By ERIK BOLAND
The college basketball season had been too quiet.
Not on the court, of course.
There’s been freshman Michael Beasley looking absurdly good at Kansas State, Memphis making a run at finishing the regular season undefeated and UCLA putting together a season that could end in the program’s first national title since 1995. Nothing wrong there as the sport is offering compelling story lines as it always does.
So what’s been missing?
“I’ve been bored out of my mind,” ESPN broadcaster Dick Vitale said toward the end of the first half of tonight’s Duke/North Carolina game.
This, after Vitale had already reeled off an “Awesome, baby!” or two, and rambling ruminations about the ACC’s strength, Duke/UNC as the greatest rivalry of them all, and “Robert Montgomery Knight.”
Throat surgery felled Vitale, an ESPN college basketball broadcaster since 1979, in December, with his return to the airwaves uncertain. He returned tonight for his favorite game – he said it several times - Duke/North Carolina.
The man has his detractors, many of them calling Vitale loud, obnoxious, utterly predictable and pretty much a caricature of himself.
All true.
And tonight, college basketball never sounded better.