TV-Radio / Larry Stewart : In Broadcast Booth, Packer Was the Star

OK, Billy Packer talks too much. But he has a lot to say.

OK, Billy Packer wasn’t perfect Monday night. But he was pretty close to it.

Commentator Packer was the star of what was generally a good NCAA championship game telecast for CBS.

There are two reasons why it was good: (1) Director Bob Fishman, and (2) Packer.

Fishman, for the most part, stuck with the basics, using his midcourt, medium-high camera for most of the live action. He didn’t seem compelled to use all of the 11 cameras that were at his disposal. Fortunately, he didn’t make excessive use of his floor-level cameras, although some may argue even once is too much.

Packer made some mistakes, but not many. His biggest came with 10 seconds left to play and Villanova leading by three, 65-62. He said that since Georgetown had no timeouts left, all Villanova had to do to win the game was “just let the ball hang out of bounds.”

The Wildcats, Packer reasoned, could eat up five seconds, then, even if Georgetown scored, they could eat up five more seconds. But since the referees had stopped the clock, it would remain at 10 seconds until the Wildcats inbounded the ball.

Packer admitted his other major mistake. At the end of the first half, Georgetown’s Reggie Williams shoved Villanova’s Chuck Everson. Packer said the referee did the right thing by not calling a foul. Later, when play-by-play announcer Brent Musburger said he thought a foul should be called, Packer agreed.

A minor mistake, as things turned out, came in the second half. After Villanova’s Gary McClain fell and was inadvertently kicked in the head by Georgetown’s David Wingate, Dr. Packer immediately proclaimed he wasn’t hurt. He even admonished the Villanova trainer for wanting to check McClain, because then Villanova would have been charged with a timeout. McClain wasn’t hurt, but how could Packer have been so certain?

A highpoint for Packer--and Villanova, for that matter--came near the end of the first half. After Georgetown’s Bill Martin missed a jump shot that bounced out to Villanova’s McClain with about 1:50 on the clock, Packer said: “I’d spread it out right now.” Just then McClain motioned to his teammates to do just that. The strategy worked. Villanova scored a late basket to take a 29-28 lead and a lot of momentum into the locker room.

Now for some lowpoints:

--The pregame show. CBS tried to cram too much hype into less than 10 minutes. Interviews were butched. One with USC Coach Stan Morrison couldn’t even be understood. He was the victim of bad editing.

--Musburger’s gushing. He just can’t seem to resist. Toward the end of the first half, he said: “This is the best half of basketball I have ever seen.” Toward the end of the second half, he called the upset the greatest in the history of NCAA title games. He later called it “ one of the greatest,” which is more like it.

After the game, Dick Stockton reminded the audience of some other pretty big ones--Cincinnati over Ohio State in 1961, Texas Western (now Texas El Paso) over Kentucky in 1966 and North Carolina State over Houston two years ago.

Stockton, by the way, did some excessive gushing, too, when he told Musburger and Packer that they had done “a superb job of calling the game.” A CBS employee shouldn’t be the judge of that.

One last thing. At the end of the telecast, CBS showed some tournament highlights, then put up a graphic that said they were in the memory of Rick Sharp. A nice touch, but most viewers wouldn’t know of Sharp. He was a CBS producer who died of a heart attack at the age of 40 on Jan. 9.