Teams

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4AA l Houston. Regardless of their strength of schedule or the conference they play in, the Cougars are one of the most talented teams in the country, and they have one of the top coaches in the country, Kelvin Sampson. They can play up-tempo or in the halfcourt on offense. And their defense can use length, speed and tenacity to make life miserable for opponents. Starting in Round 2, the Cougars will see tougher competition than they’ve seen most of the season. But they won’t be intimidated, and they will likely enter the tournament with the swagger of a team that believes it’s the favorite to win it all. l Marquette. Shaka Smart never had much postseason success at

Billy was an ambassador for basketball, and particularly a great ambassador for college basketball. He loved the college game.”

— Former KU coach Roy Williams

KU has been on the receiving end of Packer’s frank opinions before — including in the win over Oklahoma in the 1988 national title game in Kansas City, Missouri. That game was tied at 50 at halftime, and Davis said Packer “thought that Larry Brown and Kansas faced a tremendous uphill battle in the championship if they let the game be played at Oklahoma’s pace.”

“He thought KU was in trouble,” Davis said, recalling what Packer had told him about that game. “His straight talk about what he saw might have riled up Jayhawk fans, but he simply told l Texas. Kansas coach Bill Self said earlier this season that Texas has topfive talent, and the Longhorns have shown that in the past couple of weeks. After dropping back-toback games at Baylor and TCU (two teams who also could be on this list), Texas responded with two dominant wins over Kansas and a Big 12 tournament title.

Texas, but he’s got a team that can make a run this season at Marquette. With the top-ranked and most exciting offense in the country, the team has lost just twice since Christmas. Its overall defense is merely average, but it still forces turnovers with the best of them, ranking in the top 20 in the country in turnover percentage. If Smart can keep his guys playing loose and free and coach up the defense to deliver on the biggest stage, this could be a memorable postseason.

If Marcus Carr is back to form and Dylan Disu and the audience what his opinion was. There was no sugar in that coffee.”

But Packer made up for it two nights before KU’s win over Memphis in 2008, as the Jayhawks raced out to a massive lead over North Carolina in the semifinals.

“This game’s ovah,” he said in his characteristic accent, delighting Kansas’ fans. l l l

Williams, who was on the wrong end of that semifinal loss, saw great value in Packer’s tell-itlike-it-is style, regardless of who was in the crosshairs. What many fans saw as cantankerous, l UCLA. The Bruins have been flying under the radar for much of the season, but won’t be any longer. They were as hot as any team in the country late in the season, and they may wind up in the Final Four on a lot of brackets this month. Mick Cronin’s team has plenty of talent on offense and veterans who have won big before. l More possible contenders: Baylor, Illinois, Michigan State, Purdue, TCU, Tennessee, UConn, Virginia. those who knew Packer saw as frank and honest, Williams said.

Christian Bishop stay aggressive, UT could be the scariest team in the entire tournament.

It’s also incredibly well coached. Despite what you might think of a West Coast team, this group hangs its hat on defense. UCLA ranks second nationally in defensive efficiency, and it does so by eliminating 3-point shooting, forcing turnovers and flat-out competing.

“That’s all it was,” Williams told the Journal-World earlier this month. “And he stated his beliefs very strongly. Billy was not afraid to take a stand about what he thought was right about the game, what he thought was wrong about the game, or to point out if a referee made a mistake or a coach did something wrong. It was an easy deal for him.

“Billy was an ambassador for basketball, and particularly a great ambassador for college basketball,” Williams said. “He loved the college game.”

Packer played college hoops himself at Wake Forest in the ACC, helping lead the Demon Deacons to the Final Four in 1962. His first time on the mic was a few years later, when he was asked to fill in on a Wake Forest broadcast at the last minute.

He also contributed more than just his voice and his incisive commentary to the sport’s signature event: Davis said it was Packer who first pitched the idea of a March Madness selection show to CBS.

Davis said he always marveled at how much Packer and the rest of the crew cared about keeping the game and the tournament at center stage.

“They were genuinely concerned about the importance of the games and the tournament,” Davis said. “They didn’t waste time on anything else.” l l l

On the road, Davis was often the fly on the wall, letting Packer, play-by-play broadcaster Jim Nantz, producer Bob Dekas and director Bob Fishman talk basketball with the coaches and other notable names in college hoops.

And that also meant Davis got to see sides of the broadcaster other than the one that came across the airwaves.

He recalls, for instance, when the CBS crew teamed up to play a prank on Packer, using Davis’ Coach’s Edge program as the hook. Packer, thinking he was doing a live breakdown, went through a play from a game between Illinois and Michigan. It started off like normal, with Packer discussing the X’s and O’s, but it quickly went off the rails when the icons on the screen went to the wrong spots and more than 10 players were suddenly shown on the court.

Davis took a video of the whole thing, and he said the look on Packer’s face when he realized it was a prank was one of admiration and elation. Packer was always happy to play the role of the prankster, Davis said, but it was rare for him to be the victim of a prank himself.

“When he was doing games, he was serious and stayed with the mindset of explaining what he saw in front of him,” Davis said. “Outside of that, he loved to have stimulating conversations and could laugh and joke with the best of them.”

Like Self and Williams, Davis said Packer’s impact on the game was immeasurable and that his death was a great loss for the sport. But for Davis, it was also the loss of a friend and someone he greatly admired.

“We worked together for a long time and I enjoyed every second of it,” Davis said. “We created some innovative ways to show the concepts of the game to fans, and I learned a lot about the game, as well, through my time with CBS and my conversations with Billy.”

Whether it was his pointed calls, his iconic voice or his vast knowledge of the game, Packer deserved to be remembered as a pioneer in the sport and a critical part of the growth of college basketball, Davis said.

“We have lost a remarkable source of the history of college basketball,” he said. “It was an absolute dream for a high school coach from Kansas to get that kind of access to one of the true greats.”