Dishin & Swishin 4/04/13 Podcast: Previewing the Final Four with Doug Bruno and Kevin McGuff
The Final Four begins in New Orleans on Sunday night with NCAA tournament semifinal teams trying to earn a spot in Tuesday’s national championship.
Two No. 1 seeds are there, Notre Dame and Connecticut. A No. 2 seed, California, joins the party. Finally, the party crashers, fifth seeded Louisville rounds out the participants.
The field includes three teams from the conference formerly known as Big East conference, and one from the Pac-12. Ironically, none of the Big East schools will actually be a part of the “Big East” next season, with Notre Dame joining the ACC, and UConn and Louisville joining the newly named American Athletic Conference. Of course, Louisville is an AAC short-timer, leaving for the ACC the next year. The alphabet soup is sure confusing!
In preparing for this podcast, the goal became to inform you the listener, in a way you are not really going to get elsewhere on these teams. I mean you are going to hear about Geno vs. Muffet, about Skylar, the Schimmels and Layshia Clarendon and Cal being the newbie to the Final Four.
Who better than to discuss the teams, the players, and the coaches, than their adversaries: the coaches who play against them in the regular season and conference tournaments. The coaches that game plan against them, watch them on film, break them down on both ends of the court, year after year.
So that is what we have for you today.
DePaul’s Doug Bruno is one of the most well-respected coaches in the country. Bruno and his Blue Demons have been a proven success in the Big East and actually have done something that Baylor and Tennessee have not done this season: beaten Louisville. An assistant to Connecticut’s Geno Auriemma with the Olympic team, Bruno has seen it all, on and off the court, from all three of the Big East representatives.
Bruno joins us first on this week’s podcast, and goes through each team, discussing the coaches, the players and style of play that has made them successful. It is a fascinating look from someone who just seems to see the game differently than the casual fan. Doug Bruno has an eye for the most intricate details, honed by years of experience. He even gives a prediction on that exciting UConn-Notre Dame semifinal.
The second guest on the podcast is one of the up and coming coaches in the Pac-12. Kevin McGuff is returning success and excitement to the campus of the University of Washington, and while the team did not qualify for the NCAA tournament this season, McGuff had them on the bubble until the very end.
Who better than to look at Cal than the former Notre Dame assistant coach that faced them during the regular season? McGuff discusses the re-emergence of the Pac-12 as a power conference nationally, and the giant strides Lindsay Gottlieb has made with this year’s Golden Bears. McGuff discusses their strengths and weaknesses, the players and what makes them so successful.
It should be an exciting Final Four! We have four great teams, great coaches and great players. Enjoy the games, and the podcast!
