March Madness is officially here, and Asher Smith is back on Jake’s Takes for Episode 147. In this episode, we open with reactions to the Big Ten Championship game between Michigan and Purdue, including what Purdue proved, what Michigan still needs to clean up, and how injuries could affect both teams heading into the NCAA Tournament. Then we go through the entire first round of the bracket, game by game, giving our picks, upset alerts, matchup thoughts, and the teams we believe are best built for a run.

This episode is your full first-round breakdown if you’re filling out your bracket and want real conversation around the matchups, not just random picks. Then, after this episode, we finish the bracket in a YouTube-only episode, where we complete the rest of our predictions and lock in the full bracket.

If you want March Madness talk, bracket strategy, Big Ten discussion, and first-round insight, this is the episode for you.

If you want, I can also tighten this into a shorter Spotify description version.