Originally Posted by
brevity
Glad to see there's a thread about the tournament broadcast, commercials, etc.
Why did CBS and Turner Sports decide to hide the most anticipated Thursday game -- Murray State vs. Marquette -- in the worst slot in their schedule? Historically, the last game of the first block of 8 games was so unimportant that many CBS affiliates opted for local news. Times have changed, and every game is shown in its entirety, but putting Ja Morant and Markus Howard at 4:20pm on TBS was a money-burning mistake.
It would not have been difficult to rearrange the Hartford schedule so that ODU-Purdue and St. Mary's-Villanova play in the day, while Vermont-FSU and Murray State-Marquette play at night. They probably could have put the night games on CBS as well, instead of Abilene Christian-Kentucky and Seton Hall-Wofford.
This was a Roger Goodell level of incompetence. I looked it up, and I saw that Duke alum Sean McManus is Chairman of CBS Sports, which probably means he no longer handles the daily operations. He also lives in Connecticut. So, in all fairness, I can't assume that Sean McManus is incompetent. I can assume that he's selfish if he went to Hartford for the games, and that his underlings are incompetent.
(As a footnote, and I probably should have started with this, I am somewhat upset that I was unable to see any of this game. I was driving, and the radio announcers were reduced to saying "We wish you could see this!")
I watched some of the game and realized why Ja Morant is a potential top 3 pick and Marcus Howard scored a whole lot of points this year. I hope Morant is in the tournament another weekend.
“Those two kids, they’re champions,” Krzyzewski said of his senior leaders. “They’re trying to teach the other kids how to become that, and it’s a long road to become that.”