The Madness Begins Tonight!

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1:06Welcome back to Bed MGM tonight here on Lesswood on Sport. Peace, Brad Evans on Pat Boyle. And the Cavendor twins are facing off in the Court of Legends game, and you can enter our pick a twin to win, free to play a game for a chance to win a share of $2 million in bonus bets. How to get this offer in three easy steps. Number one, opt into the pick a twin to win, free to play a game. Number two, select which Cavendor twin, Haley or Hannah. You think we'll win. The Court of Legends won on one basketball game, hosted at the bank in Pallagio in Las Vegas, Nevada. And number three, if the twin you select wins the game, you'll win a share of $2 million in bonus bets. Before we get to the brackets here, Brad, let's not forget that everybody can compete against us. How much of all do you know you know more than us? We've been posted tonight.

2:08We're going to post it again tomorrow. Join our free to play Bed MGM tonight. Bracket Challenge Group. Fill out your bracket. You'll be with me. You'll be with Brad. You'll be with Brandon Combs. You'll be with Monty. And let's see who knows the most, Paul. Brad, have you got your bracket for our challenge group filled out? How many how many brackets do you do, by the way? I guess that's always a fair rule of thumb question for everybody to answer. I'm glad you asked that question because I have right here in my cold dead hand, my bracket. So here's how I approach my bracketology every single year. I do what I call the gut bracket. So I've been doing this for, I don't know, at least a couple of decades. Maybe since I was a pre-pubescent like a 10 years old, I print off a bracket immediately and I fill it out. That's my gut because I watch hundreds of thousands of hours of college basketball every single year. I love the sport. I eat, breathe, and sleep the sport.

3:10So that just gets printed out and I fill it out immediately. So here's my gut bracket. And by the way, you can check it out for free on my website, thegamingjuice.com. I got a picture of that bracket available there. And I always do the gut first. And then I let things simmer for about about 48 hours. So after the bracket is revealed on selection Sunday, and I let my noodle go to work. And I do what I call the analytical bracket and bam! Here it is. I fill this bad boy out this morning. I just posted this on a various social media platforms. You can check it out on Instagram at Team Havals. You can check it out on ex at noisy ramos. I like wavos, so I can't you tell. So I got all over the internet right now. I can tell you this. So the difference between the gut, gut is just off the cuff and the analytical. The analytical is based on the numbers there. And all the advanced editors out there. That's a difference between the two brackets. And I can tell you, historically,

4:11the gut is always kicked the most ass of the two. So that's it. I ride the gut, the analytical, submit them in about a dozen pools imaginable. And I let it ride. So that is my bracket approach every single year. What's yours? Yeah, I'm glad you asked. So you got two. I normally have two as well. And I guess it's kind of similar, though I don't normally apply the analytics. I normally, I guess it's more so of a hedge bracket. I do what you did Monday morning. I filled out my gut bracket. And then I'm probably going to tonight. Because I honestly, I've got a lot of intrigue in one of the teams in the first four. And I got to be honest, Brad. I'm kind of waiting to see how that team does before I go ahead and see what I like here. Because let me just pull up my bracket right now, but I've got in our group. Because I've already filled that one out. I've got my champion picked. It is Arizona.

5:12I think if Texas beats North Carolina state, I think Texas can beat BYU. I think they could beat Gonzaga. So I think Texas has a chance to make it onto the sweet 16. And I don't know if I feel as good about North Carolina state. So I'll probably, that's my gut bracket. And then I'll probably try to do a hedge bracket where I'm like, all right, I was 50, 50 on this one. And this kind of, you know, I have this team in the elite eight, when I feel like they could easily lose this game in the second round and that'll change everything. I will normally do the hedge bracket where I'll probably pick a different national champion just because, I mean, you know, why would I pick Arizona and one? Why would I pick them in both? And if Arizona ends up winning it, there's a good chance I'm gonna win the one bracket with my gut bracket anyway. So I'll normally pick the second team that the team that I think is the second best team in the country. And then like I said, there's normally three or four matchups where I'm like, ooh, I was 50, 50 on this.

6:14One team I could see going to the elite eight, if they win this otherwise, you know, again, that could be a big one if I end up losing that. And it'll only be about four or five different games. So, you know, I'll probably have still 50% of the same final four or 75% of the elite eight that I picked in my first bracket. It's just those subtle changes. I'm not, you know, I don't do an upset bracket last year if you did, you looked like a fool. So, you know, you pick one or two upsets. And if they happen great, if not, you know, your whole bracket's not gonna get altered because of it. But yeah, I normally have two brackets as well. Yeah, do you gotta diversify your brackets? Yo, Wu Tang financial style. I'm the same way, dude. I got a little bit variance between the two. You know, I take, you know, the gut approach. Again, just, you know, shooting off the cuff and then the analytical approach and dive in town deep in the various metrics of whether on Kampomb or Torvik. Yeah, there's some observational stuff that has also applied to the analytical based on

7:17my various consumptions of games throughout the year. But yeah, for the most part, my final fours are roughly the same. There's a little bit of, you know, like I said, a variance in the gut bracket. I have Florida, Arizona, Florida winning at all in the analytical bracket. I have Duke, Arizona, and Arizona winning at all. And the only difference with the two, you're gonna love this, Pat. You would think with my gut, right, that I would go with my ILL, right? I'm a fan, I love the team. But no, they're in analytical darling. So Illinois beats Florida in the south in my analytical bracket. It represents in the final four. So that's the difference. I have Duke, Illinois, Arizona, and Michigan. Yeah, two big 10 teams, they were like, oh, they were the way to hell that's gonna happen. It's actually happened a few times. This century, believe it or not, though, the big 10 hasn't won in national titles since 2000, I'm a team cleaves team, Michigan State.

8:17So those are the subtleties of minor differences. But it is interesting that Illinois is in the final four in analytical. But my gut doesn't trust my favorite team. Wow, and that's good. That's good, you know, that shows you're not a fan boy. That shows you do you are objective and you are unbiased. You've been unbiased about this team all year and down the stretch when they've lost some of these tight games, you've been on them. So I can't fault you for that whatsoever. You got them in the analytical. You don't have them in the gut, 50, 50, and I feel like that's a good way to play it. All right, let's get to the game coming up here in 10 minutes or now. The madness will officially begin with UMBC versus Howard at UD Arena in Dayton, Ohio. And this is, I mean, look, this is probably one of the best 16 seed playing games that we're going to get here. These are two teams that dominated their conferences. UMBC was number one in America East all year long. They're just coming off a destruction of Vermont.

9:18They beat them by 15 points, led by more than 20 at one point. And Howard, they were the best team in the MiAC all season long. And they ran through their conference tournament the NCCU by seven in their conference championship. UMBC, they're riding a 12 game winning streak. Howard's won 14 of their last 16. We got two hot teams here at Brad, that matchup. They're very different stylistically. UMBC does a great job of scoring in the paint. Howard does an awesome job of defending the paint. Well, teams pretty defensive, but Howard, they do a great job of limiting transition. UMBC wants to get out and run and transition. What do we make of this? I mean, it's a toss up in every sense of the word. Howard's a one point favorite, but this feels like a true and good to the word coin flip game as we can expect. And I think it's a good way to kick things off. Yeah, if you dig down deep and some of those advanced analytics and do a statistical scout, yeah, it is literally a coin flip, folks. Here's the evidence of backing up.

10:19UMBC is one of the slower teams. Among the 16s, and number two and nine at Justin Tippos, you mentioned Howard likes to get up and down the court. They're number 77 in Tippos, but both these teams inside the top 50 and affect a few goal percentage offense, both inside the top 15 nationally and affect a few goal percentage defense and games played since February 1st. I think really the advantage for the retrievers of UMBC in this one, Howard really relies on a lot of second chances. They're a very good offensive rebounding team. They're generating that second chance on just over 40% of their possessions and their lasting gains. But UMBC is top 20 in defensive rebounding percentage. So whoever wins the battle of the glass combined with the fact that UMBC can absolutely stroke it from way downtown. 38.1% as a matter of fact, they have splashed from distance in their lasting games. I think gives them a slight advantage in this one. So I'm going to go with Maryland Baltimore County.

11:20I'll take it plus now the one and a half at a minus 120. Hell, instead of the minus 120, I'll just take it straight up with a money line at a minus 105 right now. I've been in GM and here's another interesting, fun fact, Pat. This morning when I woke up, I grabbed the over in this game at 140 and a half. I was like, man, this is way too low. You know, a lot of people always believe the butterflies are going to come out to a big, national stage for some of these smaller schools. They're going to play ultra tight. But do you want to guess and do you know what the total is right now because it's moved? Have you seen it? I did. I did. It's moved up. It's moved up four points. Yeah, it was a great CLV there. It's a hundred and forty four and a half. It's crazy. I like the over. I think this is going to be a high scoring game period of the story. Yeah, both these teams average right around 77 points for game. And they both allow an average of about 67 points for game. So there you go. I mean, you add those two up together and that gets you.

12:23That's about a hundred and forty four points. So yeah, right on the average. You did a good job of getting after that one. Let's hope we get offense offense offense offense. Or let's hope we get OT. And I'll never forget last year. Well, I guess I will forget because I'm also forgetting the other team. But St. Francis and it was a team from the Swack who kicked us off in the first four. And that game was bananas, right? We had a buzzer beater right at the end if I'm not mistaken. That was Alabama State versus St. Francis. Yep, that's right, which I'm pretty sure again, that game. That was a buzzer beater to win it. And then St. Francis literally like afterwards. They're like, yeah, we're going to division three. We can't support our athletic programs anymore. Like wow, like a double kick to the stones there. All right, let's get into some of these Thursday games and whatever we don't hit on, we can finish up later here. But Brad, let's get after it, man. Everybody's got their brackets out in front of them. We're going to do this by day of the games, not by bracket region, you know, because if you go to your bed MGM app, they don't got it listed by the bracket.

13:25They'll have it listed by the day and they'll have it listed by chronological order. So why don't we start off here with a little five versus 12 Vanderbilt versus McNeese in the South region. The Commodore is coming off of getting to the SEC final and losing an arc and saw. Again, the team that started off undefeated 16 and O, Mark Beignton squad. Now peaking as they head into the tournament, going up against McNeese, the Cowboys. 11 and a half point favorites. What's the play here? Do we trust the team that is peaking here? Do we trust the mid major McNeese just a couple of years ago, we'll wait, pulled off a big upset. Can they do it again this time? What do you like in this game, Brad? Yeah, I don't think they will. And I think Vanderbilt is a terrible match up, honestly, for the Cowboys and McNeese. You know, that's a team that is really reliant on creating havoc and turnovers. If you look at what they've done over the last 11 games, they have forced to turn over 24.9% of opponent possessions at number one and all of division one college basketball.

14:27But Vanderbilt, they don't turn the rock over. They're number 27 in that same duration of time and offensive turnover rate. So with Tanner, with Miles, they have guys that now protect the rock. They have Supreme Ball handleers that can break that pressure and then break down this team. You know, you look at Vanderbilt, they're a team that's shot the ball well from outside right around 35% in their last dozen games defensively. That's where they have some hiccups. So they're outside the top 200 and effective few goal percentage defense in their last dozen games, not a great rebounding team. But again, what McNeese is, they're not a big team. They just, you know, create chaos. And if they're unable to create chaos, they will get folded and placed into a box and shipped out of town. So I think Vanderbilt's going to win. I think Vanderbilt has got to cover. I'm going to feed McNeese. I don't think they're going to be ultra competitive in this one. Though a lot of people are going to be on them based on a recency bias of what they're

15:30able to do last year with Will Wade, different version of a team and just a downright terrible matchup. Yeah. And Bill Armstrong, you know, Neal's brother. He's the coach now. That's right. That's right. Um, the cowboys coming out of the Southland 28 and five Larry Johnson, their leading score, the great Larry Johnson 17 and a half points per game for them. They do score a bunch of points. They average 80, but they get a lot of possessions and other team like many of adopted in college hoops. Like you said, Brad, they wanted to force turnovers. They love to run in transition. They do shoot 47% from the field, but only 32% from deep as the team. So they want to get as many offensive rebounds as possible. Two guys to look out for Taishan Archie. He has hit over 63s this year and DJ Richard's junior. There are two guards that shoot a ton of threes. Like you mentioned, um, Tanner and Miles, they've got to be ready for this team on the perimeter because McNeese is going to look before some turnovers, going to look to be

16:31shooting the three ball and you know, it just could come down to on any given day. How well the underdog shoots it, but Vanderbilt right now playing a really good brand of basketball. I don't know. I don't honestly. Brad, I think I would take McNeese to cover. I think they can keep this within within 11 or 10 points. I'd be surprised if they win, but then again, that's just me kind of thinking last year was all chalk. And if you look this year, I think I saw an interesting stat. I think some lines can move, but I believe all 16 and I know Vanderbilt's a five, but all 16 of the top four seeds are currently double digit favorites. It would be the first time in 40 years that that happens if it closes that way. So it was chalk last year. I think Vegas is hoping for folks to think that it's going to be chalk again this year. You and I kind of think it's going to be chalky because of an IL and how much these top teams are able to pay these players and even when a mid major team is good, one year is all it takes. Hey, give us your best guys. And now that has created that disparity.

17:33So we'll see if we get a punch back in the other direction or if it stays that way. Let's hit on one more game here, the eight versus the nine in the Midwest. This should be a good one. St. Louis, the Billikens who nearly opened up the door for a bid stealer. They got a nine seed. They're one of the most efficient teams in the country going up against Georgia eight seed out of the SEC. The Bulldogs are two point favorites, but they've been very inconsistent down the stretch here. And I guess Brad, you know, we can get into the X's and O's, but I think there's going to be a lot of people looking at their brackets and thinking, hmm, do I trust the power conference team or do I look at a mid major here? That is pretty damn good. And they've got what's his name? Abby Avila, milk Chamberlain, they've got Larry nerd. Do I ride this fun team, St. Louis, or do I say, Georgia's got better athleticism? They've got better speed, even though they have been inconsistent. This is a classic one here.

18:33Who do you like in this eight versus nine matchup? By the way, Robbie Avila also goes by cream Abdul Jabbar. No lie. He's just outstanding, man. The goggled one. Look, I like St. Louis in this game. I took him straight up, you take him on the Monday line right now, I bet him GM at a plus one, 15. I took him on my brackets as well. I love what Josh shirts does offensively. He's one of the best schematic offensive constructors in the entire game of college basketball, really spreadsheet out, really spaces the floor. And he's got the right players to execute with that spacing, whether on dribble drives, whether on the extra pass, knock it down triples. This is one of the most efficient offensive teams in the country of the Billikins. And number 23, it affected Fugel percentage offense over their last 11 games, other shooting folks for 55.8% from two and 39.2% from way downtown, over 45% of their shots

19:35are coming from distance as well. You know, you look at Georgia, they got a great name too. Blue cane, blue cane, what a name that sounds like a drug guys are pretty good ball player to his own right, very good offensive team. The difference between blue cane and Georgia and cream Abdul Jabbar and St. Louis defense, the Billikins are number 91 effective Fugel percentage defense. Where is Aga? Three, 24 in that category and they've really gotten beat up in three point percentage D where they're number three 11 to the country. And oh, what a quinkie. Nick. They're also number three 11 to the country and two point percentage D. I think again, with the spacing, the alternates of execution to St. Louis, they pick apart this Georgia team of what should be a high scoring affair, giving the Billikins straight up on the money line and a quick quiz, pop quiz, hot chat. What the hell is a Billikin? Do you know? Well, I think their mascot is like a dog and some kind of bulldog.

20:35So that's what I'm going to go with. But I could be dead wrong on it. Okay. So you're dead wrong. I had to look this up a couple of years ago, a woman in the 1920s, they had like a mascot competition at the University of St. Jesuit school there in the Lou. And she fell asleep and she dreamt of what is now the Billikin. No lie submitted it as part of the competition. She had a name and it's stuck. And if you look at the mascot, yeah, it's Nightmare Fuel. Yeah, I just Google it as well. A mythical good luck figure created by art teacher Florence Pretz, often depicted as a chubby, smiling imp with a pointy head. It's a symbol of things as they ought to be also a popular cultural charm in Osaka, Japan. There you go. The Billikins. All right. Well, if you're like, you know, the women in our lives who just go off of which mascot they think is cooler or which team colors and then the Billikins probably get your vote

21:35as well. So there you go. I like St. Louis too mostly just because of Robbie Avila. I want to see that kid going at making as deep of a run as possible. I think it's your break here and we come back. We will pivot to some NBA games coming up here at the top of the hour. We'll also continue on with the Thursday games in March, madness. And we're going to talk to our guy Rob Dostor coming up at the top of the hour, the UMBC and Howard about to tip it off will keep you posted on that game all the way throughout our show tonight. He's Brad Evans on Pat Boyle. Everything March madness. We got it for you right here at MGM tonight, Westwood One Sports. We are your official home of the NCAA tournament. Listen to every three, every dunk and every buzzer beater. Download the free Westwood One Sports app now and catch every second of March's campus. Westwood One Sports. Oh. After wanting one for years, Kevin is finally enjoying his new hot tub.

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