DAILY REPORT

CBS sideline reporter Michele Tafoya was pressed into play-by-play duty for the final 2:37 of the first half of the Kentucky-Wake Forest Midwest Regional final at Minneapolis when Sean McDonough was overcome by flu.

McDonough returned for the second half.

Tafoya, a graduate of Aviation High in Redondo Beach and the University of California, handled the assignment quite well. She had done some play-by-play on Big Ten women’s basketball for a cable network in the Minneapolis area and had done play-by-play on two women’s games for CBS this season.

Tafoya said that about three minutes before she went on the air she was summoned to the table where McDonough and commentator Bill Raftery were and that McDonough looked ill. “To be honest, it was so brief the whole thing is a blur,” she said. “I do remember at one point looking down at Sean’s board [where he keeps his notes] and not being able to read a thing.”

During her brief stint Saturday, the only embarrassing part was a couple of remarks by Raftery, who said to Tafoya, “You’re prettier than Sean.” After Wake Forest’s Tim Duncan drew a crowd of Kentucky players, Raftery said, “Isn’t that what happens to you when you walk into a room?”

It’s believed the only woman to do play-by-play on a network men’s basketball telecast was free-lancer Leandra Reilly, who filled in for Steve Albert on a SportsChannel telecast of an NBA game between the New Jersey Nets and Philadelphia 76ers in 1988. Reilly’s commentator on that telecast, coincidentally, was Raftery.