NCAA Cinderella story? Quality announcing team
NCAA Tournament Notebook:
Again I’m moved to favor the work of CBS analyst
Steve Lappas.
Thursday, working the Oregon-South Carolina game on TNT, Lappas saw and spoke it all so clearly, heads to toes. Thus we were shown and told how players weren’t moving their feet on defense and didn’t make smart passes the other way. He continues to make you stop, look, listen and learn. He’s Ed, as in continuing ed.
He and play-by-play man Andrew Catalon also spoke as if we could see what couldn’t be missed. They even allowed a successful 3-point shot to speak for itself rather than trying to top it with transparently forced Kevin Harlan/Gus
Johnson shouting.
The most unintended comedy came when the studio gathering of Ernie Johnson, Clark Kellogg, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith tried to provide insights on Duquesne’s next game after its upset of BYU.
It was clear that they knew nothing about Duquesne’s basketball team, and that stood to reason as few viewers knew about the Pittsburgh school’s team. We’d have applauded their honesty had they simply said, “We’re in the dark on this one.” Smith came closest to candor with, “We don’t even know who they’ll play next.” But they instead killed time and filled space with a pile of platitudinous palaver.
Touts of the first round belonged to the all-knowing, colossally wrong Mike Francesa — who advised McNeese, a 6 ¹/₂ -point dog, vs. Gonzaga. McNeese lost by 21. He also said Kentucky, a 14-point favorite, would crush 14-seed Oakland (Mich.). Kentucky lost by four.
Brings to recall Fransayso’s claim that Louisville QB Teddy Bridgewater will be the “sleeper” in the 2003 NFL draft, “a steal.” Bridgewater remained at Louisville, as he wasn’t even eligible for the 2013 draft.
And after the detritus has settled in L.A., I suspect we’ll learn that Shohei Ohtani’s since-fired interpreter, a reported $4.5 million gambling loser, was a subscriber to Francesa’s sports booksponsored podcasted touts.
➤ Bill Bradley on basketball’s escalating financial reliance on gambling on games:
“I don’t think players should be turned into roulette chips” he told NBA Substack reporter Marc Stein. “It’s a scandal waiting to happen. There will always be gambling around the edges, but to legitimize it as a central part of the sport is counter to the values of the game.”
Still no word from Temple University’s acknowledged investigation into four highly suspicious basketball betting line movements and results this season.
➤ Politicians & Sports, continued: False alarm puller, N.Y. Rep. Jamaal Bowman, recently defended the appearance of hate-mongering, proud and loud Jew-bas her, history fabricating and mainstreamed fringe lunatic Louis Farrakhan as an honored image in a mural.
Wonder how Bowman reconciles Farrakhan’s applauded spew during the Mike Tyson rape case when he declared to a room filled with black male Muslims,“When a sister says no, she really means yes!”
For crying out loud, Farrakhan essentially supports the right for black men have nonconsensual sex — to rape — black women! Bowman and Farrakhan’s many female supporters are good with that?
But it grows more insane by the minute.