are remarkably better than Big Ten Network announcers. Imagine that. I have yet to be impressed with the Big Ten Network since it was introduced.

For a webcast, I thought it was a quality production.

Apparently you didn't watch Mike Adamla when the games were on ESPN Plus (with no HD, mind you).

Did you catch it when they called Paul, "Cole" when he was fouled on a drive? He didn't correct himself until the third reference.

They botched a few names, but that's not really to be unexpected.

I really enjoyed listening to Simpkins. He does his homework and is very familiar with our team.

You can't compare ESPN and BTN. ESPN has far greater resources and is far more established in sports broadcasting than BTN. It is a lot easier for them to attract better announcers. I think BTN is a good idea and I am glad it exists. They sure can do a lot of things better but given the state of the economy right now, it is hard to make huge investments and upgrades.

Can't wait till Tuesday when everyone gets mad because of B10N's crappy streams. Why can't they just show it on the dang TV.

Tuesday's game is on espn360 according to the schedule that I have.

Simpkins really had to restrain himself. You could tell that he wanted to gush over Paul even more than he did. :)

He did have some very good first hand knowledge of Brandon Paul when he coached him for AAU. The interesting thing was when Lou Canellis asked Dickey if he had ever seen Brandon in high school. It was like Canellis was trying to get Dickey to say that he was Brandon's AAU coach.

Very true. ESPN is looking at streaming as a potential watershed event that it has to be ready for. BTN is just trying to keep up.

Yes, I thought they were really good as well. Though it's not like they pulled 2 guys off the street. Canellis has been on Chicago tv for years and we all know Simpkins in his time from the Bulls. It's not like they trotted Pam Ward out there.

We also have a "Mark" Tisdale on our team.  

But give them credit, I didn't once hear about calories!  

I could listen to both of them everytime on 360, above average for sure... Can't believe good fortune of Cox giving it to me for free, not bad for Wichita Kansas...

You can't tell me BTN couldn't get Lou Canellis and Dickey Simpkins to do their games. We're not talking about Bob Costas and Bill Walton here.

LOL i completely forgot out the calories. I hope Dorris Burke gets to remind us about how she wants to be on that 4,000 calorie diet.

This clears up everything now. I was listening and when they asked "who was Brandon Paul's coach in AAU" and he replied, "must of been a great guy."

I was all confused as to why they didn't continue and say the name of the coach. All clear to me now.

Dickey was trying to sell his AAU program, Next Level Performance, but he was also trying to be modest at the same time so he didn't even make it known that he was BP's coach. but he is definitely knowledgeable about BP's playing ability and has shown up for a handful of his HS games over the past 2 years.

That was a weird little byplay between Canellis and Simpkins. While Simpkins was obviously knowledgable about Paul, I don't think they mentioned their relationship in the first game or last night until the conversation mentioned above. Yet, I think FightingIllini.com listed the announcers as "Lou Canellis and Dickey Simpkins, who coached Brandon Paul in AAU." I don't think that's a huge conflict of interest and given the nature of the games and the excitement surrounding Paul, Simpkins' expertise added to the broadcast. Any announcer, whether they had a connection with Paul or not, would be raving about him during those games.

But after Canellis had to coax something that wasn't a big deal out of Simpkins, I think Simpkins did something that would bother the ESPN higher-ups. He mentioned NextLevel, his "performance school" or whatever, by name and said it was a factor in Paul's success. I don't think he mentioned that he owned it. ESPN won't look kindly on someone using their broadcast job to give a free ad to a company they own. I think Simpkins did a good job and would like to see him move up in the ESPN hierarchy, but that won't go over well.