The Big Ten Network is the latest network to have a female analyst call some men’s basketball games. On Tuesday, BTN announced their broadcasting talent lineup for their men’s and women’s basketball games this season, and that announcement included the news that Winters Scott (the lead analyst for BTN women’s basketball coverage since 2016) will be calling three men’s basketball games as well this year:
This year, Christy Winters Scott will provide men’s basketball analysis in addition to her duties as BTN’s lead women’s basketball analyst. As part of her role, Winters Scott will be the first woman to serve as an analyst for a men’s basketball game on BTN on Tuesday, Nov. 19, when Penn State hosts Bucknell at 6:30 p.m. ET. Winters Scott will also call a Rutgers game on Nov. 26 and a Maryland game on Dec. 29.
Winters Scott played basketball at Maryland from 1986-90, and she helped the Terrapins win an ACC championship and make a Final Four appearance in 1989. She then played professionally in Italy and Switzerland before going into coaching, where she worked as an assistant coach at George Mason, Maryland, and Georgetown, then as a head coach at her alma mater of South Lakes High School in Virginia. She also ventured into broadcasting during that time with the Roundball Report on Maryland’s CTV76, and she’s gone on from there, hosting Washington Wizards’ pre- and post-game shows on NBC Sports Washington since 2012, serving as an analyst for selected Wizards’ games, calling college games for ESPN, BTN and other networks, and serving as the primary analyst for Washington Mystics’ games on NBC Sports Washington for the past 10 years.
There have been more and more women getting a chance to provide analysis on men’s sports recently, from Doris Burke with ESPN’s NBA coverage to Jessica Mendoza with ESPN’s MLB coverage to Kendall Coyne Schofield with some of NBC’s hockey coverage and some of the Sharks’ local broadcasts to a variety of female analysts across NHL Network and other local broadcasts. But female analysts on men’s sports are still definitely a small minority in the overall picture, and there are plenty of networks that have never used a female analyst on men’s sports. So it’s notable to see BTN make this move.
[BTN.com; photo from a 2017 BTN video on YouTube]
