You can’t miss it. Even if you don’t know much about basketball, you can’t miss it.
Yet, the 75 or 80 experts who worked from the CBS and Turner TV studios the first two full days of the NCAA Tournament kept missing it. Or ignoring it.
For crying out loud, St. Louis’s 83-80 overtime win over N.C. State included — yikes! — 63 free throws, 31 of them — triple yikes! — missed. SLU was, egads, 12-of-26. N.C. State shot 37 (!) of them, made only 20. How can that not be among the top stories of that game?
But it wasn’t. It was 3-pointers and put-backs and all the rest of the highlight-reel stuff that leaves so many games indistinguishable from the others.
North Dakota State pulled a slight surprise, 80-75 over Oklahoma. Except the genuinely remarkable — NDSU was 20-of-22 from the free-throw line — was given throw-in attention. Free throws aren’t sexy enough to make the cut, let alone news.
The four fellas in truTV’s studio gave the game their overview. There was a pile of video, plus a full-screen graphic that listed six “keys” from the game. But not even a sniff that NDSU was a why-ask-why 20-of-22 from the line. Finally, Seth Davis quickly threw that in; it was C-listed.
Then there was that finish to Dayton’s upset of Ohio State. Vee Sanford hit a running bank shot, then Ohio State’s Aaron Craft missed a runner near the buzzer. And that, we repeatedly were shown and told, was the entire story.
But lost to such easy, TV-simple story-telling was that with :26 left, OSU up one, Shannon Scott fouled Dayton’s Dyshawn Pierre as he tried to shoot a 3. Scott, a 66-percent free-throw shooter, next hit all three to put Dayton up by one. Pierre finished 7-for-7 from the line.
Heck, in his previous game, Dayton’s three-point loss to St. Joe’s in the Atlantic 10 tournament, Pierre was 1-for-3, Dayton a sad 6-for-14. Next game: Pierre’s 7-for-7, Dayton’s 13-for-17. Huge difference, no?
What are called free throws can be very expensive, either way. They’re often game-makers, game-breakers. And though they don’t seem to count for much among expert analysts, they count. Man, do they count.
Mercer pass to beat Duke took guts
Branch Rickey famously said, “Luck is the residue of design.” Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors only the prepared mind.” Now try this: Audacity favors the audacious.
From my tush, the best play of the first two full days of the NCAAs was the no-guts/no-glory pass that put Duke away.
With :46 left, Duke hit a free throws to make it 69-66, Mercer. Mercer’s Bud Thomas, covertly communicating with guard Anthony White, then took a chance. As White pivoted and bolted down court, Thomas let it fly.
White caught it on one bounce, laid it in. Fabulous! (CBS’s Len Elmore got it!)
When given a chance to take a chance, basketball can be a gas. Kids. Consider that the Knicks never would even consider such a play.
WCBS-Ch. 2’s 5 p.m. news Thursday landed an exclusive it was enormously proud to promote: a behind-the-scenes look at CBS’s NCAA Tournament studio and control rooms!
As if that wasn’t enough, WCBS News then presented exclusive interviews with CBS Sports studio host Greg Gumbel and CBS Sports president Sean McManus! Holy broadcast journalism school, Batman!
Can’t listen to anything Chris Russo or Mike Francesa think about the NCAA Tournament without chuckling.
There was that Sunday night when they hosted a national radio selection show, expertly declaring the selection committee did a terrific job; they had no complaints.
The next day on WFAN, after reading the newspapers — all convinced the selection committee did a horrible job — they performed a synchronized 180-degree backflip, ripping the committee for a terrible job.
They pretended the two guys heard praising that committee the night before were two other guys.
Poulter charity a ‘Dream’
Ian Poulter is one of these PGA guys you don’t know which way to go on. At times he seems charming, funny, friendly. Other times he looks angry, mean, almost demonic. And he dresses kinda wild, breeding suspicion that he is hot-dogging.
But recently on his SiriusXM PGA Tour (Ch. 93) show, Poulter, an Englishman who lives in Orlando, Fla., with his wife and three kids, was asked to explain the children’s charity to which he has given himself, Dreamflight:
Every March, a British Airways jet is chartered in London then loaded with 192 seriously ill and physically and mentally impaired children, some so poor, said Poulter, “they’d never before even been on a bus,” and are flown to Orlando.
The first-class section of the jet is equipped to resemble an infirmary, as many of the kids’ medical needs can be immediate or steady.
When the aircraft lands in Orlando, more than 80 police and fire department vehicles meet it on the tarmac; fire trucks spray water on the jet; the kids are delighted. Then, for the next 10 days, the 192 kids are shepherded to and through all the kids’ stuff Orlando holds.
And to hear Poulter talk of it, you know he is not merely lending the charity his name and fame, but his heart and soul. Anyway, until further notice, I know which way to go on Ian Poulter.
With Louisville-Manhattan — heard it was a good one — scheduled for a 10:35 p.m. tip Thursday in Orlando, Fla., it didn’t matter if it was Orlando or Oslo. The game ended just before 1 a.m. Ridiculous.
After an elbowing call against Syracuse deep into its blowout of Western Michigan, CBS’s Bill Raftery said he would have let that foul go. Verne Lundquist to Raftery: “Didn’t you play in the Eastern League?” The old EBL was broken buses and broken noses.
Ron Hunt, the first Mets-made player of note — he was the NL’s starting second baseman in the 1964 All Star Game — has told friends the Mets have ditched him as per Old-Timers’ events.
Ex-ESPN sideline reporter/self-promoter Rachel Nichols, now with Turner’s NCAA Tournament team, has been pretty good with in-game info, now that she has removed “me,” “my” and “I” from her reports.
Six-seed UMass losing to 11-seed Tennessee was not an upset. UT was favored by four.
Horrible dream last night. All 2015 cars came with Mike Francesa’s voice and directions on navigation systems. They weren’t optional.