Today, March Madness comes officially comes to an end. Yesterday, the women’s NCAA championship resulted in a victory for UCLA over South Carolina, earning UCLA their first title win. But later tonight, UConn and Michigan will face in the final stage of the men’s NCAA championship.
In the latest Offsides, Pablo gives his take on the women’s NCAA championship game and what he expects to see tonight.
Pablo Torre is an American sportswriter, podcaster, and television host. He contributes to various programs at ESPN, including Pardon The Interruption and Around The Horn. Keep up with Pablo on his Substack and podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out .
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. If it’s Monday, it must be Pablo Torre. Pablo, welcome!
Pablo Torre
Hello, Jen, good to be back, as always.
Jen Rubin
One of the great times of year for sports fans. We got basketball, we got tennis, we got soccer, we got golf. So, let’s start with the women’s college basketball champs. UCLA was really impressive. Did you expect a blowout like that?
Pablo Torre
No, I mean, South Carolina is not used to this. This is one of the more impressive upsets, and it’s funny to think of it as an upset, because UCLA, one of the most historic programs on the men’s side, had never won a title. Until this past weekend. Until yesterday. And so, the idea that they would get a 79-51 win over Don Staley and the South Carolina Gamecocks is… yeah, that is as surprising to me as any result in college basketball this year, by far.
Jen Rubin
Yes, yes. Do you think there was a letdown for South Carolina after having beaten Connecticut the day before? That seems like a natural explanation.
Pablo Torre
Yeah, you know what, I don’t want to take anything away from UCLA because they were so comprehensively dominant, but from a pure, just like, what was I feeling while I was watching Dawn Staley go to war against Geno Smith? I mean, Geno Smith, against Geno Auriemma, both pregame, and then post-game, and then in the days after. It felt like that was the championship. Geno Auriemma and UConn, the, you know, their team, that was, of course, the dynasty before all of this, before Don Staley came along to disrupt it. And the Geno thing, just briefly, like, it’s lasting as a storyline, because Smith revealed a level of insecurity and sensitivity that you would not imagine based simply on his resume.
But something that’s happened with Don Staley, who is super, unapologetic when it comes to how she conducts herself, but also, in this specific case, had done nothing to apologize for. That’s where it came to be, oh, wait, Geno Auriemma is sort of, he’s expressing, perhaps unintentionally, his own mortality. And so, Dawn Staley was ascendant, and then, yeah, UCLA came along and said, actually, we’d like to be the last story anybody talks about this season.
Jen Rubin
There’s a lot of discussion whether a rivalry like that between the coaches is good, because it creates drama, which sports loves, or whether it’s really a distraction. What’s your take on that?
Pablo Torre
I love it. I love it. And I say that because, I want sports to always be about human interest and a character study, and at a certain point, something that is unfailingly interesting to me is when someone who seems like they have won everything still feels like they need to prove how great they are. And sometimes this is expressed, healthily, in terms of just, like, wow, they have a relentless hunger to win. And other times, it expresses itself in pettiness, and deep, deep, insecurity and resentment. And so, for those, by the way, who missed the whole thing, it was like, Gino Auriemma wanted not just one, but two sort of pre-game handshakes with Dawn Staley, and she was missed.
She did not realize that this was a tradition that she had to abide by, and nor did I, frankly, that you needed to, like, kiss his ring on bended knee twice. And so, the fact that afterwards, you know, he doesn’t really even, I would say, adequately hold his hand up and say, you know what. I got the emotions getting the better of me in that scenario, I apologize. The fact that he didn’t… he released a statement in which he did not even say Dawn Staley’s name.
Jen Rubin
I know, and that was… seemed to me the pettiest. He said he apologized to the staff, like, does that include her, or not include her? I’m not sure.
Pablo Torre
And the thing about college sports, in brief, to your real question, is… These are teams, these are sports in which the coach is the most important character. And I say that as someone who’s as pro-labor as anybody, but when it comes to college sports, of course, the coach sticks around. The coach sets the culture, and so when it comes to both misconduct inside of a program, as well as its success, the coach gets credit. And in this case, it’s hard not to imagine a team that has been more imprinted by a coach than Geno Auriemma.
Jen Rubin
So, On the men’s side, neither one of those semifinal games was remotely competitive. And, you know, in some ways, Michigan does seem to be the sleeper. It’s hard to call them the sleeper, because, obviously, it’s Michigan, they were ranked what they were ranked. Any thoughts on later tonight?
Pablo Torre
Yeah, I mean, Michigan has been blowing out everybody they played. And it has been, largely drama-free. UConn, you know, speaking of, again, like, the UConn head coach is providing a lot of the psychoanalysis opportunity here. You know, Dan Hurley was the guy who was headbutting. He would dispute the headbutting characterization, but he went forehead to forehead with a referee. After one of the most dramatic, game-winning shots you’ve ever seen. That’s this coach.
And so his strategy is going to be… We know how good Michigan is. They love to run, they love to fast break, they love to run their opponents off the court. can UConn do what it’s really good at, in a sort of boxing styles-make-fight sort of way, of slowing the game down, of being very methodical, of running a zillion screens to get to their desired action. And so the X’s and O’s of this, it’s going to incentivize UConn. To play a style that might read as boring tonight. They want to get that game to, like, 60 or so possessions, whereas Michigan would just like to score a zillion points on you, which they have effectively done against everyone they’ve played.
Jen Rubin
Exactly. It’s certainly true of Connecticut, but it’s true on both the men’s and the women’s side that the prowess at three-point shots has gotten astronomically better. Is that just a function of practice? Is that better training? Is it because coaches have figured out the odds and are encouraging players to shoot more, because the odds, even if you’re hitting 40%, is still a better play than hitting twos?
Pablo Torre:
Yeah, I mean, it is the math winning. It is the nerds, frankly, winning. I mean, you see it, of course, in… in capitalism generally, like, the nerds won. It’s true in sports, too. I go to this conference called the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference every year, and what seems like… 15 years running, people have expressed what you have just said, which seems both very stupidly simple, but is also something that took a while to get internalized in basketball, which is that 3 is more than 2, and that when you do the, you know, they call it, you know, it’s basically probabilities, but expected value is the term in the world of the nerds.
40% of a 3-point shot, you know, is still better than whatever the equivalent is for a 2. So, in that regard, what you’re seeing is at the NBA level, the 3-pointer takeover, you’re seeing it at every level, and then you have these characters, like Steph Curry, who’s just back from injury this past weekend as well, you see him being so deeply popular and transcendent, and frankly, entertaining to watch. That the stigma around what used to feel like, you know, when the 3-pointer was first instituted, it came from the ABA, first off. It was a Globetrotter-esque thing, and then it became something that embodied the optimization of the game, and now you’re not shooting it, you’re not good at it, it’s hard to get a job at the college or the pro level.
Jen Rubin
Yeah, exactly. And, you know, this is a perfect example of how the nerds, it sometimes is counterintuitive, because kids and coaches are told over and over again, take the high percentage shot, you know, get in as far as you can. And in fact. That’s not mathematically the best formula, if you have people who can hit threes. And that’s what we have.
So he always amazes me, although it shouldn’t, as someone who is very bad at picking brackets. That there are always lots of surprises along the way, but when you get down to the final four, the final two, the cream really does rise to the top. And in particularly in the men’s game, what has risen to the top has not been the ACC, which used to dominate or the SEC. We’re in an age in which the Big Ten seems to be dominating. Is that another function of the talent, the NIL money, the ability to go get players regardless of geography?
Pablo Torre
It’s such a good question, because if you grew up watching college sports, you were familiar with, like, these regional sort of biases, these trend lines, and all I can tell you is that Because we’re living in a world in which conferences don’t even make geographic sense anymore.
Where it’s like, wait a minute, who’s in the Pacific? I mean, who knows? It used to be called the Pac-10, right? Now, the Pac-3. They’re, you know, Rutgers is is not… I mean, the conferences don’t make sense anymore, and so the fact that Rutgers is a Big Ten school is just what are we even doing anymore?
So for me, it’s entirely about this era in which not only are conferences so deeply, not what we remember, but also The transfer portal has enabled freedom of movement year to year, and NIL has allowed these de facto payments to attract talent to go from school to school. There is no geography as destiny anymore. It’s familiar to, I think, anybody who lives in this country. It’s your financial status is destiny.
It’s no surprise, Jen, that Michigan and UConn both invest heavily in basketball. I mean, wake me up, I guess, when there’s a school that doesn’t spend on its basketball program that makes it to the Final Four, you know?
Jen Rubin
Exactly. So… Have we seen yet, or is it too early to see, that the availability of the portal and NIL money is decreasing the one-and-dones? Is that happening, or too soon to tell?
Pablo Torre
No, I think it’s happening, and I think, of course, when a player is so good that they will be the number one overall pick, then, yes, we will see the one-and-done freshman. Right. But in real terms, what used to be true, I mean, really, of, like, the women’s game, where it’s like, you might get paid more, as a college player than you would as even with the WNBA wage scale now being, drastically improved because of the CBA, which we talked about the last time, I think in the NBA, there’s a real recognition that, wait a minute, I could get 6 years of 7-figure salary, if I really wanted to, or I could be, an end-of-the-first-round sort of a pick, or high second rounder.
I think we’re seeing those choices happen. I also think we’re getting… And I think Illinois was a really good example of this, especially… all these teams now have, like, foreign players that they’re getting to play for them in the Midwest because they’re able to pay.
Jen Rubin
Midwest had Eastern Europe playing for them.
Pablo Torre
Speaking of the ways in which the conferences don’t necessarily reflect the geographies you remember, yes, you’re getting players who might have gone directly, or rather, they would have gone maybe to a pro team in Europe and then to the NBA. They had chose to stop over among the cornfields of the Big Ten, because guess what? You can get paid just as well, if not better, if you make that stopover.
Jen Rubin
And that is the perfect segue to golf, because NCAA Golf has long recruited people from Europe to come over, so you have people from all over the world who spent 4 years at Texas, or 4 years at Oklahoma. So, a golf, I’m biased. I like warm weather, not cold weather, so watching the British Open is not as beautiful for me as watching the Masters. But this is, I think, still the epitome of golf. We haven’t heard a lot from Scotty Scheffler. Is this his time to emerge? Is it some of the other players who have been consistently knocking at the door? What’s your sense of what this year’s gonna bring?
Pablo Torre
I’m always gonna monitor John Rahm, speaking of, Europeans. I’m always gonna monitor someone like, of course, Rory McIlroy, who overcame his own personal psychological demons to. win the thing, last year. Bryson DeChambeau, in all of his tinkering, in all of his, like, mad scientists. Trump-adjacent med scientist, kind of, like, aesthetic. I’m always interested in him. But it’s Scottie Scheffler to me. And if you look at the betting odds, not that they are gospel, but it’s not especially close.
And Scottie Scheffler, I mean, is not only the world number one, but he has that thing, and we always end up talking about what is special about a particular athlete’s mentality. he has this mentality where he has a larger view of what really matters in life, and we’ve seen him say, you know, I will win a major, and 5 minutes later, I will be sort of, like, back to Earth. Knowing that this wasn’t the thing that actually was going to deliver me my personal fulfillment, my long-term existential sort of satisfaction.
And yet that is kind of an ideal golf psychology. Because the question is always, can you have perspective, but also be, hyper-competitive. And in golf, what Scottie Scheffler is a living testament to is that those things do not need to be in conflict. I find that to be healthy and instructive for anybody.
Jen Rubin
There was a profile, pardon me if I got this wrong, but I think it was The Athletic, that Sammy, he not only has the big picture, but he has the tiniest picture, meaning he doesn’t look at a round of golf, he doesn’t look at a tournament of golf, it’s every shot. What’s the best shot he can hit this time? And then that moment is gone. And the next shot, and the next shot.
That takes a kind of a superhuman focus and ability to weed out. That’s kind of what all players dream of. having, whether it’s in the zone, or being present, whatever, you know, psychological speak you have, that’s kind of a remarkable thing, when You’re playing for millions and millions of dollars, and fame, and the crowds, and everything else.
Pablo Torre
So the question becomes, like, what’s his superpower in a more, sort of, like, concrete way? And the superpower is that he is remarkably consistent. You know, he’s that guy who’s just not going to make mistakes in the way that other humans will. And that speaks to both his, his flexibility and his ability to move from difficult shot to difficult shot. It also speaks to a certain level of calm, and that’s what all of this really is.
I mean, look, golf is a game in which the concept of defense is sort of, like, almost this abstraction, right? Because there is no one explicitly playing defense against you, except you are. Because the difficulty of your neuromuscular system is can you repeat very specific movements over and over and over again in a way that makes you seem machine-like? And so, to get to that form of enlightenment, of physical enlightenment, you need to have a consistency that feel superhuman. And Scottie’s is exactly the embodiment of that, because if you look at him, his mechanics, they seem unconventional, his footwork’s different—I’ve read articles where, golf experts marvel at, like, thank God no one got to him and made him and cookie cut. Because what he became, in his own unpredictable way, is one of the most predictable performers in all of the sport.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. So, do you have a favorite—we’ll end on this—a favorite Masters moment?
Pablo Torre
Oh, man. I mean, it is gonna be Tiger. I mean, I remember the one they put on the cover of Sports Illustrated, it’s important to—and it’s really hard to… You know what, you don’t need to divorce the two, it’s the same guy. I was gonna say, it’s hard to hold different images of Tiger together, because you want to celebrate the guy on the cover of Sports Illustrated on that gallery, with these palisades of human beings, as he is establishing himself as, actually, I might be the greatest to ever do it. Right? Like, there is that version of Tiger the Prodigy.
And then there’s the version of him at 50 years old who can no longer play in the Masters, even though you watch this video of him, the police body cam, in which he says to the police officers, who are, like, trying to look at and play with his putter. You know, in one of these classic, just, like, American scenes, even though he sang to them, yeah, I’m gonna play at the Masters, and you’re like, well, I can’t believe it’s the same guy, except of course you can. Except, of course, the guy at 50 years old who we’re seeing flip his car over multiple times over multiple years is the guy who is still trying to get back to the feeling of what it was like to be on that Sports Illustrated cover when he was invincible.
If there’s a through line in all these topics, Jen, it’s someone who achieves greatness and is still chasing the validation they thought they were guaranteed as a condition of winning it. And, spoiler alert, that’s not what brings you that fulfillment, and that’s, again, what Scotty Scheffler might be early on in terms of his own personal journey.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. And what he said is the ultimate life lesson. He says, I just love playing. I love practicing. I love going back out to the driving range. And you know what? If you don’t love what you do, forget it, because it’s too hard to gut it out week after week.
So, we will be thrilled tonight, we’ll be thrilled over the weekend at the Masters, really a great week in sports. So as always, Pablo, thank you. And you know who we didn’t mention? the crazy war criminal in the White House, right?
Pablo Torre
The guy who was, standing next to the Easter Bunny while making pronouncements that effectively are, yes, war crimes. I saw that video, and I was like, AI has gone too far, and then I was like, oh no, this is just….
Jen Rubin
You kind of fell for the Easter Bunny, he sort of wanted to get the hell out of here.
Pablo Torre
At the same time, I am… I suppose that if you were to get into the mind of the guy in that suit, he would tell you, I was very glad that no one could see my face.
Jen Rubin
Good point, good point. Take care, Pablo, we’ll see you next week.
Pablo Torre
Thanks, Jen. Talk to you soon.
