The Northern Iowa-St. John’s NCAA Tournament matchup was announced within a few minutes of Sunday’s fast-moving March Madness Selection Show on CBS, and the UNI squad in Cedar Falls was reactionless as CBS showed a camera shot of the team right after the announcement.
“Way to go, Panthers!” CBS host Adam Zucker said, ahead of laughter from the studio crew. “Here it comes! Here it comes! That’s alright! We’ll move on.”
Well, the Panthers didn’t celebrate because they had no idea their name had been called on the Selection Show.
According to Mark Woodley of KWWL (NBC Waterloo, IA affiliate), “CBS had sent [Northern Iowa] a direct feed that was supposed to be faster than the broadcast, however, someone at the network punched up something wrong, so all they saw was a feed of Hofstra celebrating when their selection came up.”
Woodley posted a video on X of how Northern Iowa learned of its matchup and destination. In the video, you can hear audio of Hofstra celebrating on the big screen that the Panthers were watching. Northern Iowa’s Leon Bond III noticed on a side TV that the Panthers’ game had been revealed to the rest of America on CBS.
And what continued to make this situation weird was that, as Woodley notes, Hofstra hadn’t been announced yet on the CBS broadcast. CBS revealed the Hofstra-Alabama matchup roughly 20 minutes after the Northern Iowa-St. John’s announcement.
So, that was an unfortunate and bizarre way for Northern Iowa to learn of its NCAA Tournament game.
Either way, the MVC Tournament champion Panthers are dancing, and they will take on St. John’s in Friday night’s NCAA Tournament first-round action in San Diego.
About Matt Clapp
Matt is an editor/writer at The Comeback and Awful Announcing.
He can be reached by email at mclapp@thecomeback.com.