Raves For Raveling

Just when you thought it was safe to watch college basketball without Dick Vitale puncturing your eardrums, the ABC/ESPN guy shows up as a commercial pitchman on CBS.

Vitale was easily eliminated with the mute button, and occasionally the past few days, similar strategy should have been applied to several CBS announcers caught up in the current mood of mounting hoops hysteria.

Still, give the network credit for a job mostly well done.

In its fourth year of juggling the entire 64-team tournament, CBS has worked out many of the kinks. For the most part, there have been timely switches from boring blowouts to fabulous finishes, crisp camera work and all the right replays, no-frills graphics and announcers who generally come to the games well prepared.

If occasionally wired.

For a while in Thursday’s Kentucky-San Jose State game, former Southern California coach George Raveling was doing his best to win this year’s Vitale sound-alike contest, bellowing into a mostly unnecessary microphone. Mission control in New York told Raveling to reach for the decaf and tone it down just a touch.

Still, how could anyone complain about the man’s enthusiasm for an event that clearly transcends the wretched excesses from broadcasters caught up in the frenzied atmosphere? And Raveling also is emerging as one of the sport’s more entertaining analysts, a man who cares passionately about the game.

In a session with reporters last week, Raveling advanced a strong opinion on how schools might combat college basketball’s problem of its best players leaving after only two or three seasons for the pros.

“If the (college) presidents knew the first thing about athletics, they could solve the problem tomorrow,” Raveling said. “The first thing I’d do is declare freshmen ineligible. All that stuff about graduation rates right now is baloney. If you want to see them graduate, make ‘em ineligible. Now maybe they’ll stay three years, and if they stay three, why not four and get the degree? With the rookie cap, the money will still be there.”

If there is one major criticism of early NCAA coverage, it would be that such thoughtful commentary ought to be delivered on the air.

Instead of so much deep thinking on dribble penetration and transition offense, how about Billy Packer telling us why he thinks the reduction of scholarships from 15 to 13 is having a major impact on college basketball?

“I don’t find many programs today that can even have a good practice,” Packer said at the same media roundtable where Raveling spoke so forcefully. “When you watch Duke practice, their first team is going against three kids who came off the soccer team. Dean Smith is without a bench. The system has done a lot of things that have created the current product. They’d better take a look at this.”

Speaking of better looks, how about a little more up-close-and-personal? For example, after listening to San Jose State’s Olivier Saint-Jean deliver one of those NCAA promos in French during the Kentucky game, it would have been nice to know a little more about him.

A few other tournament observations: Would someone please tell us when tattoos became hip in college basketball, a development that cuts across all racial and regional lines? Doesn’t any referee ever call traveling or palming any more? And what is Al “Broadcaster From Another Planet” McGuire talking about?

Still, the first weekend of the NCAAs is not about puff pieces, social commentary or referee/ McGuire-bashing. As debonair studio host Pat O’Brien noted, it’s all about “basketball, basketball and more basketball.”

It’s about Princeton’s stunning last-minute upset of UCLA and the story of Tigers coach Pete Carril’s postponing retirement for one more game. It’s about the poignant pictures of the Western Carolina kids in agony after missing two shots in the final seconds that could have tied or beaten mighty Purdue.

It’s all about George Washington’s losing its cool and Koul (7-foot center Alexander) in the final minutes in a heartbreaking collapse against Iowa, and plucky San Jose State throwing an early scare into Kentucky before fading from the exhausting effort.