ORLANDO, Fla. — By this point in the week, Dan Bonner is eager for tipoff.
He said he’s spent every possible minute since the NCAA Tournament field was revealed Sunday evening doing the same as he’s done this time of year for the last 32 years — preparing to work the always-entertaining first and second rounds of the Big Dance as a color analyst for CBS.
Between six games over three days involving eight different schools, there’s plenty of research to do and insights to gain.
“You scramble around. You’re flooded with information,” area resident Bonner said Wednesday between College of Charleston’s practice and Virginia’s workout at the Amway Center in Orlando.
“My basic thing is I watch as much tape as I can, but by this time my head is about to explode,” Bonner, a UVa alum, said with a smile, “so I can’t wait for the games to start.”
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He’ll have South Region contests between UVa and Furman (12:40 p.m.) and San Diego State and Charleston (3:10 p.m.) followed by East Region tilts between Duke and Oral Roberts (7:10 p.m.) and Tennessee and Louisiana (9:40 p.m.).
“I don’t know if in all my years that I’ve been doing this that I’ve ever had a break like I have this year, though,” Bonner said. “And that’s that I have Virginia, I have Duke and I have San Diego State. So, I know three of the teams cold and that’s a big help.”
He said that cuts down on the prep time of learning all the players he needs to know and allows him to focus on other methods of readying like he did throughout the day Wednesday when he was talking over the broadcasts with his play-by-play partner Kevin Harlan as well as about the teams involved with their coaches throughout the day as they took the floor for practice.
Bonner, who played on legendary coach Terry Holland’s first team in Charlottesville, is a basketball junkie. He coached the Cavaliers’ women’s squad for two seasons ahead of beginning his broadcasting career with Virginia’s radio team, which eventually led to his break into television when former TV producer C.D. Chesley was in search of a non-North Carolina-leaning commentator to appear on ACC broadcasts.
“And there were only seven teams in the ACC then — the four North Carolina schools and Virginia, Clemson and Maryland,” Bonner said. “And the non-North Carolina schools wanted a non-North Carolina presence on the TV broadcast and they constantly harassed Mr. Chesley about it and he said, ‘If you find someone who can do it, then I’ll put them on.’”
Bonner was recommended by former UVa athletic director Gene Corrigan, interviewed and has been a fixture on college hoops broadcasts since.
He’s had other basketball jobs, too, like coaching Staunton’s Robert E. Lee High School girls about two decades ago, which he said interestingly enhanced his broadcasting.
“I was old enough then and had been doing this long enough then,” he said, “that I was able to take lessons from my observation on television and apply it to coaching and I was able to take the thing I learned working with the kids and apply it to this.”
During his career, he’s spent time with various networks but most notably CBS during the NCAA Tournament, which Bonner said never gets old even for as long as he’s been part of it.
“There’s that Christmas song where they say, ‘It’s the most wonderful time of the year,’” he said. “Well, it’s not. This is. This is wonderful and it’s not just doing the game.
“It’s seeing [Charleston coach] Pat Kelsey. I’ve known Pat Kelsey for years and so I enjoy talking to the coaches. [Furman coach] Bob Richey is somebody that I’d only met once before, but you get to meet people and talk to people. And then it’s the people you work with.”
He and Harlan are longtime partners who’ve worked with the same producers for years, so they have conversations beyond basketball and catch up about each other’s families. Former NBA coach Stan Van Gundy and sideline reporter Lauren Shehadi are new to the crew this year, and Bonner said it’s always neat to incorporate different voices into the telecast.
He said his favorite March moment isn’t one that happened on the grandest stage. Bonner and play-by-play man Ian Eagle called the 2007 Division II national title game, in which Barton College rallied from nine points down with 45 seconds left to stun two-time defending champ Winona State.
“Every time Ian and I see each other we say, ‘If that was a Division I national championship game, then it would be legendary,’” Bonner said with a grin and a chuckle. “But in the big tournament, Kevin and I did a game a number of years ago that involved Kansas, Northern Iowa and Ali Farokhmanesh.”
That’s the 2010 second-round contest that Farokhmanesh and the ninth-seeded Panthers toppled top-seeded Kansas behind his 3-pointer from the wing in transition with 33 seconds to go. It was the fourth shot from beyond the arc that Farokhmanesh made.
“So as long as they’ll let me do this, I’ll do this,” Bonner said.
About this version of the Hoos, Bonner said what’s interesting is they have a wide-range of possible outcomes and depending on whether or not the Cavaliers are scoring effectively will dictate how far they advance.
“You saw early in the season that they scored 86 points and beat Baylor,” Bonner said as he switched into analyst mode. “Now, you don’t have to score 86 points every time, but defense, contrary to what people believe, does not win championships. Defense puts you in position, but eventually you have to score and that’s Virginia’s problem.
“When they score, they can beat anybody,” he continued. “The way they play they can be in the game against anybody and anybody can be in the game against them if they can’t score. As they demonstrated against Clemson, they destroyed Clemson and that’s what they can do. They beat Baylor. They beat Illinois. That’s what they can do. But they scored 48 points against Boston College, so that’s also what they can do. But if they score, then they’re as good as anybody in this tournament.”
