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Jay Bilas finally meets rapper Young Jeezy (VIDEO)

Jay Bilas

IMAGE DISTRIBUTED FOR RISING STARS - Television personality and honoree Jay Bilas is seen at the Jay Williams Rising Stars Gala on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 in New York. (Brian Ach/AP Images for Rising Stars)

AP Images for Rising Stars

If you follow college basketball analyst Jay Bilas on Twitter, you’ve probably seen him begin each morning with a tweet or two that ends with the trademark phrase, “I gotta go to work.”

That trademark phrase comes from Atlanta rapper Young Jeezy, who Bilas has often shouted out on the air and called an urban philosopher.

Jeezy, who has two platinum albums and two gold albums among his six studio releases, also returned the favor by shouting out Bilas on the remix to E-40’s “Function” by saying, “we goin’ to work like Jay Bilas.”

So, as you can see, Bilas and Jeezy have a mutual respect, but the two titans of their respective industries had never actually met in-person until a recent video feature with Vibe.

Bilas starts off in the video by reciting a Jeezy line into the microphone -- which is a fantastic start to the clip -- and soon Jeezy appears to back him up and give the commentator some help.

From there, Bilas and Jeezy sit down together and Bilas discusses how his admiration of the rapper became public. After finding out that former Michigan State forward Draymond Green was listening to Jeezy on his headphones before a game that Bilas was calling, former ESPN colleague and current North Carolina assistant coach Hubert Davis asked Bilas if he had any idea who Jeezy was.

Because he evidently keeps his ear to the streets, Bilas was already familiar and a fan of Jeezy and Davis and Bilas mentioned the exchange on the air that day. The rest is history.

Soon, Bilas was called out by a fan for not being an actual Jeezy fan and Bilas began dropping verses on Twitter, before finally ending with the now trademark finale of, “I gotta go to work.”

It’s now become a morning routine for Bilas and he also shouted out Jeezy in a recent commencement speech at Queens University in Charlotte.

Hopefully these new friends can get together in the studio and cut a track soon.

(H/T: FanSided)

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