Villanova's Scottie Reynolds reacted quickly Saturday night, dashing to a Final Four berth and sending Pittsburgh home in the process. Unfortunately, CBS Sports brainiacs were not thinking on the fly.
They marred a superior telecast by leaving Boston before providing the necessary punctuation mark to what went down. After the most scintillating game of a boring tournament, the network owed it to viewers to show an interview with Reynolds and Wildcats coach Jay Wright.
Instead, oblivious to this magic moment, Verne Lundquist - who captured the drama with a spectacular night of play-by-play - threw it back to Greg Gumbel in CBS' hoops studio and there was a break for three commercials.
Gumbel set the stage for what we thought would be a return to Boston for an interview, informing viewers they had just seen "one of the great tournament games of all time."
But there would be no "let's go back to Boston." Instead, the few minutes were used to flog Sunday's tournament matchups and upcoming Saturday night shows. Programming so critical it couldn't be further delayed to air a Villanova interview.
One that would have been good for CBS' business, too. This edition of the tournament has produced few thrills. Finally, in prime time, Villanova had provided a legitimate one. A memorable highlight that, if your business is generating ratings, could have been immediately exploited by going one-on-one with Reynolds and Wright after the game.
RAF TRACK: Bill Raftery, working with Lundquist Saturday night, sensed what was unfolding and buried his bag of shtick. He resisted the temptation to 1) make himself bigger then the game and 2) remind us - over and over - what a classic confrontation we were witnessing.
In the first half, Lundquist tried goading Raftery into one of his signature calls. Raf did not take the bait. The analyst really came up big after Reynolds' winning runner with 0.5 seconds left in regulation.
There are no shortage of college basketball analysts (fill in the blanks) who would have taken the spotlight away from Reynolds and turned it on themselves, offering an over-the-top reaction. Raftery didn't.
His first instinct was to report. He immediately wondered how much time would be put back on the clock. Then, Raftery explained the one desperate option Pitt had: "A catch and a dribble is the most you can do."
Raftery and Lundquist turned in a performance equal to the competition they described. In a game with so many obvious "onions" moments, Raftery didn't break out the call until after the tilt ended.
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