Nantz & Co. give March Madness a rudder
Three men, all of different generations, one of them twice as old as any Sooner player, another more than thrice as old, joined the OU basketball team in a huddle before practice Thursday at Colonial Life Arena.
Call it a snapshot of the NCAA Tournament.
The fresh-start feeling of not just teams, but players. Aaron Calixte, this time last year a Maine point guard whose March Madness experience consisted of two America East Tournament blowouts to Vermont, stood transfixed at the men who joined the circle.
Jim Nantz, 59. Bill Raftery, 75. Grant Hill, 46.
They say college basketball stars are transient. Trae Young a year ago, Zion Williamson now, here for but a season. But television long ago created a mania that turns the NCAA Tournament into a national obsession, and the faces and voices of CBS are constants, each spring calling the buzzerbeaters and Cinderellas and heartbreaks.
Lon Kruger knows that. So when his Sooners took the court Thursday and finished their stretching, Kruger gathered his team and called over Raftery to speak to his
team. Raftery, who once was a coaching staple in the all-important New York market and has since become an iconic broadcaster, in turn called over Nantz and Hill.
And there they stood, chatting for maybe a minute with a team unlikely to go far but with hopes high and memories mounting.
Nantz calls Raftery a “great ambassador for the game. One of the most beloved figures in basketball history.”
Raftery, a former Seton Hall head coach whose trademark phrases (“the kiss, onions, nickeldimer”) have become part of the sport's lexicon, said, “I just said hell, `congratulations.' Then Grant came over, and we told `em Grant was a great player. They started smiling. At least we got one player in the group.”
I'll say. Twenty-five years ago, Hill led Duke to the NCAA championship game, when the Blue Devils famously were done in by Scotty Thurman's rainbow 3-point shot, which gave Arkansas its only national championship in basketball.
Duke's victim in the semifinals of that 1994 Final Four? A Florida team coached by Lon Kruger.
See, that's part of the charm of the NCAA Tournament, which every year saves college basketball from an increasingly insufferable regular season. All kinds of new players come and go, but there always are the familiar faces, from television to coaches, who give the tournament a sense of history, and links to schools or sites or coaches that give the game a track.
Nantz said some coaches ask the television crew to speak to their team; some don't.
“It just kind of depends on the coach,” Nantz said. “Obviously, Raft is really immersed in the coaching fraternity. And I've been around long enough that I know a lot of these guys from many moons ago.”
In fact, that's what Nantz told the Sooners: “Twenty-five years ago, Coach (Kruger) was in the Final Four. And that guy was too,” pointing to Hill, who went on to a 16-year NBA career.
I'm sure not every Sooner was enthralled. While Calixte and Reynolds had wide eyes, and even veteran Christian James soon after practice tweeted, “LEGENDS,” another veteran, Kristian Doolittle, was stoic as always. Just before practice, Doolittle had said he wouldn't be watching much basketball Thursday night.
“I'm going to go to sleep tonight,” Doolittle said. “We play at 12:30. Can't be up too late. We're going to have an early breakfast tomorrow.”
Of course, the Sooners are wise enough to know Nantz and Co. aren't in Columbia to see OU-Ole Miss. Mount Zion is here. So Duke drew the A team.
But getting placed in South Carolina with Duke was an extra benefit for these Sooners' NCAA Tournament assignment.
Nantz has been the voice of the NCAA Tournament since 1991, has been the voice of the Masters for longer than that and now has called five Super Bowls. When the NCAA Tournament was but a dream for Calixte at Maine and fellow graduate transfer Miles Reynolds at Pacific, they knew the voice of Nantz. It was a nice touch by Kruger to give his players a touch of the largesse and tradition of the NCAA Tournament.
Because you see, the NCAA Tournament for players can be about the same thing as it is for us fans and media, who have been enticed by the thing for 40 years.
Making memories.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-7608080 or at btramel@oklahoman.com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. You can also view his personality page at newsok. com/berrytramel.