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Home > Blogs > Flyer Connection: University of Dayton sports > Archives > 2009 > January > 23
Friday, January 23, 2009
WHIO broadcast of UD game faulty
WHIO Radio experienced technical difficulties during the broadcast of Dayton’s 63-61 win at George Washington on Thursday, leaving fans frustrated as the station struggled to produce a consistent signal from the Smith Center in Washington D.C.
Larry Hansgen, who does the producing for the games along with the play-by-play, said neither of the two enhanced phone lines he tried — called ISDN lines — would allow him to dial out or the station to dial in. He was forced to go with a standard phone line, and it proved to be unreliable.
“The problem when you’re using a phone line at a college is that it’s an extension off a universal line, and the quality is terrible,” he said. “That’s what we ran into. It was just an awful, awful phone line.”
Hansgen said the station received some complaints, as did the Dayton Daily News. With the signal breaking in and out, listeners caught about every third word.
“No one was probably more upset than me. … What they’re hearing, my ears are hearing it at the same time (through his headset), and it was distracting and unnerving. It was not a good situation for all involved.”
WHIO eliminated a broadcast producer for games a few years ago in a cost-cutting measure, but Hansgen said having that technical support wouldn’t have helped.
“We could have had Alexander Graham Bell there, we could have had Marconi there, we could have had Tesla there, and I still don’t know how it would have been any better,” he said.
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Flyers win despite sputtering offense
WASHINGTON D.C. — Dayton is like a souped-up race car that looks sleek going around a track. But put it in stop-and-go traffic — like the post-Presidential Inauguration gridlock still gripping this city — and it’s usually just another clunker on four wheels.
The Flyers had oodles of trouble scoring in half-court sets against George Washington, but they had the moxie and — let’s face it — a needed stroke of good fortune to pull out a 63-61 win Thursday.
The Colonials (6-10, 0-4 Atlantic 10) entered the game with an RPI of 208 — they somehow managed to lose to 3-15 Coppin State, among other indignities — and lugged a seven-game losing streak into their meeting with the Flyers (17-2, 3-1).
Getting caught with six men on the floor for a crucial technical with 21.9 seconds left only added to their season-long woes.
The Flyers were slogging along at a point-a-minute clip through the first 11 minutes of the first half, making just four of their first 13 shots and committing six turnovers.
They really never did get into an offensive rhythm, apart from their 12 fastbreak points, and looked completely finished after falling behind by six with 2:14 to go.
But during the course of any season that ends up memorable, you need some bounces and breaks to go your way, and the Flyers now have had at least two instances of that.
The first was pulling out a one-point win over Fordham, which allowed Rob Lowery to dribble the length of the floor with 10 seconds to go (don’t you make Lowery kick the ball out and then take your chances on Dayton hitting a perimeter shot?) and then the GW technical.
Hardly anybody knew what was going on at first when play stopped with 21.9 seconds to go. Coach Brian Gregory was trying to call a timeout to set up a potential game-winning shot.
But GW didn’t properly sub — one player went in after a made foul shot but nobody came out — and a veteran referee crew spotted it as UD was ready to make an in-bounds pass.
The Flyers have NCAA tournament aspirations — and they’ve certainly laid the foundation for a bid — and that technical may turn out to be the difference between going to The Dance or being left home.
UD’s Gregory said he would have preferred that his team made a last-second shot to win it. But college basketball victories are like strokes in a golf tournament. The NCAA selection committee doesn’t ask how, it asks how many.
