Mike DeCourcy Joins to Talk Opening Night of College Hoops

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00:00Mike DiCorsi, the legendary scribe from the Sporting News, and of course, a college basketball

00:12aficionado with Fox Sports and Big Ten Network.

00:15He's on the take for the Indiana Hoosiers and just won't admit it publicly in football

00:21and basketball.

00:23Let me ask you this, Mike, Cooper Flagg last night, what a start for him.

00:28You know, some people would say that's pedestrian, but really, when you break it down, 18-7-5,

00:35you had three steals, something like that.

00:37That's pretty heady stuff for a freshman at Cameron Indoor.

00:40I don't care who they're playing.

00:42Yeah, well, I wrote about him on Monday and talked to a lot of people who are scouts,

00:49experts in the evaluation business, and they said, look, don't expect him to be going for

00:5440 and 50 every night.

00:55It's not who he is.

00:56Let's not say he can't or won't on occasion if he starts ripping threes and he can get going.

01:02On those occasions, he might get up some big points numbers, but it's not who he is.

01:06It's about the versatility, and this Duke team needs that versatility because the one

01:12position where they're not really covered, where you really aren't sure their national

01:16championship good is point guard.

01:19So last night, he comes out and he has five assists.

01:23Their nominal point guard has zero assists.

01:26So that tells you he does what is necessary to do to win, and that's what everybody I

01:31talk to.

01:32I spoke with Sharman White, who's the coach at Pace Academy in Georgia, but he also works

01:37with USA Basketball with the under-17 national team, and he had Cooper when Cooper was 15

01:43years old.

01:44Cooper came out at 15 and was the best player on the team in 2022 that won the gold medal

01:50at the under-17 World Cup.

01:52He is a phenomenal player.

01:54He's the best prospect in American basketball since Anthony Davis rolled through, and honestly,

01:59Scott, we need that.

02:01We haven't had the great guys come out of school.

02:05In the early part of the 2000s, what did we have?

02:07We had LeBron James in 03.

02:09We had Chris Paul.

02:11We had Kevin Durant come out.

02:14We had Greg Oden, although he got hurt and it didn't work out, but at least we had these

02:17great talents coming out, and it's been a while since we had Anthony Davis.

02:23We had Zion come out in 2019, but he can't stay healthy, and that's pretty much it, so

02:28we need a guy like Cooper Flagg to come in, plant the flag, and go out and have a great

02:33career.

02:34So, you know, I think he's an incredible player, and I've seen him at every level, and I just

02:42think that, you know, you guys ranked him third in the Sporting News Top 25, and like

02:48last year, I think you nailed two of those four in the Final Four, and I think this guy's

02:54that good that he's going to—I think he's going to carry him to the Final Four.

02:58I think they're going to play for a national championship.

03:01I think there's a great chance of that, Scott.

03:04People have become of the belief that you have to be old in order to win.

03:08No, you have to be good, and there's a lot of old teams that aren't good, and there aren't

03:13very many young teams in any case, and so I think that in Duke's case, with the freshmen

03:19that they have, that they can make the Final Four.

03:23That's where I stop and wonder, though.

03:26Like I said, there are certain ingredients that every championship team—going back

03:30as long as I've been covering this game, and as you can see, it's a while—and you have

03:36to have certain ingredients, and one of them is a point guard who's really—it doesn't

03:43necessarily have to be a pro, but he's got to be significant.

03:46I mean, you had a DeJuan Harris in 2022.

03:49He's still at Kansas.

03:50That kind of player can win a national championship, or you can have a legit pro guy, a first-round

03:57NBA pick, which we've had—let's go back to 2005, for an example, with Raymond Felton.

04:02You can have that guy, or you can have DeJuan Harris, but can you have a guy where you're

04:06wondering?

04:07And that's what I wonder about with Duke.

04:09I think they can paper over that for a while with guys like Flagg who can really pass the

04:15ball and are really unselfish, and so many weapons around them, but when you get to those

04:20final couple games, Scott, you've got to have it all, and UConn had it all last year, and

04:25they were able to win it.

04:26They had enough the year before they were able to win it, but that's where I stop short

04:33with Duke on whether they can win it because of that concern.

04:37I know Danny a little bit, and he's a lot like his dad.

04:44I saw his dad coach around here many times, and his dad—I think his dad had the hardest

04:51practices I've ever seen in my life from a basketball coach.

04:55I've never quite seen anything like it, but his team's never lost.

05:00And then I saw Danny's practice.

05:03I saw it the other day.

05:04I've never actually watched him practice, and I saw him running a practice for about

05:11an hour, and he's crazy.

05:13I mean, this guy is crazy.

05:17He's way more insane than his dad was, and his practices are—I mean, I've never seen

05:24anything like it.

05:25Like, it's a—who can survive it?

05:28Like, not only the players, but the assistants.

05:32He's screaming it down.

05:34Like, the guys that work for him, he said there's no room for—like, that it's the

05:38ultimate job, and don't plan on sleeping if you work here.

05:43It's like a 24-7, 365 job.

05:46It's insane.

05:47Screaming and yelling and cussing at players, throwing balls around—not at them, like

05:53Rice did, but throwing them everywhere else.

05:56Kicking them, smashing them on the floor, cussing, screaming.

06:01And the season was like, you know, three weeks away, and he's already a lunatic.

06:06Have you ever seen anything like it?

06:07Oh, I've been in a few practices where guys were on the edge.

06:12Absolutely.

06:13I've not been in a Bob Knight practice, but I've seen coaches who were hard to play for,

06:21not necessarily—hard in practice to play for, but eventually they would—you can't

06:26do that and not be really good with your players.

06:29Your players have to believe you care about them.

06:32They have to know you care about them.

06:33They have to know that you have their best interest at heart if you're going to push

06:37that heart.

06:38And you also have to know who you can push and how you can push them, and Dan clearly

06:41does, because you don't win two titles in a row not knowing which guys can take being

06:47hammered verbally and which guys can't, don't feel good about it.

06:54There's certain players that just, if you're really hard on them, it causes them to lose

06:59confidence and you don't want that.

07:02So he knows how to measure each guy, how it works, and that's why he's had so much

07:08success over the years, going all the way back to his time at Wagner and on the way

07:13up through Rhode Island, and now two national championships at UConn.

07:17He's a tremendous coach, and you have to be one of the players who wants to play for

07:22a coach like that.

07:23Guys, you have to want to play for Izzo.

07:26You had to want to play for Huggins back in the day or Knight back in the day.

07:29And some guys got in there, as you know, back way before the transfer portal with Bob Knight

07:34and said, you know what, this isn't for me.

07:37We know a lot of players who got in there and said that.

07:40But not very many guys are leaving UConn.

07:43They feel like he cares about them, and whatever you saw, apparently it's not so much that

07:51it pushes the buttons that says there's the, remember, he's coaching at an age when anybody

07:56can leave at any time and begin playing not long after that, and they're still sticking

08:01around.

08:02Honestly, I think he's great, and I just, I don't think they're winning it again.

08:08I don't.

08:09But, you know, his practices reminded me a lot of Bob Knight.

08:13The difference was is that I don't see him grabbing players.

08:17Knight used to grab players and shove them around and move them to the right place, and

08:23that turned into he was choking people, and he was crazy and all the rest.

08:28I never saw him hurt anyone.

08:30I saw him cuss people out and scream and shove them and push them to where their feet needed

08:35to be and their shoulders and their body in the right position.

08:39Real quick, Alabama and Houston, will they live up to the billing of the sporting news?

08:45Well, Alabama is our number one team, and I think they have all the ingredients.

08:49I talked about those before.

08:53Having all the talent you need, the size you need, the rim protection, the point guard

08:58is probably my biggest question about Alabama, too, although I'm not as concerned there as

09:03I am with Duke.

09:06I like Houston.

09:07I think Calvin's done a great job.

09:09He's built a really good perimeter offense.

09:11They, too, have point guard issues.

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