The view from the chair

This year’s first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament was not the most exciting action, there were no major upsets and the games were pretty boring with just 2 overtime games and a few buzzer beaters. The only double-digit seed to advance to the sweet 16 is Arizona. The good part is that my bracket is holding up pretty well, most years it in the can by now. By the way, I am beating President Obama’s picks after the first weekend and the second weekend as well. The good thing about no upsets is that there were some very good matchups.
Update #1: We did get great games and a few surprises with Missouri over Memphis and Villanova over Duke. Villanova also beat Pittsburgh to advance to the Final Four. Update #2: Your Final Four was UCONN and Michigan State, Villanova and North Carolina, until UCONN lost to Michigan State this past weekend, and North Carolina beat Villanova. Tonight, Monday April 6th it is Michigan State and North Carolina. Update #3: North Carolina won the national title in a blow out. President Obama did pick the champ, and I lost.
It’s an interesting year when the Women’s Tournament catches my interest, there were some great games and a few buzzer beaters, and they even had some upsets. The problem I have with the Women’s Tournament is that the first two rounds are held at on campus sites so some teams have their home crowd on their side. Most of the time it’s the higher seeds home court but this year some of the double-digit seeds had the advantage. This caused two major upsets as Rutgers beat a second seed Auburn and Michigan State beat a # 1 seed Duke. The Men’s Tournaments are played on neutral sites all the way through. I would love to see the Women play their first rounds with the Men.

Let me talk about some of the announcers, UCONN had the team of Carter Blackburn and Jay Bilas on Thursday, Jay is one of the best analyst in the business, Carter in the new kid on the block and may be good in the future but he had no enthusiasm for the game or the event. We had Jay with Dick Enberg for the other three games. Dick is a legend in the sports broadcasting business but this tournament he mispronounced names and called a
2-pointer a 3 pointer that clearly was not. At 74 years old he can still call Tennis better than any one but basketball is a young man’s game. I fell badly for him but when your time is up its up.
Speaking of enthusiasm, one man that had too much of it was Gus Johnson. One game I heard him scream the last name of the officials, I thought to myself, calm down, the game has not even begun. The main team this year is Jim Nantz and Clark Kellogg. Clark took over for Billy Packer who has called the Final Four since 1974 until last year. Clark was CBS’s studio analyst from 1997 until this year. I think he is better in the studio because he has more time. He uses stats and that’s more useful in the studio, at the game just call what you see. I think he will get better the more he does it. One person I would love to call the Final Four is Bill Raftery. His enthusiasm for the game is infectious. He’s a lot of fun to listen to. By the way, Raf will be on the radio to call the title game tonight. Here is one of his gems from the first round of this year’s tourament with partner Verne Lundquist.


What to watch for this weekend
Easter weekend bring us the first major of the golf season, The Masters from Augusta National in Augusta, Georgia. Converge begins Wednesday with the par-3 contest 3 to 5 P.M. on ESPN. The first two rounds will be on ESPN 4 to7:30 P.M. each day. CSB has the weekend converge on the weekend with the Third-Round on Saturday from 3:30 to 7 P.M. Easter Sunday is the Final Round from 2 to 7 P.M. For the 24th consecutive year Jim Nantz will cover the Masters for CBS (his 22nd year as host). This is CBS sport’s 54th consecutive year of converging the Masters. It is truly is a tradition unlike another and a sure sign of spring. Enjoy!!!!!

This week is the start of Baseball season. The Boston Red Sox have there home opener today at 3 P.M.

Jamie Lazaroff