009: Dudes in a Room & Cinderella Stories – March Madness Explained

Office bracket pools, Selection Sunday drama, and the highest number of vasectomies booked in a single month—it can only mean one thing: March Madness. We’re breaking down the lingo, the strategy, and the sneaky picks that will make you look like a bracket genius (or at least help you fake it). Plus, meet the next big thing in women’s basketball—Juju Watkins—and find out why her hair bun might be the real MVP. 

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Chapters

•  00:00 – Bracketology for dummies (and us)
•  11:59 – March Madness: A beautiful, chaotic mess
•  20:03 – The Dudes in a Room on Selection Sunday
•  21:03 – NCAA Selection Committee: Why do they do this to us?
•  24:08 – March Madness crash course (no PhD required)
•  30:34 – The Final Four: Where legends (and heartbreaks) are made
•  34:29 – Juju Watkins: Certified bucket-getter

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00.054)
Next term that people use a lot when discussing bracketology is the word resume. It's just like what it sounds, it's showcasing why they deserve a spot in the tournament. This does factor in things like their wins, their losses, and their strength of schedule. So it's just another factor that the dudes in a room use to decide who's gonna make the bracket.

Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:22.648)
Dudes in a Room, that's the selection committee.

We'll talk about this election committee in a minute, but yes, it is absolutely.

Dudes in a room.

Have you ever wondered why people get so hyped about their favorite sports teams? Well, it turns out it's not just about the game. It's about the community. My name is Teryn.

And I'm Ambre. Welcome to Almost Fans, the sports podcast that's fun, a little bit educational, and will give you plenty to say when you're trying to keep up with those diehard sports fans in your life.

Speaker 1 (01:02.924)
Welcome back to Almost Fans, the podcast where we're all about the fun side of learning about sports and everything that goes with it. And if you've been with us up until now, you know that every episode we kick things off with our starting five, where we each pick our top five of a topic that we discussed ahead of time. But Ambre and I were switching things up a little bit today. We realized we needed a little bit more time to dive into the heart of each episode.

So instead of starting five, we're gonna go with the hat trick. For those of you who are newer to sports, a hat trick means three successes. So probably most often used in hockey for three goals. So unless the Almost fans revolt out of anger and dismay, we do listen to you, trust us. We know that the starting five has been the thing people have felt the most strongly about.

Yes, I will go watch Cool Runnings. I swear I have gotten the most flack for that.

and little giants too.

I have to say, I did. Have you watched it? How could not tell me that that movie had so much to do with women?

Speaker 2 (02:19.158)
It has, it does. I mean, that's why it was one of my top movies of.

But you didn't even mention that. Just mention that like the main, well not really, but like kind of the main story revolves around the daughter who wanted to play football. Yeah. I watched it. We digress. I saw it come up on Netflix and I was like, I don't know, it was on my Roku. And I was like, I've got to watch this. Everybody has been giving me so much flack. yes, anyways, we digress. So we're going to kick off today and the rest of our episodes.

awesome

Speaker 2 (02:34.353)
I'm so glad you've seen it now.

Speaker 1 (02:53.11)
with our top three favorites of the topic at hand. And today we're so excited to talk about our top three favorite sports quotes. And it was very, very, very hard to narrow it down to three, but Ambre, why don't you kick it off with your number three sports quote today?

I would love to. My quotes were not hard to come up with. These are quotes that I actually have lived by for many, many years. The first one is, football is a game of inches and inches make the champion said by Vince Lombardi. He is so quotable. He has all of these just amazing down to earth, like solid pieces, nuggets of wisdom. I love this quote because I...

quotable.

Speaker 2 (03:42.378)
love the idea that it's really valuable and helpful to be good at the fundamentals and pay attention to the details. Teryn knows this. I have a personality that can easily get swept away with a new idea or something big before we really can break it down and decide if it's worth it. So I oftentimes need to remember to just ...

run the game plan, stick with the basics. So I just love the idea that football and life and everything is a game of inches and it's about little pieces of improvement all the time.

Yeah, that's really good. And I'll keep it on the Packers train because my first quote is also by Vince Lombardi. He was a pretty witty guy. And one of his quotes was, and I really love this one, the only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.

I've never heard that one. love that. You've never heard that one? No.

Really?

Speaker 1 (04:45.646)
is a good one. Yeah, I like that. I mean, I don't think that's even needs explanation, but you can't get where you are without working hard. And we are well aware of that. This is part of a of a labor of love in doing a podcast and we love doing it, but it's been fun and we're hoping to be really successful with it.

We will be. I'll stick with the theme then of hard work. The next quote that I want to mention, okay, can I have two? I'm cheating here, is, I know, not sorry. Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. So this was said by a philosopher, Seneca, but then the pro golfer, Gary Player sort of took it and made it little bit more applicable for sports. He said, the harder I work, the luckier I get.

I love this. Again, it's consistency. It's hard work. I really don't believe in luck that much. I think it's hard work and being in the right place at the right time, but you're in the right place at the right time because you made some good decisions along the way. So I really like those quotes.

Yeah, agreed. Agreed. Okay, my next quote, my number two is from one of the greatest of all time, John Wooden. And I have to say this really quickly. My dad was a teacher growing up and he, and I actually had him as a teacher. He was an English teacher and he had an entire wall. So this is why I love John Wooden so much. He had an entire wall in his classroom of basically just John Wooden quotes. I remember this very vividly. Yeah.

He's also very quotable, has 13 books, so it makes sense. But this quote is, be more concerned with your character than your reputation because your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are. And I feel like that one is a great one for not only sports, but life. My life has been...

Speaker 2 (06:40.014)
Hmm.

Speaker 1 (06:49.932)
You know, people could judge what's happened in my life and judge me for that. And I have to just let people think what they're gonna think and just go on doing my thing and having character where I can.

Let's unpack all of that in a future episode.

Ha ha, lutz.

I like that. Okay. And I'm pretty sure you taught me who John Wooden was in a prior episode. He's basketball coach.

the coach of the UCLA Bruin.

Speaker 2 (07:22.446)
Perfect. knew that was.

He was the one that had the 10 national championships in 12 years.

Okay, that's right. Great. Perfect timing on our March Madness episode. Okay. Yes. My final quote, so my top favorite quote is a poster that was on the back of my door when I was a kid growing up. Our soccer coach gave it to all of us and I didn't really understand what it meant until probably 20 years later. So there's that.

And the quote, it has been said by multiple people, but the one that I have in front of me was said by the great and amazing Shaquille O'Neal. Here's the quote, excellence is not a singular act, but a habit. You are what you do repeatedly. Again, Teryn knows I'm a creature of habits. And again, just boils down to efficiency and consistency.

and fundamentals and just sort of small improvements all the time. So excellence is not a singular act, but a habit, literally. So it was also said by the Mizzou soccer coach. I think that's what I had on the back of my door, but it stuck with me because I saw it all the time for years and years and years and years. And then somehow years later, I finally realized that I understood what that meant. know, like when I had

Speaker 2 (08:44.652)
responsibilities and I was an adult and I had jobs and things to do. I finally understood what that meant. So this is such a fun topic. I think I could probably go on and on for other quotes, but these are by far my top three favorites.

Yeah, that's good. Can I end with a funny one? Yeah. Because this is my favorite quote. I mean, I only gave two, so this is really my number one. Okay. So let me set the stage really quickly. If you went to college with me in Florida, you know this quote and you're going to laugh because we used to say it all the time. It was the Oklahoma State football coach. name is Mike Gundy.

I kinda have a funny one too but go.

Speaker 1 (09:24.072)
and he's in this press conference and he holds up this newspaper with this article that was written about his quarterback and he is just on a rant and he is like talking about how he is like, you must not have kids because how could you say this about a kid? And he says, come after me. I'm a man, I'm 40.

That's amazing. He's crossed the threshold. Now he's a man.

I can't. I can't. That is literally the best quote of all times.

That's an amazing athletic sports quote.

Well, he is just don't come after him. He's a kid. He does all these things right. Come after me. I'm a man. I'm 40. You have to if you've never seen this on YouTube, you need to just go.

Speaker 2 (10:13.486)
I can take it.

Speaker 2 (10:18.806)
I feel like you pulled it up and showed me.

Pause this episode, go watch it and come back.

for all the context and giggles.

Yeah, it's so, so great. And Ambre and I really just want to recognize that we just concluded Black History Month. And I know she agrees that we wouldn't be where we are today with these amazing quotes, amazing contributors of sports from people of all different colors and races and genders. And it's really a time that we wanted to honor the incredible contributions and resilience of Black Americans throughout history.

In a time when our nation feels very divided, it's more important than ever to acknowledge the ongoing struggle for racial justice and we stand in solidarity with our communities of color. So we wanted to mention that before I moved on.

Speaker 1 (11:14.766)
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Speaker 1 (11:59.412)
All right, for today's episode, we are talking all about March Madness. It's coming up, you guys, and we know that our Almost fans, they wanna know what they're gonna hear, who's doing all the discussions, who's making these decisions, and what are some of the things that I need to know leading up to the March Madness tournament for NCAA basketball. So.

Ambre and I, we're here. We're here to explain all the nitty gritties. But I want to start with us today talking a little bit about bracketology. Have you ever heard that term, Ambre?

I have and I have zero idea what it means. So I'm so excited for this.

Yeah, bracketology is super interesting. let's define that term first and then I'll define a few terms that you might hear when it comes to people doing bracketology. So what you hear leading into Selection Sunday is this term bracketology, which is the art of trying to predict the NCAA tournament bracket ahead of Selection Sunday. So...

Selection Sunday is the day when the brackets are announced. It's the official, like basically hard launch of what to expect for all of March, what all the people who are gonna be sitting on their computers at work watching while they're not working. That's what they're doing. So many sick days. The highest rate of vasectomies done in March.

Speaker 2 (13:27.438)
That's a lot of I think that probably happened in.

Speaker 2 (13:34.126)
That's so specific. A different kind of sick day.

Yup. If I'm going to have to be out, might as well be. be strategic about it. So this is all about projecting the 68 teams and their seed placements, kind of like predicting where Gonzaga is going to be seeded. Number one, are they going to be in the West region? Blah, blah, blah, blah. It's not about predicting how far a team will go. So that's a little bit different. That's, know, once you do your bracket and you're, you know, hoping to win your bracket with your

Music.

Speaker 1 (14:08.75)
co-workers or whatever. It's different than that. This is more just about predicting who's going to be what seed and where. You're going to hear

So bracketology is like setting the stage before you start choosing all of your Cinderella stories and et cetera.

Exactly. And there's like a whole group of people who just do this. You know, they're going to be all over SportsCenter and everywhere in the media and the news, basically just trying to predict who's going to be where, who's going to get in what quadrant of the bracket, et cetera. So I sort of already mentioned this selection Sunday. It's when the NCAA reveals the 68 teams that made the tournament and what seed they're in. 32 teams.

get an automatic entry into the bracket through conference championships. And the remaining 36 are selected by a committee. And this is just like what we just discussed with the NFL playoffs. Basically like what we were saying where the winners of the divisions or in this case, the winners of the conferences automatically make the playoffs.

You said 32 of them?

Speaker 1 (15:16.782)
32 teams, 32 conferences.

Are there 32 basketball conferences or is there more than one winner per conference?

Great question. I believe there's 32 in division one. Got it. That's my guess. Okay. Yeah. So the rest of the teams, the other 36 teams that end up making it into the bracket are kind of like the wild cards that we talked about with football. The other teams that make it in addition to the ones that win their conference or their division in football, except in the case of NCAA basketball, there's a lot more teams to pick from.

So many teams.

So many teams, yes. It's so much subjectability to like subjectiveness for who is the best team and whatnot. So I'm gonna get into that a little bit later.

Speaker 2 (16:10.222)
have another question. Yeah. Is it only division one teams that can qualify for?

Yeah, there's like, there's a March madness for all the divisions type of thing. But most people just care about division one. That's just what we end up watching on TV. So on this Sunday selection Sunday, the brackets are revealed and the tournament begins with the first four teams before moving into the full 64 team brackets. So you think about like how it goes down from, you know, 32 to 16 to eight to four, you know,

It starts with 68, but there's four teams that are kind of like play-in teams. Well, there's eight, four games. Four games that happen before the brackets officially start that lead into the whole tournament. Does that make sense? Yep. Okay. So some terms you might hear when people are discussing bracketology are the first one is net, NET. So what it is is NCAA evaluation tool.

Speaker 1 (17:13.152)
Net is a key tool used by the NCAA to evaluate teams objectively. So very specific statistics. I read a lot into this and it's very stat heavy. just, it sort of went over my head. I'm going to be honest. And it includes factors like team value, efficiency, win percentage, adjusted wins. I'm not even going to try and define all of those things. In its most basic form, it's a statistician's dream.

It's supposed to be a tool used to, like I said, objectively evaluate each team based on those factors, but sports aren't objective. Because one thing this tool doesn't take into account are the strength of schedule, any other subjectability that you see from a team while they're playing. So that's not the final say. That is just a starting point with other factors that will influence the rankings that goes into who makes the bracket.

Next term that people use a lot when discussing bracketology is the word resume. It's fairly easy to understand. It's just like what it sounds. It's their team sheet. It's literally like a job resume. It's showcasing why they deserve a spot in the tournament. This does factor in things like their wins, their losses, and their strength of schedule. So it's just another factor that the dudes in a room use to decide who's going to make the bracket.

Okay.

Speaker 2 (18:40.942)
Dudes in a room, that's the selection committee.

Yeah, we'll talk about this election committee in a minute, but yes, it is absolutely some.

It's in a room. It's great.

So last term I want to define for you that you'll hear a lot are automatic bid and at large bid. It's so juicy. There's 68 spots in the tournament. mentioned this. 32 go to the conference champions. Those are the automatic bids. Easy to understand.

Mmm, sounds good.

Speaker 2 (19:12.046)
You're in. Yep.

The 36 other teams are the at-large bids, and those go to the teams that didn't win their conference, but they're still considered worthy.

And that's where the resume and the net comes in.

Exactly, exactly. Those at-large teams can sometimes even get a higher seed than the automatic bid teams, which is very different from the NFL we talked about. The conference champs always get one through four seed in the NFL, but in this case, just because you won your conference doesn't mean that you're going to get a particularly high seed. That's also where some of those factors come into play because that's in terms of ranking. You know, you're going to see how people rank out.

Crazy.

Speaker 1 (19:53.09)
Because you might be part of one of the really small conferences and just happen to have the best record. That doesn't mean you're gonna beat North Carolina or Duke.

So you're like at the party, but you might not have a really awesome seat.

Yet. Right. That's a good reference.

I'm just picturing prom, you know?

You may not be the queen or the king of the prom, but you're there. You're You're there. Definitely there. You get to dance on the dance floor.

Speaker 2 (20:23.694)
You got to dress on, but who's gonna see you, we don't know yet.

Not sure. Anyways, okay, that was the bracketology. Pretty simple, kind of straightforward. It's really not, but if you think about it from that sense is like there's reasoning behind what goes into who makes the bracket, et cetera. There's lots of different math and things that are going on in people who are looking at all kinds of factors. Now, I wanna talk about the selection committee. So the selection committee is 12.

The dude's in a room. I'm so excited.

committee members made up of athletic directors and conference commissioners throughout the Division I basketball field, right? So here's how the members are chosen. There's five what they call autonomy conferences, and this is the big power conferences, you know, the big 10, the SEC, ACC, et cetera. They each get one representative. The next seven highest ranked non-autonomy conferences.

Okay.

Speaker 1 (21:24.514)
basically the conferences that are just a level below the power conferences and they get three. And then the remaining four members come from the other 20 smaller conferences. 20 plus seven plus five, does that equal 32?

yeah, think so. Yeah.

There's the answer to your question. Yes, so there are 32 conferences.

There we go. bam learning on the mics. So this sounds highly politicized. Sounds like maybe not super objective.

We're so smart.

Speaker 1 (22:01.038)
I don't actually know. I read into it a little bit and I didn't go into a super deep rabbit hole, so I didn't figure out. I couldn't figure out how these people got nominated or if it's just that they get selected. get, everybody wants to do it. And it's the people who are just like, fine, I'll do it, you know? But the committees, they're committee members for five years. And why I thought this was hilarious is historically the men's committee was made up of all men.

but different news in

Speaker 1 (22:29.154)
while the women's basketball division one tournament committee was made up of all women. But now some women are there like allowing the women to join their committee. Yeah, exactly. They did list off when I was reading listed off a few women who have already done it. So that's cool. So I was laughing because I'm like, definitely dudes in room. I don't think there are any women on it right now.

Amen.

Speaker 1 (22:58.008)
This is the interesting that I found about this is the committee's work is not just about picking the teams for the tournament. They meet year round to discuss a lot of other things like how the tournaments run, who's gonna be the referees, where the games are gonna be held in future years, all of those types of things. And this is the part that I thought was the most interesting, to keep things fair and avoid bias. The members are required to leave the room when it's time to talk about their own school or

conference. yes, they can be asked to answer questions about their team. For example, if a player is injured or something like that, but they cannot. This is funny. They cannot participate in the voting of the selection of those teams and they can only answer questions if directly asked. Keep your mouth shut until you've been asked to speak. Yeah, okay. Yep. So I thought that was pretty funny.

Speaker 2 (23:52.597)
it.

Speaker 1 (23:57.378)
So that's that, that's the selection committee. It's 12 dudes in a room, maybe a woman or two over the history of time.

12 dudes in a room. It's gonna stick in my brain.

using some math that quite frankly went way over my head, but feels right to use some math, to use some objectivity, even though we all know it's so subjective. And also there's so much bias that goes into it. I mean, let's be real. You can't, you can't go into a selection without bias. There's just no way.

Okay, my next part of this topic I wanted to go into just what does March Madness look like. So kind of like March Madness for dummies, I learned some things if I'm being honest, but just what to expect and what to see. So in general, the NCAA basketball tournament happens every March. We said this already once, 68 men and 68 women's teams. Fun fact.

women's field expanded to 68 teams in 2022. So only within the last three years did they have the same size bracket as the men's. had less teams. Um, and the men's tournament is broadcast on CBS, TBS, TNT, and True TV. While the women's tournament airs on ESPN and ABC and sling TV in case you are interested.

Speaker 2 (25:27.554)
Nope.

Yeah, exactly.

I will watch probably both March Madness tournaments equally. It's not on Sling TV.

I love that. No, no, no.

Speaker 2 (25:43.596)
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Okay, so I mentioned this earlier, we talked about the first four round. It's not the number of teams, it's the first four matchups between the lowest ranked men's and women's teams. So the four teams will be eliminated before the tournament technically starts. So it's not technically part of the bracket, it's basically play-in games to get into the bracket.

It was created actually to reduce the field from 68 to 64, which was what the women's tournament size was. But 64 just maths way better. So after the first four round is first round, easy to remember. The remaining 64 teams begin the tournament and then the winners advance to the next round, the second round, which is 32 teams. And then it goes down to 16. Sweet 16 is the sweet 16.

Yes, most definitely.

Speaker 2 (27:06.975)
Which

Exactly. I love that they have names for all of them after that point.

Yeah, they need something to let's three tours, you know

Poor 30 tours, they want a game, good for them.

I deserve something. I deserve a name.

Speaker 1 (27:25.294)
Yeah, the second round. You made it to the second round. So, Sweet 16 is where the tournament narrows down to 16 teams in the four regions. So, you have East, West, South, and Midwest. That does not necessarily mean where those teams are from. They kind of get placed to try and evenly match, you know, the different quadrants.

exciting. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:48.97)
Is it true that the selection committee might put teams in different sides strategically? For example, they know that this team and this team are huge rivals and so they want to put them on the same side of the bracket so that there's a higher likelihood of them meeting up in a game and then more people will watch it, more viewers, more money, et cetera. Is that a thing?

You know, Ambre, that's a good question because there's no written rules about that. You know, and I know that they are. There's just no way. I mean, there's no way that you could, it's not chance. mean, it's not like when I was, I used to work in intramurals at the University of Florida and all the way back UNC, even undergrad.

Yeah, we'll never know, eh?

Speaker 1 (28:47.148)
you would just use like a system to create a bracket. It's just like an online, it's not that, it's humans. Yeah, in case you're wondering. And then the computer just sets it, know, like sort of objectively quote unquote, you know, objectively sets the field in the bracket. And that would be the most objective way to do it. But in reality, it's a bunch of humans sitting in a room deciding on

How did that go again? Okay.

Speaker 1 (29:16.974)
dudes in a room sitting deciding on who's gonna play who when and what side of the bracket they're on and blah blah blah blah blah. So you know that they're humans and they're doing that.

Yeah. mean, you know what? The tournament is exciting every year, so the dudes in a room are doing something right. Just curious if you had found anything.

No, I didn't see anything. There's. Yeah, exactly. We're not. We're not stupid out here. OK, so then the winners of the Sweet 16 move on to the Elite 8. Final 8 teams and they advance to the national semifinals, which is the what? Yes.

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:03.118)
Final Four.

So it's kind of like the most exciting part of it. Like for some reason it feels like the final four is more exciting than the championship game. I don't know why. It seems like those are the ones that people talk about the most often. And when you get to the final four, it's a huge deal. mean, you basically won one whole entire quadrant of the bracket. And then the two winners go to the championship game. That's pretty much it. The final game determines the winner of the NCAA tournament.

and the format and name of the tournaments evolved. The March Madness nickname stuck and it's kind of just what it stuck as the name and it captures the excitement of the annual event. Okay, then really quickly I just wanna talk to people who wanna put together a bracket, right? mean, who doesn't wanna put together a bracket and be part of a group of fun people? And I think in the historically,

People would always print out a bracket, right? And write on it and fill it all out. And that's super fun and all, but my recommendation for anyone who wants to fill out a bracket and feel involved and get involved in March Madness, download an app. There's a bunch of different apps that you can find that will literally just put the two options of who is playing each other in the games right on there. And you just click one, right? And it slots it into that thing.

scroll down, you keep clicking, you click on who has the coolest mascot, whose colors you like the most. And if it's a one verse 16 seed, you'd better pick the one because I think only two times in history has a 16 beat a one. And it was recently like 2018 and 2023. yeah, you like there's lots of historical like stats on how often this number beats this number, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (31:59.438)
that's kind of interesting to look into. But you can also just go the Ambre route and Google what does Charles Barkley making his bracket.

Yeah, that's my go-to every year. It hasn't done me well though.

But the fun thing about making a bracket is you can literally make as many as you want on these apps and you can add yourself to a bunch of different pools, right? So maybe Caitlin Clark has a pool that you're joining, probably not, I bet that would be considered sports betting, but you know, something like that. So maybe Shaq has a pool that you can add to or maybe Michigan fans have a pool that you wanna add to. You basically just add your bracket to these different pools. You can do,

different brackets, can do the same bracket and just add it to a bunch of different groups. And a lot of times you can win something if your bracket does the best. So it's kind of a fun way to just get involved. makes you feel a little bit more engaged in the games that are happening. I think so at least because a lot of times it's like, I have no idea who, you know, the number six seed is and then Midwest division. But, know, hey, I have them going all the way to the sweet 16.

And so I'm rooting for them, you know, or maybe you hit a really big upset early on and that like knocks you way up in your work, you know, pool. So my recommendation is to get in a quick pool with some friends or with some coworkers and make a bracket. It's not hard. You do have to make sure that you have your bracket completed before the first game starts. Otherwise, you're not getting in.

Speaker 2 (33:38.86)
Yeah, rules to live by.

Yeah, don't go printing one out unless you really want to see it like in cross think cross names off and stuff. The apps will just like automatically gray out the ones you win or lose. And, you know, it'll show you where you rank in the world. It'll show you where you rank with your coworkers, etc. It's super fun.

That's awesome. That sounds fun. Along with some friendly bits, of course. Yeah, always have to bet.

Yeah, I think in our work one last year I got second place. Hmm. Yep. I know, especially because nobody really knows what they're doing when it comes to brackets. And that's another reason why you should fill it out because nobody knows what they're doing. Even the smartest people out there in the world, they're messing it up.

Wow, look at you. It's pretty impressive.

Speaker 2 (34:21.678)
Fair enough.

That's pretty much it.

Speaker 1 (34:29.646)
Quick update folks, earlier in this episode I mentioned that 32 teams received automatic bids to the NCAA tournament. However, since recording I learned that this year there are actually only 31 teams. With the Pac-12 dissolving, we lost one of those automatic bids, bringing the total down to 31. I just wanted to set the record straight.

Speaker 2 (34:54.702)
Okay, now it's time for our She's Got Game segment where we highlight a woman doing something awesome in sports. Low key, high key. It's like my favorite part of our episodes. I think I say that every time I have. You do. I do. I do. Because it really is and I get so hyped. standing at six feet, two inches tall and now the top scorer.

Definitely definitely

Speaker 2 (35:21.44)
in women's NCAA basketball since Caitlin Clark moved on to the WNBA is Miss Judea Juju Watkins. Teryn, what team does Juju play for? So close. USC, South Carolina, University of Southern California. Yep. That one. USC, Trojans.

Carolina.

Speaker 1 (35:45.262)
Our friend Kelsey, who we talked to a couple episodes ago in our officiating episode, she would probably punch me in the face for not knowing that.

Well, then it's a good thing she'll hear this later on.

I'm not gonna tell her until she hears it live.

Just ask for forgiveness later. Okay, so Juju Watkins plays for University of Southern California, USC. And you should care about Juju because she is the player to watch when it comes time for March Madness this year, NCAA women's basketball. She's from an inner city neighborhood in LA, started playing basketball in a local community league when she was a kid, probably like most basketball players, hoopers as she terms basketball players.

Her senior year in high school, she won the Gatorade Player of the Year Award. This is a big freaking deal. It could probably also be called the best human award because it's not, I mean, obviously it recognizes amazing athletic achievements. Yes. Also academics. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. But also just character and being a good human, community service, sporting local causes. So she won

Speaker 2 (36:58.792)
that award out of all the basketball players in the whole US. She won that her senior year. Super cool. So as she was graduating and heading off to play basketball at a college, she probably could have played anywhere she wanted and she chose to stay close to home and play for USC.

And when I say close to home, mean her hometown is exactly 18 minutes away from the arena she plays at now. I mean, it's like, she's still at home. She's sleeping in her bed, eating out her breakfast bowls. She is at home.

What would you rather? Would you rather be close to home or would you rather have taken your college days somewhere else?

I feel like I did exactly what was right for me, which was 40 minutes away. So if I had played, if I had done something cool in college, I didn't. But if I did, friends, family could have seen me, but I had a perfectly good excuse to stay in a dorm or an apartment with my friends, et cetera.

I love my parents, love them. Great people. If you're listening, Jeff and Jen, love you. But I needed to get away. Two hours minimum. Two hours. Two hours was nice because I could go home for weekend if I wanted to, but I needed to be, I needed to leave the, fly the nest.

Speaker 2 (38:19.266)
How far did you?

Speaker 2 (38:28.024)
Your own thing.

Jump out of the nest. So the thing about Juju though is that she's super close to her family. You'll hear this come up a couple of times, you know, in the next few minutes. And when she was being recruited, because she was recruited by all of the teams, so many teams, they would go on these recruitment trips. The whole family, the whole fam damnly would come on these recruitment trips. Because when you recruit Juju, you recruit the whole, like the uncles, the aunts, the cousins, you recruit the whole family.

So it's tough now that we're talking about college. It's tough going from high school to college for anyone. Now picture you're a student athlete. So you've got a transition. Okay, Juju didn't leave home, but still you're transitioning and you're playing a sport. So you've got academics and sports. Now picture you've got academics and sports.

and like huge expectations on your performance. She came in and she was the hot thing. Everybody was like, Juju is about to rock this world. All of these amazing expectations, you know, sort of sitting on her shoulders. And she did not have any problem with that. I mean, crushed it her freshman year. So I heard this clip of Stephen A Smith, ESPN commentator talking about her first couple of games around the gate. He said this,

The girl has said nothing other than speaking with her game and what she said with her game was, hello.

Speaker 1 (40:01.582)
Okay.

rushed it. mean her first couple of games. know he's funny. He talks like that. I was trying to do his voice. Anyway, but during her freshman year, she set all sorts of records. For example, by the end of her freshman season, she had broken the NCAA division one freshman scoring record. Mike drop. How cool is that? Yeah. She's got to deal with Nike. She's got to deal with Gatorade naturally. Teryn, can you guess a couple of players?

who Juju has been compared to. One men's player, one female player.

Hmm. I have no idea, but let me guess. Okay. Can you tell me what position she plays? Okay. So guard. She's been compared to Kobe.

Guard.

Speaker 2 (40:51.458)
Michael Jordan. I don't know a physician really. Just in general, people are like, know, the next Michael Jordan of women's basketball. And then also Caitlin Clark. And this elicits all the feels from everyone. They're like, you can't be the goat, blah, blah, blah. You know, it, okay, whatever. People have.

I love when people talk like that.

Direct quote. So, but people have called her the quote unquote new Caitlin Clark. To be real here, she did score, Juju scored her 1000th point two games sooner than Ms. Clark. There's a clip of a reporter asking Juju. She's like, Caitlin Clark who? And Juju just laughs it off. She's like, nah, nah, nah, don't do that. know, like she doesn't want to be compared. She's not there for the.

the, you know, like the glory. She just loves the game and loves to play for her community. Her dad says off the court, it's just like she has two personalities off the court. She's Judea. She's calm. She's cool. Super chill. Loves to shop, loves fashion, loves her Nikes on the court. Direct quote from her dad on the court. She's Juju and she will take your head off. Alter ego, Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde sort of thing. She's super dominant.

Yeah

Speaker 2 (42:10.306)
Whenever we highlight a player on this podcast, always want to watch all of these games. want to know, okay, great. All the records, the awards, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like, what is it about her that is so good? So, so here's a couple of things. She can hit three pointers from far away with deadly accuracy. Sounds like Caitlin Clark. Sure. Also, she's a fantastic ball handler. So there was a coach who was talking about

When Juju dribbles toward the basket and gets double teamed, right? The other team knows she's super strong and good. So they send a couple of people to defend her. A lot of players in that moment get overwhelmed by the defenders and they got to pass the ball, but Juju is so solid and such a great ball handler that she can usually somehow shoulder in and still figure out a way to get a shot off. that was one of the things that makes her poised. Yeah. And just really strong. can tell when she's playing that she's having all sorts of fun.

Now I want to close down talking about her signature, which is her bun, her hair bun. So for her games, has this like her hair is slicked up and then she has this bun on top, it's not a, not, it's not a spherical bun. It's more like a donut shaped. It's beautiful. And it's so consistent. So for games, her mom still does her hair. And sometimes she gets teased about this like, Juju, why can't you do your own hair by now? And

She responds and says something like, well, my mom has 18 years of experience. Let's just leave it up to the expert sort of thing. I love that. That's cute. But like, you know, so her pregame ritual, she's in her hotel room. Her mom is doing her bun. She's on her phone. She's looking at, you know, film of the team of the top players that she's going to be facing soon. Her dad's lacing up her shoes. And someone asked her, you know, how important is the bun?

And Juju said, the hair is everything. If the bun is good, it's going to be a good game. So here's a really quick story about the bun. It's her debut game as a USC college player, her first college game ever. This is in Las Vegas and they were playing a really good team right out of the gate. First game, wham, bam, here we go. Right. Right into the fire. Her family came to naturally because they're so close and they want to come and support her.

Speaker 2 (44:32.62)
She's nervous, know, first game, blah, blah. She texted her mom and said, hey, mom, can you just be in my hotel room at seven o'clock to do my hair? You know, just want to make sure we've got enough time. So her mom got up at 6 a.m. so that she wouldn't be late. You wouldn't have to worry, Juju. She's going to be there to help her. And, you know, did her hair and everything. And in the car after the game, mom, dad and uncle were talking. And uncle's like, you know, like, what's the big deal? It's just a bun. And mom and dad were both like,

No, it's not. How dare you? know how dare you. This is my hair, right? But mom and dad both said it's not just a bun. And this is one of the biggest themes, all concentrated into this hair bun. But it's one of the biggest themes that I've really learned about Juju and her just MO, the way that she operates, is that her family and her community are absolutely the most important and most valued things in the world to her. I think basketball is like a super close

number three, but it's family community first. So a really cool story, somebody to have your eye on during March Madness. She's going to crush it, hopefully go all the way. I'm going to put her as the winner on my women's bracket for sure. And all of this is why she is who I chose to be our spotlight for today's She's Got Game segment.

Speaker 2 (45:58.562)
Thanks for tuning in to Almost Fans. We hope you learned a little, laughed a lot, and maybe found a few new reasons to love sports as much as we do. Catch us every week for more laughs and just maybe a little learning along the way. If you enjoyed today's episode, follow us and toss a five star rating our way. And then find us on social media at Almost Fans podcast for more fun. See you next time, Almost Fans.