The Alabama men’s basketball team bowed out of the NCAA Tournament surprisingly on Friday night in Louisville at the hands of San Diego State.
Coming into the weekend, it was expected that the Crimson Tide would at least make the Elite 8 and potentially be headed to Houston for the Final Four as the tournament’s number one overall seed.
CBS Sports play-by-play voice Ian Eagle talked to Grant Paulsen and Danny Rouhier on 106.7 The Fan in D.C. on Friday ahead of Alabama’s game, and Alabama’s situation with freshman Brandon Miller came up.
Miller was linked to an alleged murder that took place in January in Tuscaloosa, providing the gun believed to have been used to kill Jamea Jonae Harris. Miller continued to play in games with the investigation ongoing. He has not been charged with any crime.
Eagle said he wasn’t prepared to delve into the situation specifically or incorporate it into some kind of broader point about the program while calling the game.
“At no point am I going to view it that they’ve dealt with challenges or that they’ve handled the distractions,” he said. “This is something that affects the program because of a tragedy, and I think word usage, vocabulary, nomenclature and tone is really important. I don’t want to cross the wires here to say that Alabama is overcoming something because that’s just not the case.”
Eagle mentioned that the game moves so rapidly that even if he wanted to address it, it’s likely there wouldn’t be any time to get to it.
“You can’t go through every possible storyline in the game,” he said. “There are moments where of course the play-by-play announcer has to trust his or her instincts in the moment. That this is important. That this is a priority.”
But Ian said ultimately he tries to put himself in the shoes of the viewer or listener, thinking about what would be the most meaningful contribution he can make to a broadcast.
“The lowest common denominator when it comes to this for me is simply what would I want if I was sitting in my living room, sitting in my kitchen, watching this game?” he said. “What do I want to know? What’s the information I need? And am I being entertained during the process?”
