Linear basketball - in person! - for the first time

Besides working the Women's Euros, a real positive of this year for me, professionally, has been the opportunity to call games on linear TV (aka you can just flip on the TV and find the channel, not deal with a streaming app) in sports other than soccer.

I'll always be a soccer person and proud of it. But I'm a baseball person and a football person and a hockey person and a basketball person, too! I have ties to each of these that go beyond broadcasting ambition, and each one challenges me and captivates me and piques my interest in a different way. I'm very proud to cover all of those sports, and softball and volleyball as well, when given the opportunity, but it often feels like some other sports write me off for bigger games because I am "a soccer guy."

So the chance to call the 13-year-old Little League World Series this summer, including the world championship game on ESPN2, was a thrill and an important professional step.

Similarly, the chance to call the Georgia-Bucknell men's basketball game for the SEC Network on November 18, in person no less, was a real highlight of the year. I have done lots of college basketball for ESPN and the Big East, and I have done lots of NBA work in virtual reality, but I'd only called one previous basketball game on linear TV, and that was a pandemic-enforced home broadcast. Not quite the same energy!

So I tried to soak up the atmosphere at venerable Stegeman Coliseum in Athens, Georgia, and enjoy every minute of the game, one that wound up finishing a close call. Partner Mark Wise and I had a fun post-game interview as well, with Georgia's Jabri Abdur-Rahim, who at some point said he "wants to be a TV personality," and he confirmed that he's coming for our jobs as soon as his playing days are finished.

Here's a look at some of the highlights:

The best news is there's at least one more linear basketball game still to come (December 17, LSU-Winthrop men's), even if that one will be called from home. So stay tuned.

Friday Night Hoops: Wake rallies to beat Longwood

I started my college basketball season Friday night with the ACC Network call of Wake Forest vs. Longwood, and here's how it looked and sounded:

Condensed game (8:45)

Highlights (2:45)

New network, new role, new level unlocked!

As avid followers of this blog know ... I've been shirking my blogging duties. There are many reasons for this, but let's get past those and focus on not making it FIVE months without posting.

The news is that my role with ESPN will increase this year, a big professional deal that is more than three years in the making. It's occupied a lot of thought and attention and time, and it's really exciting to finally start. My focus will be on ACC Network soccer, with some professional soccer, college basketball, and miscellaneous odds and ends thrown in.

I'm not sure I'm capable of explaining what it means, after almost eight years of free-lancing, to have guaranteed broadcasting income. It's not a full-time deal at the moment (baby steps!), so there will still be plenty of free-lancing and scheming and job-chasing. But to earn and receive a commitment from ESPN and some people I truly respect and admire really provides encouragement and validation of work I've put in going back a long way, and it's something special.

I'm incredibly fortunate to have the support of family (nuclear and extended), and friends (old and new) in chasing, pursuing, and realizing this and other opportunities, and I really am grateful for it. This is neither the time nor the place to list everybody, but suffice it to say, Thank you.

Moving ahead, the fall schedule still has some moving parts to it, but it is well and truly underway with a two-game ACC Network week with games Sunday and Wednesday this week. Sunday was a special thrill and adrenaline rush, as Lori Lindsey and I called the second ever live event on newly launched ACC Network, and the first produced from a school control room. What's more, it was the first game at Syracuse for former Rice head coach Nicky Thrasher Adams, who I know from my undergraduate days at Rice, when she started her coaching career as an assistant. The emotions and intensity of seeing her new team pull out its first win was a welcome start to the season!

Missed last night's game? We got you covered. Visual recap of our 1-0 shutout of Colgate.⬇ 🍊⚽ pic.twitter.com/QN24kJOTTx

— Syracuse Women's Soccer (@cusewsoc) August 26, 2019

There is much more still to come, and I am hopeful of providing slightly more regular updates as the year goes along. But there's an ESPN paycheck in my bank account this morning, one I didn't have to submit an invoice for, and that's a goal I never felt certain of achieving.

Wonderfully busy start to 2016

I can assure you, fewer than 40 days in, that 2016 is a year I will never forget.

But if my year's signature moment already happened (I've been on my version of paternity leave since the NWSL College Draft on Jan. 15), that still leaves another 11 months to try and maintain a solid body of work.

Thankfully, I've set my plans for most of the next two months with a schedule that will be fun but will also challenge me.

That's not my pom-pom, I promise.

It starts this week, with two basketball games as part of my five-game stint covering the MAAC for ESPN3. One of those five is already in the books, although the game we were attempting to broadcast was curtailed by a leaky ceiling.

So on Thursday, it's up to the Bronx to see Manhattan play Quinnipiac (8 p.m. ET, ESPN3), while Friday will see me taking the PATH train back out to Jersey City to give the Yanitelli Center a second chance as St. Peter's hosts Niagara (7 p.m. ET, ESPN3). To complete my MAAC stint, I'll be up in Buffalo at Canisius for a men's game on Feb. 20 and a women's game on Feb. 25.

The MAAC is pretty much a one-bid league, but it's a really exciting one. While Monmouth is one of the most talked-about mid-majors in the country this year, Manhattan is the two-time defending tournament champion, and all the schools I've researched have either a great scorer, a great story, or both. Since moving to New York in the fall of 2013, I've been hoping to do some broader basketball coverage, and I'm excited to get this chance.

• Current 2016 broadcast schedule

Once March rolls around, though, it will be back to my bread and butter. While I won't be a regular part of Red Bulls radio broadcasts this year, I've got five televised MLS games and a US women's national team game already lined up, and that's more in-person TV work than I get in some MLS seasons. I'll work FC Dallas-Philadelphia Union for opening day on March 6, and then I'll call play-by-play for at least three Red Bulls games on the MSG Networks while lead voice Steve Cangialosi is on Devils duty. I've actually never called a TV game at Red Bull Arena (my MSG work last year came on the road), so I'm looking forward to that first.

These games really get me excited to start what I hope is going to be a terrific year of broadcast work (while I simultaneously figure out how to raise a child, cook for my wife, study for those games, and, y'know, sleep). I hope you'll enjoy any portion of it that you might catch!

Late fall broadcasts in photos

After being unsure of what (if!) my schedule would look like after college soccer conference championships on Nov. 8, I was fortunate enough to stay busy into the first weekend of December.

While running here, there, and everywhere to call three different sports, I found time to snap a picture or two to remember it all by:

A soccer field nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains …

… our home for the weekend at Appalachian State.

Clearly, one of us is more comfortable in cold weather.

With my new friend and partner, Eddie Rodriguez.

Happened to be in Oklahoma right before the Bedlam football game.

Also got to see Historic Gallagher-Iba Arena.

My actual work was at Reynolds Center, always a house of horrors for Rice.

But it treated Bryndon Manzer and me just fine.

In December, I enjoyed the scene at Georgia Southern.

Not that Vonnie Holliday and I weren't hard at work.

Taking selfies …

… and enjoying a great atmosphere in a budding rivalry

All basketball, all the time

I'm happy to report that I have a busy week of broadcasting coming up, including four NCAA basketball games on ESPN3 in six nights - three Rutgers men's games from New Jersey, with a St. John's women's game mixed in.

Prepping for this many games at once is no easy task - I'm about halfway through all the flashcards and team research I need to be doing - but it's a good problem to have! There are a lot of good stories out there, and hopefully I get to see a few more play out on the court.

First up is the NIT Season Tip-Off, with four teams competing at Rutgers for the right to move on to the tournament semifinals in Madison Square Garden next week. When I was in high school, I went to the Garden for several of those doubleheaders - usually to see a powerhouse like Duke or to watch Delbarton alumnus Troy Murphy play for Notre Dame - and that makes it extra special to work the tournament this year.

This four-team group has Rutgers playing Canisius tonight (click here to watch), following the opening game between Elon and Drexel. The winners and losers play each other on Tuesday night, but our broadcast will definitely be the Rutgers game.

I really don't see an overwhelming favorite in this pool: Elon has a veteran team and was a consensus pick to win the Southern Conference, and Rutgers is the biggest name in the field, but Drexel is a great defensive team, and Canisius is coming off of a 20-win season.

So it's time for me to buckle up for a busy week of basketball!

It's up to you, New York

New York, New York. 
I want to wake up in that city that doesn't sleep
and find I'm king of the hill, top of the heap.
My little town blues -- they are melting away.
I'm gonna make a brand new start of it in old New York!
If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere.
It's up to you, New York. New York.

I have sung Frank Sinatra's words hundreds of times while walking out of Yankee Stadium (mostly the old one), but they've never meant more to me than this fall, because I now live in New York City.

This is a little strange, and more than a little intimidating. New York has always been where my family and I go for the big stuff: sporting events, Broadway shows, incomparable museums. It's where my brother and sister went when sneaking out of the house, and it's where I saw my first baseball game (Yankees-A's) and my first concert (Springsteen at The Garden).

I always said I wanted to live in New York, even if only for a year, just to see what it is like. But I'm not sure that I felt it would really happen.

I have arrived here in a year of transition, one which has included my marriage (awesome) and my 30th birthday (less exciting) and my return to the Northeast after the better part of 10 years in the South.

What does it mean for me, professionally speaking? That remains to be seen. I'm very excited to announce that I'll be calling some college basketball on ESPN3 - starting with a St. John's men's game tomorrow and continuing with at least three Rutgers men's games in the coming weeks. Beyond that, I'm hoping for a little bit of everything: more basketball to be sure, college baseball, MLS soccer, college hockey, maybe a return to college football next fall.

It's a new set of people to meet and work with and a new audience to convince of my credentials and abilities. But I'm excited about it, and I know I'm going to appreciate every opportunity I get to call a sporting event. If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere.

What a basketball debut!

I got a thriller Saturday night in my first ESPN3 college basketball game, as the College of Charleston shocked 24th-ranked Baylor 63-59 in Waco. I really enjoyed the broadcast alongside former DePaul standout and NBA veteran Stephen Howard, and I walked out of the Ferrell Center both exhilarated and satisfied.

The workday started with team shootarounds in the early afternoon, and they were even more helpful than I anticipated. Charleston went first, and we watched from the side with Director of Athletics Communications Marlene Navor and the radio crew of Jeff McCarragher and Everett German. Our familiarity with them would pay off later.

On the Baylor side, the big story was that sharp-shooting guard Brady Heslip would miss the game while recovering from appendicitis. We found this out at the shootaround, but we could not get anybody from Baylor to confirm it on the record, even though we tried right up to tip-off. Of course, much to our frustration, it ended up in the Associated Press recap of the game, so it was definitely not a secret.

We returned to the Ferrell Center for a late-ish tip-off, and despite my (needless) search for a proper credential and Stephen's (fruitless) search for a functional pen, we were ready to go in plenty of time. That was in stark contrast to Baylor radio announcer John Morris, who made a mad dash from the Bears' football game in Arlington, Texas, back to Waco in time for the game. That's what I call a full day!

The game itself was fascinating - Charleston rained 3-pointers early and led at the half, then survived Baylor's revved-up defense in the second half despite getting just one point from leader Andrew Lawrence. He instead turned provider, setting up teammate after teammate for key baskets. The Cougars had six of their eight players contribute at least eight points, and sophomore center Adjehi Baru hauled in 15 rebounds. The key man was his frontcourt partner Willis Hall, who went 8-for-10 from the free-throw line (his teammates were 4-for-10) and hit his only two field goals in the final minutes for the 63-59 win.

Up close and personal, shortly before tip-off.

Behind the scenes, basketball moves so fast that there were some great efforts to aid the broadcast and keep us on top of things. We got an outstanding performance from our statistician on this day, Jeff, who provided helpful notes all game and constantly helped me keep track of individuals' foul trouble. His biggest play, however, came when No. 13 checked in for Baylor. This player was not listed on the roster and had no last name on his jersey; luckily, Jeff knows the program and alerted us that it was freshman Taurean Prince wearing a different uniform, and we were able to introduce him quickly and pass that on to the CofC radio crew.

Finally, as we got into the final five minutes with College of Charleston still in the game, I used my phone to email Charleston's Navor, who was sitting diagonally across the court from us, and I asked her for the date of Charleston's last win against a Top-25 team. I had noticed earlier that the season (2009-10) and opponent (North Carolina) were in the notes, but not the exact date. I never figured it would come into play! I could see Navor across the court, rifling through records, but I was still worried she hadn't gotten the message. In the final minute, my phone finally buzzed with the crucial email, telling us the exact date (Jan. 4, 2010) and the fact that this win was only Charleston's second ever on the road against a Top-25 team and first since 1993. I let Jeff relay the message to the graphics crew, and we were able to get it on the air at the final buzzer. Perfect execution!

Stephen even has a height advantage in post-game interviews.

After we went off-air, Stephen interviewed Doug Wojcik to provide material for the ESPN family of network, and we also filmed a web segment that you can see here. We actually shot a second take that was a little smoother, but the one currently online is our first effort.

Basketball never ceases to make me feel short.

All in all, I really enjoyed my first basketball game of the year and hope it leads to a few more here and there. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on Baylor and College of Charleston as the season heats up. It'll be back to football next Saturday, though, with a little bit of soccer thrown in during the week. I'm very thankful to be this busy.

A Pilgrimage to The Palestra

The Palestra

I made my first visit to The Palestra Monday night to see Penn play Princeton in one of college basketball’s oldest rivalries. I arrived at both the venue and the rivalry as a distinct outsider: I did not attend either school, nor do I have a geographic affiliation with either (I was raised in North Jersey, far away from Princeton, and I am only living in Philadelphia now for about nine months). So if I don’t understand the complete backstory to a tradition or quirk, please forgive me.

Opened on Jan. 1, 1927, The Palestra is Ivy League library on the outside and modified airplane hangar on the inside. Everything about the place is old, but I mean it in a good way. It is fabled, it is history. Walking the three blocks from my apartment on this cold winter night, I felt I was gravitating toward the arena with hundreds, maybe thousands of others wearing winter coats with the collars turned up. I felt a little bit as if I had stepped into one of John Tunis’s unforgettable books that described a 1930s Ivy League education, Iron Duke and The Duke Decides, except I was at Penn to watch basketball rather than at Harvard to watch track.