CBS won’t LaForce the issue
SMILING throughout, CBS ssideline reporter Allie LaForce, during Thursday’s Villanova-Mount St. Mary’s game, was delighted to share this story:
Mount St. Mary’s, having qualified as a play-in two nights earlier, had flown in at 2 a.m. and now were playing some more basketball.
But that is nothing, she merrily piped. She had something “really fascinating” to tell us: Mount St. Mary’s, in the hills of northern Maryland, this season took an extended road trip: “19 days, 12 states, eight games, seven different flights, five diffe ferentShe was bus right: companies!” Fascinating!rS
AApparently, it didn’t dawn on heher happy-headed report that shshe caused intelligent viewers to holler, “Then when the heck didid they go to school?”
As a reporter, wasn’t LaForce drdriven to ask how these studentat athletes could be the first of the twtwo while on a 19-day road trip?
Or was it that because she is a sisideline reporter, reporting is jujust a sideline?
It was difficult to miss Friday what New Mexico State coach Paul Weir had in mind. Down 18 to Baylor with 1:10 left, he sent a sub sprinting to the scorer’s table to check in, ASAP. Weir then used his last timeout to allow his team to salute its only senior, Ian Baker, as he left the court.
But CBS’ “Hollerin’ ” Kevin Harlan, calling the game on truTV, heard the whistle, then declared New Mexico State was just called for travelling — though the man with the ball was cleanly, clearly dribbling it.
“No,” analyst Dan Bonner said, “just a sub.”
More Tournament stuff: So there’s Bruce Pearl, again, invited back by CBS/Turner as an studio analyst. Did it matter that in 2011 the NCAA hit Pearl, now Auburn’s coach, with a threeyear ban for cheating? No more than it mattered last year.
Len Elmore at the half of sloppy, frenetic CreightonRhode Island on TBS: “It wasn’t a masterpiece. This was not a Rembrandt or a Monet. It was probably more a Jackson Pollock.”
Does Charles Barkley get to keep all that TV endorsement money Weight Watchers paid him?