CBS Is Saddled With Unremarkable Title Game

About an hour before Maryland and Indiana did a hatchet job on Monday night’s NCAA championship game, ESPN asked viewers to play editor for a minute.

Trolling for a poll during its pregame show, ESPN posed the question: “What headline is most likely to appear in Tuesday morning’s paper?”

a) “We’re Number Juan!”

(Translation: Juan Dixon leads Maryland to the championship.)

b) “The Baxter Factor!”

(Lonny Baxter leads Maryland to the championship.)

c) “Hoosier Daddy!”

(Jared Jeffries leads Indiana to an upset victory.)

d) “Great Dane!”

(Dane Fife leads Indiana to an upset victory.)

Exclamation points were flying all over the place. Bad puns too.

Halfway through the basketball game that followed on CBS, it was obvious that ESPN had blown it, ignoring the headline that would best capture the essence of the evening. Which was:

e) “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

After three weeks of basking in out-of-nowhere upsets, clutch performances and memorable finishes, CBS was handed a mutt for its final prime-time showcase.

One shining moment? Indiana’s Hoosiers and Maryland’s Terrapins spent 40 minutes of basketball time searching for, and failing to find, anything that might qualify.

In the process, they did manage to answer one pressing query: How badly can one team play and still win the NCAA championship game?

Now we know. You can turn the ball over 16 times, as Maryland did, and shoot 22% from three-point range, as Maryland did, and go more than six minutes between baskets, as Maryland did, and still win the title ... provided you are playing an opponent that also turns the ball over 16 times and shoots 34.5% from the field and 29% from the foul line.

For a while, as the wild passes flew all over the Georgia Dome, interrupted only by bobbled passes and bricked foul shots, Jim Nantz and Billy Packer blinked, swallowed hard and groped for some explanation.

“Nerves all over the place,” Nantz suggested early in the game. Except, perhaps, in the case of Indiana guard Tom Coverdale, hobbled by a sprained ankle, a fairly major injury, in Nantz’s estimation.

“The focus of the nation!” Nantz called that troublesome ankle.

But that was only until Indiana’s awful foul shooting and Maryland’s horrendous ballhandling eclipsed it.

“Neither team can settle down,” Packer said, growing more exasperated by the minute.

Gradually, however, it became clear that this was more than a case of big-game jitters.

This was a case of both teams playing very, very poorly. And there was nothing Gary Williams or Mike Davis--or, worse yet--CBS could do about it.

Usually, the NCAA final is one long parade of platitudes and superlatives, a coronation-by-commentators. As such, Dick Enberg came prepared with a glowing halftime tribute to the coaches who participated in this year’s NCAA tournament.

This was notable mainly for Bob Knight’s very brief appearance in the montage--the only reference CBS made of Knight the entire telecast, an interesting piece of editing considering that two days earlier during the semifinals, Nantz had chided the former Indiana coach for failing to place a congratulatory phone call to even one of the current Hoosier players.

That was an atypically strong comment from Nantz, and certainly it was a reasonable one. Nantz was posing a good question: Why hadn’t Knight kept in touch with the players he recruited to Indiana, players completing a most unlikely ride to the NCAA title game? Hadn’t that invalidated the long-standing theory that Knight, beneath the bluster, really cares mostly about the kids?

Evidently, it was too strong a comment for CBS.

Monday night, Knight was never mentioned again. You had to go to ESPN for an explanation for Knight’s curious cone of silence. During its pregame show, ESPN ran an excerpt of an interview with Knight, who said, “The time will come for that....To inject myself into it [now], I think, is ridiculous.”

Fortunately, Packer’s journalistic instincts kicked in as Indiana and Maryland finished a wretched first half. The game had turned so ugly so quickly, something had to be said.

“One of the worst-played games I’ve ever seen in a final in a long time,” Packer said as the second half began.

After another Indiana turnover, Packer felt compelled to point out that the crowd’s reaction was “not a boo of the play” but Maryland fans chanting the name of Terrapin forward Byron Mouton. At the time, it was a necessary clarification.

Packer was hard on Maryland point guard Steve Blake, advising Williams repeatedly to get the player out of the game.

Maryland, he said, “looked totally confused.” Williams, he said, “can’t figure out which team he’s watching.... A few years ago, he’d have had a heart attack.”

But when Indiana failed to take advantage, allowing Dixon to finally seize control of the game, Maryland ended the agony and closed out a 64-52 victory.

“Strange game,” Packer assessed. “One of the strangest Final Four games I have ever seen.”

“Very odd,” Nantz had to agree. “Out of sync from the start.”

How about that headline, then?

Juan to Forget.