A TBS graphic showing Arizona players' faces with Dayton players' names. A TBS graphic showing Arizona players’ faces with Dayton players’ names. (Awful Announcing on Twitter.)
College BasketballTNT SportsBy Andrew Bucholtz on

Thursday was the first day of March Madness proper, and it saw a notable early mistake from one of the tournament broadcasters. TBS, showing the 10th-seeded Nevada Wolfpack against the seventh-seeded Dayton Flyers in Salt Lake City, used a graphic with the faces of Arizona Wildcats’ players instead of the listed Dayton players on the lineup introductions:

Second-seeded Arizona had previously beaten the 15th-seeded Long Beach State 49ers 85-65 in the previous game in Salt Lake City. So something went wrong here in updating the graphics package between games. It’s not the biggest deal in the world, but it is unfortunate for those Dayton players, their fans, and the overall viewing audience here.

The error wasn’t acknowledged on the broadcast, at least not quickly. But it led to some funny tweets. That included one noting past Wildcats’ star Deandre Ayton:

Here are some of the other responses this drew:

So, for TBS, we have a Maxwell Smart comment:

Get Smart.
A “Missed It By That Much” on Get Smart.

We’ve seen quite a few graphic errors over the years, covering everything from birthplace mixups to logos of the wrong team to players’ names to the conferences teams play in. Thus, this is far from unprecedented. But it is a notable one, especially coming in a high-viewing event like March Madness and on the famed first day of the tournament proper. So a lot of people saw this go very wrong for TBS Thursday.

[Awful Announcing on Twitter/X]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.

View all posts by Andrew Bucholtz