Bob Knight announced a Kentucky game tonight for ESPN at Vanderbilt and actually played nice with John Calipari and Big Blue Nation. Perhaps that effort to be kind affected his mental equilibrium, because he was out to lunch for this game ending situation.
Kentucky freshman Nerlens Noel made a controversial basket where there should have been a shot clock violation in the last minute. The replay clearly showed a 0 on the shot clock with 18 seconds left in the game and the ball in Noel's hand. During the replay, Knight speaks about "a different zero" and says about the shot and game clocks, "I don't know what that meant." Rece Davis has to talk him through the difference between the shot clock and game clock like you would to someone who hadn't seen a basketball game since they had to climb ladders to retrieve the ball from a peach basket. (Thanks to Cork Gaines for the video.)
That was a sequence Yankees announcer John Sterling would be proud of. How would any basketball analyst, let alone a man who won over 900 college basketball games and 3 national titles as a Hall of Fame coach, not know the difference between the shot and game clock? I've rarely seen an announcer blank on something so elementary.
(via The Bloody Owl)
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