For The Washington Post

March Madness 2024

sp-marchmadness2024 Women's Bracket resized

Auburn v LSU

Stringer

handout

The Washington Post

Iowa gambling

Obit Dayton Donoher Basketball

NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament - National Championship

Staff

File Photo: Stanford Head Coach Tara VanDerveer Announces Retirement

Kentucky Media Day Basketball

Purdue v Connecticut

NCAA Purdue UConn Basketball

Caitlin Clark

NCAA South Carolina Iowa Basketball

Alabama v Connecticut

NC State v Purdue

Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Teen grabs wheel when driver passes out and school bus veers into traffic

Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away

Brave Little Hunter is free: Baby orca escapes lagoon for open seas

What’s the best bus to New York? We tested 5 for comfort and value.

You asked: Do I need a passport for my cruise?

Adaptive equipment is making national parks more inclusive

Journalism in India is under assault

The dangerous new call for regime change in Beijing

Ukrainian men abroad voice anger over pressure to return home to fight 

Trump Media auditor charged by SEC with ‘massive fraud’

Biden honors distinguished Americans; Trump back in N.Y. court

Google’s empire is massive. A judge will soon rule if it’s a monopoly.

The Capitals, a team in transition, know what they want this offseason

Is Pastis as good as our food critic thought? He sent spies to find out.

Nationals can’t solve Nate Eovaldi, drop series finale to Rangers

On Press Freedom Day, little to celebrate for Hong Kong’s journalists

Young Georgians want to be part of Europe. Their government is in the way.

Taxes are inevitable. Paying to prepare them doesn’t have to be.

Israel’s offensive is destroying Gaza’s ability to grow its own food

Riot police and over 2,000 arrests: A look at 2 weeks of campus protests

‘It’s been abused’ Rep. McCaul on motion to vacate threat

The New York Times, alone in its outrage over access to Biden

Wait, what is Stephen A. Smith talking about? Find out with our quiz.

Stephen A. Smith would like even more of your attention

Ask Amy: Should I be the best man if I think the bride is abusive?

Carolyn Hax: Husband keeps pushing modest spouse to wear sexier clothes

Miss Manners: Host eats luxurious breakfast, leaves cereal for guest

Hope Hicks witnessed nearly every Trump scandal. Now she must testify.

State laws measure if a woman is close enough to death for an abortion

An I bond is now at 4.28 percent. Are they still a good deal?

Use these 6 points to say no to a college you and your kid can’t afford

How this new rule protects retirement savers from costly advice

Isaac Brekken

Seconds after the final buzzer sounded in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/2006/03/27/eleventh-heaven-span-classbankheadpatriots-fairy-tale-run-reaches-final-four-with-ot-defeat-of-top-seeded-huskies-george-mason-86-connecticut-84-span/ff9e3246-a4bb-4bab-b744-849d83e21181/" target=_blank>George Mason’s stunning 86-84 overtime victory</a> over Connecticut in the 2006 East Region final, Patriots Coach Jim Larrañaga sprinted past me en route to his team’s postgame celebration.

Pausing for a moment, he shouted, “I can’t wait to see Nantz and Packer in Indianapolis!”

He was talking about the CBS duo of Jim Nantz and Billy Packer, the legendary analyst <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/01/27/billy-packer-dead/" target=_blank>who died Thursday at 82</a>. Nantz and Packer<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/12/AR2006031201496.html" target=_blank> had criticized Craig Littlepage</a>, then the chairman of the NCAA’s Division I basketball committee, after that year’s tournament draw had been unveiled, demanding to know why George Mason and other mid-majors had been included.

George Mason, of course, then beat Michigan State, North Carolina, Wichita State and top-seeded Connecticut <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2016/03/04/mason-madness-inside-the-most-unlikely-run-in-ncaa-tournament-history/" target=_blank>to make it to the Final Four</a>. Three nights after Mason cut down the nets in downtown Washington, I was having dinner with some friends at St. Elmo, the famous Indianapolis steak house. The manager mentioned that the Patriots were eating in a private dining room downstairs. A few minutes later, Nantz and Packer arrived and stopped at our table to say hello.

“You know, the George Mason players and coaches are having dinner downstairs,” I said. “I know Jim Larrañaga would love to see you guys.”

Nantz understood instantly and said he was going downstairs to apologize. As he departed, Packer sat down with us.

“Aren’t you going downstairs?” I asked.

He laughed. “I got something wrong. Not the first time, not the last time.”

Billy Packer, college basketball analyst who was March Madness staple, dies at 82

Actually, Packer wasn’t wrong often, especially when it came to basketball. He was, in the opinion of many who follow the game closely, the best college basketball analyst ever seen on television. He had no shtick, and he didn’t pull punches. He had the rare ability to talk about the game, its coaches and its players without pandering.

That is why he was often unpopular with fans.

I pointed out to him once that <i>every</i> ACC fan base — including that of Wake Forest, his alma mater — was convinced that he was biased against their team.

“I know,” he said. “I guess I must be doing a pretty good job.”

When he went to work for NBC in 1974 and then CBS in 1981, he was often accused by fans around the country of having an ACC bias — meaning he was doing as good of a job on network television as he had done on ACC telecasts.

Packer was the son of a college coach. His dad, Tony, was the coach at Lehigh for 16 seasons. Billy was too good of a player to go to Lehigh and ended up at Wake Forest, which was a national power under Horace “Bones” McKinney. The Demon Deacons won the ACC title in 1961 and 1962 and went to the Final Four — for the first and only time — in 1962, Packer’s senior year.

He coached briefly, worked as a businessman and then found his niche when he was hired in 1972 by C.D. Chesley to be a color commentator on the ACC game of the week. He was paired with Jim Thacker, and the team of Thacker and Packer became iconic among ACC fans. In 1974, NBC hired him to do its national telecasts (he initially was paired with Curt Gowdy), and he ended up broadcasting 34 straight Final Fours, his last one coming in 2008 for CBS.

“He was the best ever on TV,” former Davidson and Maryland coach Lefty Driesell said Saturday. “He was always a step ahead of what was going to happen, even if some people didn’t like what he said. He talked about the game in front of him and he told people what he thought.”

Packer actually played in the first college game Driesell coached at Davidson, a shocking win over Wake Forest. “I’d always tease him about that game,” Driesell said. “And he’d come right back and say, ‘Yeah, well [all-American] Len Chappell didn’t play in that game.’ That was Billy. He always had a comeback.”

That was the genius in NBC’s Dick Enberg, Al McGuire and Packer trio — the first three-man booth in basketball. When NBC hired McGuire after he retired from coaching in 1977, he watched the game from an off-the-court spot — sometimes a janitor’s closet — and would occasionally make comments when there was a break in play.

According to Tom Merritt, NBC’s longtime publicist, it was Packer who said during that first season it was time to move McGuire out of his broom closet and put him at the table with him and Enberg. The rest is sports broadcasting history.

“Don Ohlmeyer [then NBC’s executive sports producer] got the credit for putting the three of them together, but it was all Billy,” Merritt wrote in an email last week. “It was his idea and his insistence on doing it that made it happen.”

Coach Wooden’s gym might be old, but inside UCLA still sparkles

McGuire and Packer bickered constantly on the air but were close friends off it. In fact, they often shared hotel rooms because McGuire didn’t like being alone and preferred to sleep on the floor.

I was lucky enough to be covering college basketball during the NBC glory days and often had dinner with the on-air trio Saturday nights before their Sunday games. Packer and I frequently disagreed, especially on the subject of CBS’s influence on the basketball committee’s tournament selections. When I began referring to CBS as “the official network of the Runnin’ Rebels” during UNLV’s 1990-91 season, we had a very loud shouting match on a street corner in Indianapolis during the Final Four.

But I missed Billy on telecasts when he retired — pushed out, I believe, because he refused to suck up enough to coaches and to the NCAA — because he so often told me things I didn’t know or hadn’t thought about.

I would call him on occasion to talk, and he was as opinionated as ever. In 2016, he told me the only college basketball games he was watching that season included LSU and freshman star Ben Simmons. “I’m not really a fan of the game anymore,” he said. “But this kid fascinates me. He’s so talented, but I’m not sure he’s going to be the star in the NBA everyone thinks he’s going to be.”

It’s nice to see all the tributes to Packer pouring in, but how is it possible that he isn’t in the Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor? He should have been inducted years ago. 

I asked him about that several years back.

“John, if I cared, I’d say so,” he said. “I honestly don’t care. I enjoyed doing what I did all those years, and I think I was pretty good at it. That’s enough for me.”

I believed him. That doesn’t make it right. Billy Packer was a Hall of Famer long ago. Just ask all those fans whose teams he was so biased against.

John Feinstein is a Post contributor who also writes for Golf Digest, Golf World and does TV color on college basketball games.