Pardon My Take
NCAA Tournament Mega Recap, Lack Of Upsets, Storylines, Cal vs Pitino, Duke's Dominance And More
Mon, 24 Mar 2025
We've watched 4 days straight of basketball and are ready to break it all down. We talk big picture tourney topics, the lack of upsets, how Monday sucks beyond belief (00:00:00-00:13:24). We then break down each region Starting with South (000:13:24-00:33:42), then West (00:33:42-01:03:05), East (01:03:05-01:28:57), and Midwest (01:28:57-01:48:07). We talk Cal vs Pitino, Duke dominating, Big Cat's Badgers losing and then getting his twitter account locked, football vs basketball schools and more. We finish with who's back of the week including a spirited hammock debate and then lotto numbers (01:48:07-02:07:39).You can find every episode of this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube. Prime Members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. For more, visit barstool.link/pardon-my-take
Chapter 1: Why is this NCAA Tournament less exciting than usual?
You're like, man, it's just like the dopamine of wall-to-wall hoops. When they take it away from you, I'm an addict. I need the hoops.
But if you are a fan of one of the teams that's still in it, this is a great Monday.
yeah because that now you get to just relive the entire you got two games that you get to think back on read all the stats from make plans for thursday or friday of where you're gonna go drink yeah hang out yeah no it's are you are we gonna go to the game um all right so well before we do the regions uh has is march madness gone have we lost march there was no madness this year it was it was too sane
So the biggest culprit that I've seen being blamed is NIL and Transfer Portal. I think that's actually a fair critique because what has happened with a lot of these teams, a lot of those smaller conferences will take a shot on a guy who maybe wasn't a high-level guy out of high school. Maybe he was at JUCO. Maybe he didn't grow all the way. They take a shot on him.
He's good for a year, and then he gets plucked in the transfer portal in NIL, and all the Power 5 schools are basically picking apart all the smaller schools and taking their best players, and then you don't get upsets. I actually think it's a fair critique. I think you need a little bit more of a sample size than two years, but... We did lack, especially the first two days, the madness.
What would be the moment we even looked to for the first two days?
McNeese? McNeese, yeah. McNeese in the first round. Robert Morris for a half? That was pretty mad. Also, was it Norfolk? Norfolk. Norfolk, they were plucky. They were frisky.
Norfolk for the middle 20 minutes of the game because they lost by like 30.
The story, the underdog story, the feel-good Hoosiers story coming out of this weekend was those plucky underdogs at Arkansas. Coach Cal, he is the one Cinderella that's still left. And he's at Arkansas. They were 10 seeds, so it still counts. But yeah, we don't get the mid-majors, which is unfortunate.
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Chapter 2: How did each tournament region perform?
Scenes.
Scenes. Get to kiss the logo at center court. Kiss the bracket.
I'd like Tom Izzo to get back to another Final Four. Because that does feel like, even if Michigan State doesn't win at all, it would be one of those we can really sit and enjoy Tom Izzo's career. You get the stories written about him like, this is crazy. He's 30 years in coaching. He's back to another Final Four.
Tough to beat a team three times in the same season.
Yeah. I wonder if you would. I think if you're Tom Izzo, you'd have to just have it on loop of them disrespecting the ass. Yeah. Because they were about to kiss that ass. Kiss the ass. Yeah. You got to kiss that ass. All right. Let's take a break and then we'll go to the next region. This episode of Pardon My Take is brought to you by our friends at Game Time.
The best part of college basketball is here, and we know you're as excited as we are to watch some big upsets throughout the tournament. While we're streaming in the cave, you can get out to see the action in person with Game Time, the official ticketing partner of Barstool Sports. Game Time makes getting tickets faster and easier. Prices on the app actually go down the closer it gets to Showtime.
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Hank, we're looking at tickets for the regional. Thursday.
$218.
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