He wins it! He wins it! With the jumper!" Then, five seconds of silence, followed by, “A San Diego State miracle!” His call of Saturday's buzzer-beating shot by San Diego State's Lamont Butler in the semifinals - Nantz estimates he's had 20-something such last-second winners over his years in the tournament - plays back like a master class in what his job should be: simple, urgent, much more about the moment than the person talking about it. Nantz's welcome-in message to the telecasts might be planned. The Nantz National Alzheimer's Center is based in Houston.
It gives Nantz a moment to connect with the audience and think of his dad, who passed away in 2008 after a long bout with Alzheimer's. “Hello Friends” is the comfy-as-a-slipper welcome he coined about 20 years ago. Two streets on an intersection outside the stadium were renamed “Jim Nantz Way” and “Hello Friends Boulevard.” It's been wild, emotional and a little awkward for a man who concedes he likes to tell the stories, not be part of them. “Storytelling paradise,” Nantz called it. That didn't happen, but Nantz believes there's something fitting about a Final Four that came out of the blue like this, with three schools that had never been this far before, and no team seeded better than No. 1 seed, was playing in its hometown in the final game of Nantz's basketball journey. Some said it might have been perfect if his alma mater, which came into the tournament as a No. He'll continue on those assignments for the foreseeable future, but this 37th run through March Madness will be his last. He has guided them through six Super Bowls on CBS and walked with them among the towering pines at the Masters since 1986, when Jack Nicklaus won his sixth green jacket. Nantz's might very well be the voice American sports fans know best. A year after that, Nantz was still living in the dorms at UH when Lewis asked him to host his coach's show. About 10 years later, that coach, Guy Lewis of the Houston Cougars, would give Nantz, who played golf at the school, a job as the public-address guy for home games at Hofheinz Pavillion. Working the sideline was a bear of a coach who had a red, polka-dotted towel draped across his shoulder. His dad took him to his first college basketball game. The 63-year-old traces his own path to the announcer's table to when he was 9 and living in New Orleans. "This tournament is their ‘forever.' I always wanted to make sure that I do justice to their story.” “But those Delaware State kids, they're on CBS, and I envisioned that someday, they're going to have the VHS tape to be able to show their grandchildren and say ‘I played in the NCAA Tournament,'" Nantz said during a courtside conversation with The Associated Press the day before the start of his last Final Four. Nantz was certain he'd see those Duke players again.
They were going against Duke in a first-round game hardly anyone remembers now. The Hornets were a 16 seed when they made what is still their only NCAA appearance back in 2005. HOUSTON - Certainly, Jim Nantz could fill an evening weaving tales of the great games and buzzer-beaters he's had the privilege to see, and call, over a storytelling career that made his the voice of March Madness for nearly four decades.īut when asked about his favorite moments as he prepared for the 354th and final game of that journey - Monday's title game - he brought up Delaware State.
0 kommentar(er)
