Reviewing the College Hoops TV Preview shows

This is a marathon review of the college basketball preview shows on TV. I will be watching three of them and reviewing them with this marathon live-blogging update. This will be updated throughout the night. Note: At 11pm pacific time there will be Blogger maintenance.


College Gameday on ESPN (one hour long, aired Tue Nov 6, 2007)

Experts: Jay Bilas, Digger Phelps, Hubert Davis

Guest Appearances: Dick Vitale, Andy Katz (on Billy Donovan's back)

Guest Coaches: Ben Howland of UCLA and his injury train. Howland sees nine Pac-10 teams being NCAA possibilities

Hostess: Karl Ravech

Location: Studio

Digger Phelps sees Notre Dame in the Sweet 16. How unbiased :)

Hubert: Derrick Caracter a key factor.

8th best team candidates: Washington State, Gonzaga, Michigan State (Bilas drinking Izzo koolaid)

Dick Vitale mentioned Duke __1__ times so far.

Majerus restaurant/food jokes so far: 1

They showed a video of Kevin Love breaking the backboard while "dunking"

Lute Olson's leave of absence discussed but the reason was not revealed

An all access pass with Dino Gaudio at Wake Forest, replacing the late Skip Prosser. The ESPN in-studio crew did a great job in paying a mini tribute to Skip Prosser.

Jay Bilas visits John Calipari's practice where Calipari may get in trouble for his "Princeton on Steroids" comment ;-) Also Calipari says he doesn't want screeners and rebounders. Ouch!

Digger Phelps's mid-major to avoid: Austin Peay (He called Winthrop last year which ended up biting him in a Notre Dame fashion). Also picked: Davidson and Western Kentucky.

On site College Gameday tips off January 19, 2007. ESPN has secured two Pac-10 games this year and one of them will be a Gameday special, Arizona at UCLA, with the ESPN crew visiting John Wooden.

A number of upcoming games were advertised both by the crew and by the bottom of the screen scrolling ticker.

Their Final Four predictions were pretty safe/reasonable except for Hubert Davis which shocked everyone by picking Gonzaga going to the Final Four. Go Zags baby!


Crystal Ball on CSTV (one hour, airs multiple times)

Experts: Pete Gillen, and Seth Davis

Hostess: Adam Zucker

Location: Studio

The crew paid a mini tribute to Skip Prosser. Pete Gillen had worked with Skip Prosser while he was coaching :-(

OMG! Pete Gillen picked Duke as #10.

Not a shocker, they all agreed, just like the ESPN crew that the Pac-10 is the most loaded conference with 7-8 teams possibly making the NCAA tournament.

Boooooo!!! @ CSTV, they had an on-campus interview with Coach Smugface RatFace Krapanova.

Dookie Seth Davis defends Greg Paulus's performance on an injured foot. Damage Control? :)

Pete Gillen is on fire! With Jay Leno in re-runs, it's time to give Pete Gillen his own late night talk show! He is "coaching a bar team, the Kegs" he said.

On campus feature: Billy Gillispie taking over Kentucky. Apparently one of the drills during "boot camp" made the players cry.

Seth Davis: Rumor is Joe Crawford is in Billy G's doghouse. Also rumored: Michael Beasley scored 38 on Marquette during a scrimmage

Brian Curtis interviews OJ Mayo and Tim "Sleepy" Floyd.

Pete Gillen picked Eric Gordon as the best freshman, an eyelash ahead of OJ Mayo

A nice spotlight feature on short Memphis guard Andre Allen!

An interview with Ben Howland and Kevin Love and Brian Curtis. UCLA wants a national championship? Starting to smell like a first round upset to me since Howland "stole" two final four bids by uglying the games ;-)


Women's Crystal Ball on CSTV (30 minutes, multiple air times)

Expect: Debbie Antonelli

Hostess: Greg Amsinger

Guest Coach: Geno Auriemma

The review started with a very nice review of the previous season, with Don Imus obviously mentioned


Countdown to College Hoops on Versus, Comcast Sports Net and Fox College Sports (one hour long, multiple air times)

Experts: Dave T. Thomas, and Daymeon Fishburn (ex Auburn star)

Host: Paul Crane

Speaking of Versus, Dennis Miller is debuting his new show "Sports Unfiltered" on Versus this week.

Sound-bite bite size interviews with Ole Roy, Coach K, Bob Knight and more.

This show is sponsored by a pain relief thingy which is prominently featured on their desk.

They predict Duke as #2 in the ACC! Eek!

The audio of the program was much lower than the other tv programs

Bruce Pearl: "...expect us to be good..."

Kudos to Versus for trying, but compared to the ESPN and CSTV preview shows, the Versus show was rather monotonous.

They did pick the best ten college basketball teams of all time. Quite interestingly they picked the 2006-2007 Florida Gators as the #5 team of all time. Hello??? :) They also picked the best 10 college basketball players of all time.