ESPN Announcer Repeatedly Botches Call During NCAA Women’s Tourney—Right Up To Buzzer-Beater
She had no idea what the score was.
The first rule of being a basketball broadcaster is to be aware of what the score of the game is, especially when the game is tied, and there is the potential for a buzzer-beater. An ESPN announcer on the call for the Ole Miss - Minnesota NCAA Women's Tournament game forgot that rule and embarrassingly dug herself into a hole with repeated asinine comments.
Ole Miss scored to tie the game at 63-63 with 3.5 seconds left before the Golden Gophers called a timeout to draw up a play for a potential game-winner. This left the ESPN crew of Krista Blunk and Andrea Lloyd to set the scene, and they failed, miserably.
Blunk leaned on Lloyd during the break in the action, and understandably so, given that Lloyd is a veteran broadcaster and a member of the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, but certainly didn't think that her counterpart didn't have any idea what the score of the game was.
Lloyd began by saying that "the clock was the problem" for Ole Miss, which didn't make any sense given the score was tied up, but then things got worse. A lot worse.
Lloyd went on to say that Ole Miss would go for the quick steal before having to foul, then spouted out the free-throw shooting percentage of Minnesota players on the floor that the Rebels may want to put on the line.
It was an absolutely brutal watch for any fan paying any attention at all to the broadcast.
To make the situation that much more uncomfortable, Minnesota's Amaya Battle went on to hit a tough jumper with one second remaining to give her team the win. Naturally, Lloyd didn't say a single word as pandemonium broke out on the floor.
While Lloyd's mistakes were about as embarrassing as they come in the world of broadcasting, there is something extremely fitting for the error to come during the same broadcast that continually showed Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in the crowd.