Do You Know Who This Is?
If you watched last night’s National Championship game, you saw him in action on the court.
Still stumped?
Well, he was involved in the opening tip…
Too short to be a center?
Well, he was the one tossing the ball...
That’s right, veteran official Karl Hess during his playing days at Liberty where he remains the Flames’ all-time leading scorer. Hess’s appearance in the National Championship game, his third Final Four appearance, gave the ACC at least one representative at the Final Four. He was joined by Big East official Ed Corbet who was working his fifth Final Four and SEC official Tony Greene who was working his fourth Final Four and second straight championship game.
Other officials who worked in the Final Four were Richard Cartmell (PAC-10), Michael Kitts (Big East) and Ted Valentine (SEC) who worked the Georgetown – Ohio State game. Vern Harris (PAC-10), Tom O’Neill (C-USA) and Curtis Shaw (Big-12) worked the UCLA-Florida game.
Interesting... none of the officials who worked the Big-10 tournament advanced to the Final Four this year. I guess they had to get prepared to work the Big-10 spring football scrimmages.
Hess who had his jersey retired in December works as a psychologist in Lynchburg.
5 comments:
Hess called a great game I thought. There were a couple of calls (like some nba style continuation) that I wish he had made instead of his partners.
Jim Nance proved to me last night why I do not like him as a basketball announcer... he doesn't do enough hoops to know what he's talking about. Remember when he started talking about how they should allow a 6th foul because there is an extra set of eyes on the court? He led that off by saying that it had been 15 years since the NCAA went to 3-man officiating crews. I think the NCAA went to 3-man crews in 1979... 28 years ago.
I've come to expect Packer to be a grumpy old man, so I ignor anything he says about the officiating.
I love Nance, mostly because of his voice, but he isn't a college basketball expert for sure. I'm fascinated by Packer and how much everyone I know seems to hate him. I'd honestly rather listen to Packer than Vitale and some others, but he's not perfect. He seems to be right more than most, but I do catch him missing things he should be picking up at times, and being wrong at times. But then again, I keep reminding myself they've got a whole lot of dead air to fill in a 2 hour broadcast. It is one thing for me to come up with the occassional observation that might be a little more insightful than what he's saying, but I don't have to just keep talking non-stop, and that is probably hard.
No doubt that it's a tough job, but we don't have a staff of assistant producers and statisticians tracking down information for us. Still, Packer has forgotten more about the game than we will ever know. The 33 straight final fours speaks for its self.
While I do not agree with everything Packer says, I would much rather listen to him than Vitale, Dykes or that former UCLA coach we almost hired last year. If Vitale would tone it down a bit, quit dropping names and kissing everyone's ass he would be tolerable.
I really like Jay Bilas. Interesting how he was able to swing working for both ESPN and CBS.
Packer is just pissed he never got a coaching job!
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