One Shining Podcast with Tate Frazier

I’ll start by saying I like this podcast. I’ve listened to this and Tate’s previous podcast since 2020. I’d call myself a fan of a team rather than the sport, so I appreciate the 10,000 foot view of what else is going on, along with Tate’s podcast demeanor. Frankly, there’s never been a great depth of knowledge about west coast basketball on any iteration of a national college basketball podcast. That’s fine: it would be unreasonable to expect them to know every detail about every team. I do expect them to not be factually wrong on their platform, like calling a lead guard with a 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio a “turnover machine“, or saying that a 21-year-old is “in defiance of God still playing college basketball,” or claiming that continuity will be a plus on a team with 9 new players. I wouldn’t care if—in their analysis—they disagreed with my assessment of players, but true inaccuracies like these make me question how much they actually know about other teams. There are many great media personalities with deep knowledge about west coast basketball. I hope in the future Tate will invite one of them on, rather than have national figures give their 30-second espn.com read-off on teams in the sport they cover.

As someone who grew up on ACC games broadcast regionally — and called by Jim Thacker & Billy Packer — and then attended UVa in the Ralph Sampson era (and remembers Phil Ford & Walter Davis BEFORE Michael came to Chapel Hill, and was the first freshman to ever lead a Dean Smith team in field goal attempts)…it does my heart good to hear Tate Frazier, a man who knows his college basketball in general, and the ACC in particular. (It irks me to hear people wax poetic about how the Big East was the best basketball conference in history.) And in this era of one-and-dones + overseas prospects, I turn to J. Kyle Mann and Kevin O’Connor for NBA draft analysis. So this is a perfect pairing for March Madness. Keep up the great work, guys!

I listen to at least 30 hours of podcasts a week so it has to keep my attention. This one does. I started it because it’s from TRU (the ringer universe) but I stayed because it’s really good. A little more Arkansas content would be great. 😊 Also I was at the “time out heard round the world game” so I love the intro…

First things first. This and The Mark Titus show are #1 and #2 for CBB podcasts. I don’t usually have time for both though, so I end up going to this first. Why? 1. Length. They keep it under 90 minutes and are sticking closer to the old OSP format than Titus (though Titus seems to be fixing this lately sticking to one guest per show). 2. J Kyle Mann is a better guest who has a better rapport with Tate than anyone Titus has brought on yet (again Titus has been closing the gap with Jake Marsh lately though). I’m surprised I’m going with OSP since I’m the same age as Titus, have enjoyed his stuff since the Club Trillion era, and generally felt he was a little better on the mic than Tate, but here we are.

Tate once again proves he’s woefully unqualified to have a podcast about college basketball outside of his school. If you are going to cover something on your podcast, like the Hunter Dickinson quote about Michigan, maybe actually do your job and listen to the interview, rather than perpetuate a snappy headline. The quote was taken out of context to enflame Michigan fans. What Hunter actually said was that Michigan people are nice, but that Ann Arbor has a more east coast feel because it’s a bigger, more metropolitan city than Lawrence, Kansas. Also, calling Kansas an ally of the South? This is a blatant admission that you have never once researched the border war. Kansas and Missouri literally burned things down and people died in the civil war, because Missouri was a slave state and Kansas was a free state. It’s literally the basis for the entire rivalry. Just because Bill gives you a podcast doesn’t mean you get to say whatever you want. Your job is to do even just the bare minimum amount of research before you turn on the microphone, and you can’t manage to do that. Do better.

I enjoyed Tate much more when he and Titus were doing this show and T’d Up and more so when he was Simmons’ lackey. Now, he is trying to pretend like he is hosting a national college hoops show, but there is WAY too much UNC and UK talk than those programs deserve. And if you’re a fan of the schools he clearly hates (Duke, Arizona, etc), forget about getting an objective take on your team.