ESPN’s college basketball broadcasting lineup may be their very best

Can you believe it, the college basketball season is right around the corner?  It doesn’t seem possible, right?  ESPN has announced their commentating lineup for the 2015-2016 season and Bristol returns a very strong lineup for the campaign.  The last couple years has seen quite a few major moves with College GameDay ushering new faces like Seth Greenberg and Jay Williams while the lead analyst torch was passed from Dick Vitale to Jay Bilas.

ESPN has made just a couple of changes to this year’s lineup, most noticeably Doris Burke replacing Painfully Awkward Shane Battier as Sean McDonough’s partner for ACC Big Monday action.  Burke is a great analyst and she and McDonough should form a very good partnership.

Dan Shulman, Bilas, and Shannon Spake remain the Saturday primetime team while Dick Vitale calls Saturday games with Dave O’Brien.  Jim Calhoun also steps into the broadcast booth as he partners with Rece Davis for Thursday Big Ten games.

Now that the network is no longer in the NASCAR business, Allen Bestwick joins the play by play roster to call American games with Tim Welsh while Brad Daugherty partners Beth Mowins for WCC contests on Saturdays.

Here’s the entire lineup:

Given the depth and the quality throughout ESPN’s announcing lineup, you can easily make the argument that this is the best group of talent ESPN assembles on a yearly basis.  Shulman/Bilas, Tirico/Dakich, McDonough/Burke, Musburger/Fraschilla, and of course Pasch/Walton are all tremendous broadcasting duos.  Add on top of that personalities like Dick Vitale, seasoned pros like Jon Sciambi, Kara Lawson, Mark Jones, and Bob Wischusen, and up and comers like Adam Amin, Dave Flemming, and Miles Simon and you’ve got a very impressive talent lineup.