Good questions from commenter Mitch Rosenzweig:
What are your thoughts on the coverage so far? Think its been too heavy on the look-ins? That one of my beefs. I would rather stay with one game.Who do you think is the best CBS annoucing duo? Who do you not like? Why?
I have always liked Ian Eagle and Jim Spanarkel...they have a good balance.
Gus Johnson is terrific too
I like the look-ins. The reason why the first two days of the tournament are my two favorite days of the entire sports calendar is that there's so much going on at once. I certainly use the online video streaming, but I also get a sort of adrenaline rush when there are two games at once coming down to the wire. Wisconsin-Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Creighton-Nevada provided that sort of moment. You just never knew what was going to come next.
As for the announcers, I have long been a fan of Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery. I tend to like understated play-by-play men more than overactive ones (although I do like Brent Musburger and Mike Tirico), and Lundquist is very good at picking when to raise his voice and when to not.
Raftery is my favorite analyst because he's just so funny. He has great one-liners and an even better sense of timing when delivering them.
I like Gus Johnson more than I used to, but sometimes he still goes a little too far over the top for me (which Musburger doesn't do quite as much as he used to). My least favorite tandem, though, is Jim Nantz and Billy Packer. Nantz is fantastic at golf and as a studio host, but he comes across to me as awkward when he raises his voice to exclaim something.
As for Packer, I don't dispute his credentials, or his status as the top network color voice in the sport. In terms of analyzing the action on the court, I think he's fantastic. But it shouldn't surprise at all that I really don't like how much he gloats over the big-time programs, especially in his native ACC.
He calls ACC games for the conference's regional network, and if you ever get a chance to listen to those (they're on ESPN Full Court and often broadcast over-the-air if you're in that part of the country), you can just tell how little non-BCS conferences matter to him. There are 31 conferences in Division I, not six, and whether he likes it or not the other 25 have a right to get on the floor with the big guys this time of year.
