The early call from CBS sounds good for Bruins

The way CBS commentator Billy Packer sees it, Florida’s 73-57 victory over UCLA in last year’s national championship game actually gives the Bruins an advantage in Saturday’s rematch.

“Emotionally, the fact that UCLA is the team that Florida beat gives UCLA a little bit of a leg up,” said Packer, who will be working his 33rd Final Four on Saturday and Monday.

Packer also sees Darren Collison, who replaced Jordan Farmar as the Bruins’ starting point guard, as another plus.

“Collison is a better factor for UCLA than Farmar was last year because of the way the game is played,” he said.

Of the Bruins as a whole, Packer added, “I think they have an understanding of what it takes to beat Florida, so it may be a one-up for UCLA in terms of the emotional factor. I think that will all play out in the first five to 10 minutes of the game.”

CBS studio analyst Clark Kellogg agrees with Packer.

“When teams are evenly matched and they return primarily the same personnel, the advantage always, psychologically, goes to the team that has lost,” Kellogg said.

“You cannot manufacture the kind of hunger that a team that is seeking revenge has. You can’t drum that up. You can’t drum up the emotional high pitch that comes with being an underdog, that comes with having the salt in the wounds.”

Packer and Kellogg were on a conference call with reporters, and Packer interjected, “Not only did they lose, they got hammered. They were a better team last year than the result indicated. It’s one thing if Florida had eked out a victory. When you get hammered by somebody, that is a heck of a motivating factor.”

Packer, careful not to carry his theory too far, said, “The reverse of that is, this Florida team is obviously very experienced and they are a champion and a lot of times a champion just isn’t going to go away.

“That’s what makes this such an intriguing matchup.”

Packer said the Gators remind him of the Nevada Las Vegas team that was trying to repeat in 1991 and was upset by Duke in the Final Four semifinals.

“I think that UNLV team came into the Final Four bordering on becoming one of the great teams in college basketball,” Packer said. “But they kind of lost focus of what they had to get done in that Final Four. And they probably lost it midway into February.

“I think this Florida team may be lucky, unlike Vegas, because they faced adversity in February. If you remember, Vegas came in undefeated. Florida got knocked around by people in their own league and I think that helped get them get refocused and that’s what might carry them over the top in this Final Four.

“Vegas hadn’t been really ever challenged going into the Final Four and probably felt they couldn’t get beat and therefore their minds were on other things than the job at hand.”

Short waves

Preceding Saturday’s Final Four coverage, which begins at 3 p.m., will be a 2 1/2 -hour CBS pregame show at 12:30 p.m. Highlights include an interview Greg Gumbel taped with John Wooden and a feature on the Bruins’ Arron Afflalo.

The women’s Final Four Sunday and Tuesday will get the “ESPN Full Circle” treatment. The semifinals Sunday at 4 and 6 p.m. and the final Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. will get traditional high-definition coverage on ESPN and various types of coverage on ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNews, ESPN Radio, ESPN360.com and ESPN.com.

On Saturday, ESPN kicks off a 16-day, multi-platform “After Jackie” initiative marking the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. At 2:30 p.m., ESPN will televise an exhibition game between Cleveland and St. Louis at Memphis, Tenn., site of the National Civil Rights Museum. On April 15, extensive Jackie Robinson Day coverage will conclude with San Diego Padres playing the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium.

The baseball season begins Sunday, and the game that night on ESPN2 is the New York Mets at St. Louis. ESPN and ESPN2 will televise six games on Monday, including the Angels’ opener against Texas at 7 p.m., which also will be televised on FSN West. The Dodgers’ opener at Milwaukee on Monday will be televised by FSN Prime Ticket at 11 a.m.

The NBA on ABC, which went up against the men’s NCAA tournament last Sunday with a single game, Phoenix at Sacramento, will face less competition with a doubleheader this Sunday. It will be Miami at Detroit at 10 a.m. and Dallas at Phoenix at 12:30. Last Sunday, the Phoenix-Sacramento game at 12:30 got only a 1.0 national rating, the same rating NBC got for its NHL coverage at 9:30 a.m. And NBC doesn’t pay a rights fee for the NHL.

As expected, Fox has announced that its NFL pregame show next season will return to the friendly confines of a studio on the Fox lot in West Los Angeles. Curt Menefee, who now lives in Santa Monica, will be permanent host and Joe Buck will concentrate on play by play.

The consensus is that Joe Theismann got bumped out of ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” booth and replaced by Ron Jaworski because ESPN executives believe Jaworski will do a better job of bringing on Kornheiser. But don’t feel too sorry for Theismann. A source said he has five years left on his ESPN contract that pays him $2 million a year.

larry.stewart@latimes.com