Channel 2 Will Carry UCLA, Loyola Marymount Games

Channel 2, KCBS, will televise UCLA’s and Loyola Marymount’s first-round NCAA tournament basketball games live on Friday.

UCLA’s game against Alabama Birmingham in the East Regional at Atlanta will be shown at 4 p.m., and Loyola Marymount’s game against New Mexico State in the West Regional at Long Beach will be televised at 8:30.

The NCAA has a blackout policy, so there could be a problem with the Loyola game if it isn’t sold out 24 hours in advance. But the game is expected to sell out.

The rest of the nation will get the Loyola game on CBS at 11:30 p.m., which means it will be live in the East. The announcers will be Greg Gumbel and Quinn Buckner.

Channel 2 is picking up the UCLA telecast from NCAA Productions. Announcers had not been assigned Monday.

Jay Strong, Channel 2’s director of programming, said Hank Gathers’ death is not the reason KCBS decided to show Loyola live.

“We probably would have done it anyway,” Strong said. “We are Los Angeles’ college basketball station, and we have obligations to the fans here.”

Strong said Channel 2 scrapped the halftime show of Sunday’s delayed telecast of the Pacific 10 tournament championship game between UCLA and Arizona to get the NCAA tournament pairings announcement on live.

Interestingly, UCLA’s 16-point loss to Arizona got a higher Nielsen rating than the pairings show, 4.0 to 3.0.

ESPN has announced it will televise 11 first-round games live, six on Thursday and five on Friday. Two of Thursday’s telecasts will not be complete games.

ESPN’s schedule:

THURSDAY: 9 a.m.--Clemson-BYU; 11:30--La Salle-Southern Mississippi; 1:30 p.m.--Louisville-Idaho; 4--LSU-Villanova; 6--Princeton-Arkansas (second half); 7--Indiana-California (in progress).

FRIDAY: 9 a.m.--Duke-Richmond; 11:30--Temple-St. John’s; 2 p.m.--Alabama-Colorado State; 4--Georgia-Texas; 6:30--Notre Dame-Virginia.