacclimate himself into the system, and who knows that could happen about even if it's late February, what would be the point.
Now, yeah, it's I.
Mean just it would be a minute's usage kind.
Of thing and trying to keep the other big men fresh. And I mean it sounds like it's some sort of like a stress reaction fracture type situation because of the fact that he was out for a while and then he's come back and then it's it's resumed.
In that respect.
So I just it's it's a it's.
A dangerous thing and and what value are you going.
To get back out of that guy if if all it.
Is is something that you need to wait on.
And again you think about the way Arizona plays offense, how important that position has always been. And you know he's sort of kind of coming into his own a little bit here in the last you know few games that uh, you know, you lose that and now who do you have you have you know going outside it with with Henry and Awaka. You know doing what he can do is not the biggest guy in the world either.
Sure these are these are looked best against U. C. L A.
When he was doing a little bit of that high low It was. It was the choice to take those three pointers outside. There's a reason that you're not guarded.
They're going to leave you open until you can show.
You run them, and that was Those were just some.
Very ill advised shots and all that.
And you know, Awaka has shown he doesn't really have.
The high low ability. He's more of the grab the miss and kind of the bruiser type thing rather than the finesse that you know some past bigs have had here at Arizona, which Vsar kind of fits more into. I think Crevas had the ability to be potentially to be both, he just hasn't shown it yet. You know, another thing I had asked Tommy yesterday was this leaves them assuming that Crevis doesn't come back or is not available for a while, with ten scholarship players, one of
which hasn't played. When you had the ability to have thirteen, they made the decision to not use all thirteen scholarship players because they felt the ten that they were going to use was plenty, and that beyond that you weren't going to be seeing much time for these guys.
Stephan was supposed to red shirt.
But now you with it being limited, I've wondered if is there even a way to add a player, Like do do they know of some guy in Europe who wants to come over at mid season?
That is a big I mean, it's not like there'd be anybody. Anybody who's still in.
The transfer portal is probably.
Not any good. Yeah, remember he was good.
Yeah.
But the thing is is, you know, and and considering that Tommy and his staff they've got those connections overseas, it wouldn't surprise me for them to at least put some feelers out to see if they could get somebody over and work them in. You know, these these aren't the days of like when James A. Kinjo came to Arizona. He came at midyear, but you still had to sit
out a year. And I think that players who went who left their teams before this season, like in the summer or whatnot, since there wasn't a portal unless they are a grad transfer, I think they aren't eligible again until the next year. Because I believe there was like, you know, some well known guy at Memphis who left the team like two weeks before season. I don't think he would be eligible to play anywhere until next year.
Yeah, okay, last question, real quick, Brian, I know the questions being asked here. December eighteenth or so. They're going to make the playoffs the tournament.
If they win eleven games in the conference, which is what Ken Palm projects, and win one or two in the tournament. I can see them getting in with fourteen losses just because of the overall strength of the schedule. But I'm gonna hold off judgment until I see them either lose to a team they're supposed to beat or beat a team they're supposed to lose to based on projections, which would happen.
In maybe by mid January.
Okay, so I'll hold that thought until mid January. Yes, okay, thanks.
Yes, thanks like their Yeah, their first road trip is Cincinnati, which is rated higher than them and West Virginia. If they win one of those games, I think they are in good position to show they can get into the tournament. If they lose those and then come home and lose to like a UCS, well then yeah there's trouble.
Yeah, okay, thanks, Brian, appreciate it all right, thanks for having me guys to take care. Let's take a break and come back on the other side. We went way over. Oh it's okay, okay. If you're an Arizona men's basketball fan, you know it's been successful for newly forty years now. Take a look back at the Ludolsen era in my
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This is I on the Ball on Fox Sports fourteen to fifty. Want to take part in the show. Call out Steve now at five to two oh four one six seventy four to four night.
Hey, welcome back to I the Ball Here old Fox Sports fourteen fifty. I'm Steve Rivera here, Dave silvermanck I am It's good to tect to Brian A lot of the same philosophies I.
Have an improbably three those A lot of stuff.
In cener.
Rocking out there. No, I do. He's got a lot of good insight, and I think it's interesting. Just I'm always curious, how when you see a list of like thirty players that are leaving, how is the U of a football coaching staff feeling about that right now? Like, are they optimistical we can get maybe ten of them to come back, or oh we have ten in mind
to replace them. So there's a lot of you know, game playing and negotiating I'm sure going on over the next month or so, and you know, maybe the UF able to get a nice Christmas present at the end of it all and have a good class coming back.
I would I wouldn't ask I should have asked him this, but I don't know if he would give me the right answer because he may not know. Okay, so you have thirty guys and in typical recruiting classes you get twenty four to twenty five, right, you get him in and not all of them are are this level or good enough? Right, So you have you know, twenty five, maybe ten, twelve fifteen of them are good enough to play here. That means you nine of them you missed
out and they just not good enough. Okay, So the thirty he said eight eight were pretty good and obviously one one would stay. So that's twenty two. So all those twenty two, there's probably another ten that they would probably say, if you so inclined, come back, and the other ones it was good to see you, but you're probably not good enough to play here.
There's a lot of organizing it has to go on. You know, they have that kind of a football general manager. I'm sure there are slotting players in different positions like priority, Okay, we do need you know, hey we just lost you know, four defensive backs. I think they're probably gonna be in the market for some defensive backs here in the next month or so wherever they can get them, whether it's maybe a couple to come back, maybe they got to just look for the others to transfer in. So, you know,
it's a big game. It's a game of just moving parts and sure, moving chess pieces around.
Sure, and there are very few maybe coaches that have been able to pull it off the issue did it Jillingham Billingham Indiana did it. There's also coaches that I guess the players must play hard for because you know the Indiana coach, he's a pretty good coach. You can tell he's very stern, very you know, you better listen to what I tell you. Dyllian Ham's more of a he's not that guy. Maybe he is off the field or whatever. But but they played hard for him. No, no,
damn other way they put. He's a young guy. Uh, he played hard for that. They played hard for him, and look what he did. But they're in fact. As you talk, I'm gonna look this thing up. Uh my Cala Comic, the guy we had last year last week, great basketball and we're very impressed my uh Evan Mike Cowell.
Yeh, so he did he did the thing.
Uh A thing I haven't really looked at it where the teams that got more transfers aren't doing very well, really aren't doing very well because it's new. Everything's new, right, and Arizona's kind of one in that group. The team that's done the best is Kentucky.
Interesting, well, they're they're used to it. Though.
It goes back to this, and everyone knows who've been listening to on the show Coaching Matters. To me, Cali Party is the most overrated college basketball coach in the country just because he brings into talent. But if you have talent, what's the point, right, he can't coach him. He's and he's won. He should have won more than just one national title, right, and he had Anthony Davis, right, Well, that's when he won it. And he's had a ton of talents, so many nbas So and coach k too.
To the truth, not that he's not a bad coach, but you know what I'm saying, Yeah, talent doesn't always win the day.
He spread out pretty good in college basketball, though, there's just there's always going to be somebody sneaks in. There's always going to be like maybe twenty teams when the tournament begins, like, oh yeah, any one of these teams is probably gonna win this thing. But we are in that day and age now where the transfers are coming and going and there's not a whole lot of continuity
from season to season anymore. Right, you know, look at look at the Arizona in both basketball and football, and I'm sure it's gonna be the same way in baseball as well, sure, sure, they're constantly you know, you know, just messing around with the rosters.
So here's the list of the season performance for teams with flipped rosters, and who's the best, who's been playing the best Kentucky, Louisville, USC and Louisville and you coaches all three of new coaches West Virginia, new coach De Paul, California, Vandy, Arkansas.
That's with Calipari Illinois. And this is all changeovers, right, A lot of them have first year of coaches or all these because they had to the coach had to get there, they had to change the roster because they didn't know what they had bring in their own players, YadA, YadA, issues like number eighteen nineteen and there.
They've done well relative that well we thought they would. Yeah, and they usually don't play anybody that's the problem.
No, but they but they have. They've done Patty well, they have the kid that should have come here but didn't because because love came back. So you know, and there was almost kind of in that in that boat where see this season performance for teams with season performance with teams with continuity Marquette, Houston, Purdue.
There was one it's not on that list either. No, they don't have much continuity. They you know, and you lose, you know, a starter like Creevous and your top player is not playing up to his custom level. You know, things that just hasn't worked out here for ten games. Did I ask you this question?
Because I know I asked a few people, and I asked Tommy this on Saturday, and I wrote you you read by column. I think you liked it. I thinks so, I don't know if you must have read it. You liked it, you read it. So my question to Tommy was, as this team goes Creevous or as Caleb, as Caleb goes, and he kind of didn't pooh pooh it. Yeah, but it's kind of coincidental. Yeah, if not factual. Well, it's pretty obvious.
You know what we saw last year just when Arizona played well, he was playing well. When he struggled, it was usually you didn't want to blame it all on him, but sometimes when he was, you know, firing up three for seventeen, the chances are they weren't going to win that game. So he's he's the barometer, he really is.
I don't think there's any way you can look around it, and you know, just with nine games into the season, you can just see that, hey, when he's playing, okay, things will probably work out well.
Then then to me, not that this is you know, you have a you have a hole in the wall. You fix the hole because there could be other issues. But if he shows up, you know a lot of the games moving forward, the chances of winning are pretty good.
Yeah, pretty good.
But now if I'm Kansas and I'm Houston and I'm all these guys, what do we.
Need to do stop love? One guy? To stop stop love and make sure they go in the half court? Yeah, oh for sure.
And already if you were the coach day for the last thirty years and you played Arizona and you have talent, what do you do stop stop them from running?
Usually the games that they would lose, they would they would usually not lose, you know, eighty nine eighty five, they'd lose sixty five sixty exactly like that, exactly. The game was just not played at their pace exactly. And when things just were not you know, the way Luke wanted to run it, or Sean or anybody. But when they would slow it down, they would have Sean played right into their hands because that's how he played, right.
But lut if you if they kept under seventy, there's a good chance you're gonna win. Look, the first round losses losses were exactly that they slowed them down and made them played in half court. They didn't have the shooters like Slim or whomever to get them out of that mess.
Well, even in the Pac ten some of their rare losses when they would have it would be like Oregon State or Washington State where they would just slow things down and it just didn't didn't go at the UFA's rate of speed. And so that would sometimes happen. And it was usually those kinds of teams, you know, Stanford like said, forget it, we're going one on one with you guys. Let's go, and you wind up with a you know, a ninety eight to ninety six final.
Right, And that was that was more Montgomery's teams because he said, I have the guys to be able them exactly the anti Arizona guys.
Yeah, but you know, I think the coaches know they know what to do, and they know obviously they know that he's struggling. And then I'm sure we'll see even maybe something tonight. Let's see if they're gonna if they're gonna put more pressure on him and force someone else to make some shots.
So the place bets eighteen and Brian. Brian talked about this and I said, well, Arizona's gonna you know, they like to run.
They like to run. First thing.
Arizona's gonna win because if they like to run, Aeron's gonna say, come right in, come in the spider to the fly, because this is what we do. If they were gonna say, well, they like to play half court, they slow it down, and I said that could be a little tough game. But because they like to run, it doesn't matter. I don't even know their roster at all.
But they're pretty good. You think they have the talent to slow it down and stick with you. Again, that's not what they do.
Okay.
No, you know, Dave, if you eat breakfast at eight o'clock every day, you guess what you can do tomorrow. You can eat breakfast eight o'clock tomorrow.
Me.
I don't eat breakfast. So if people scouted me, that's what you learn.
If they are who they are, So if they want to run, I think the first one to eighty wins this it'll probably be Arizona, you know, eighty five to sixty eight or something like that.
Who knows. Let's hope. Let's hope that they have at least a couple a couple w's before things get serious next week.
Yeah, I think they'll be all right. But the thing is all they're back, they're back. Oh no, no, because you're not competing. You're not measuring yourself against these teams. You're measuring your tea, yourself against the Big Twelve. Yeah, because if you can get get through or survive the Big Twelve, that means you could probably get through the tournament.
Yeah.
It's kind of a shame because I remember when we were talking probably in September, before all this was going, and you know, all we were thinking about was the Big twelve. Oh, it's gonna be a challenge. And then look what happens here in the non conference games, like what is going on? And now I think could be you know what, they're four and five. Let's say they're six and five. I'm not gonna feel too confident going in. Well no, no.
Even when I asked Brian the question, do you think they're gonna be in the tournament, and he gave you scenario.
You kind of raise your eyebrow. Fourteen losses, that's what he was predicting.
Seventeen and fourteen something like that, and two more. I mean then you're hoping.
Yeah, then you're nit bound.
Then your Sunday, your Sunday, you're thinking they going to get in. Yeah, they're and they're not going to stay in the West. Oh no, you know, let me ask you this. Okay, So they don't make the tournament, the get an invite to the n do they take that?
Yeah?
They did it once, right, didn't they? And they know they lost, but that was I think his second or third year.
Yeah, that was miserable. They didn't want to be there. Yeah, they didn't.
They didn't want to be there and they got beat at home. Yeah you remember, it's really embarrassing. I was still here. Yeah, so bad. We'll see. I don't think they take that to go to an I I don't think, so what do I know?
We'll see. There's if there's money involved, that probably will Well that's true.
Let's not put the horse before the cards or whatever that because it's still a long way to go. Yeah, yeah, and they can find the magic and and so could Caleb. But they need him, They need him desperately.
Yeah, because if he just can get going, it's going to open it up for so many other players because the other's probably thinking, well, gosh, Caleb can't hit a shot. You know, that means I got to start shooting more.
You know.
So if he can at least, you know, shoot fifty percent, well then comes in. Yeah.
I think that's what That's part of it too, because if he doesn't come in and do a job, like you say, more on kJ. But I think even against Husel it was like panicky. It was like near the end and you had kJ who threw up a shot and what kind of show was that?
Right, Well, that whole last ten minutes the game was really hard to watch. And you were there, and I was. I was watching on TV and I'm sure most of Tucson was screaming other television as those guys are firing up three pointers, you know, ten seconds into the shot clock. I'm like coaching for my couch, like what do you what are you guys doing?
In fact, I should have said this to Brian because you sat next to me at the game and there was a point in there, I think late late first half, maybe three or four minutes stuff. And I turned to him and I said this on Monday, I said, God, this lineup looks weird. It's just there's no one's going to score. Yeah, it was like Martinez and it was just like a haphazard group. And I think where the point's going to come from. It just doesn't look