Tonight, I get to have another professional thrill by announcing the WIAA girls basketball state tournament, for the second consecutive season, on this outstanding radio station.

I will be announcing Mineral Point, one year after I announced the Pointer boys at boys state in Madison. This is the first state trip for the Pointer girls in school history, and their radio announcer hopes their state experience ends like mine did.

The only downside of announcing girls state is that it’s at the Resch Center in Ashwaubenon, which is a great facility at an inconvenient end of the state, as I have discussed here before.

The Resch Center works better for girls state in contrast to Madison arenas because it is (1) nicer than the UW Fieldhouse, (2) smaller than the Kohl Center, and (3) not several miles from the UW campus as the Dane County Coliseum — oops, Alliant Energy Center — is. A high school girls game at the Kohl Center is analogous to a state football title game at Camp Randall Stadium, which usually is one-eighth filled. (Which is still better than the last days of Don Mor(t)on.)

The Resch Center is the home of UW–Green Bay’s men’s basketball team, whose announcer made news one day before the Phoenix clinched, the, uh (its? their?) first NCAA berth in 20 years. The Green Bay Press–Gazette reports:

UW-Green Bay men’s basketball radio announcer Matt Menzl briefly was off the air during the game during Monday’s Horizon League semifinal victory over Valparaiso after referee Pat Adams kicked him off press row for what Menzl described as a misunderstanding.

Full audio | Hear Menzl’s ejection here

Menzl said Adams thought he was waving him off after a call went against the Phoenix. Adams thought overwise.

“I talk with my hands,” Menzl said. “I was trying to describe that we had two guys fighting for the ball, and he took it as I waved him off, like saying that’s a horrible call.

“At first he gave me a warning. Then two seconds later said, ‘I want this guy removed and I won’t start the game until he gets removed.’”

Menzl had to hand over his headset to an Oakland play-by-play announcer and went into the tunnel, where he explained the situation to UWGB athletic director Mary Ellen Gillespie and Horizon League spokesman Bill Potter.

Potter told Menzl to go back and that they’d deal with it.

“I maybe missed actual game action, a couple minutes,” Menzl said.

This is what it looked like on TV:

And this is what it sounded like on the air back to Green Bay:

Nation of Blue adds:

Audio has surfaced of referee Pat Adams ejecting the Green Bay radio guy and it makes Adams look even worse than we originally though.

The radio guy appears to be calling the game and suddenly Adams can be heard screaming, “who is this guy?”

After a commercial break, the Green Bay guy is replaced by another radio guy who is filling in.

Given where I will sit for tonight’s game, two-thirds of the way up in the stands, this is not going to happen tonight. However, where I usually sit to announce UW–Platteville games, more often than not courtside, it theoretically could happen, though I would hope I would be professional enough to not get myself tossed or assessed a technical foul. You’d hope the officials would be professional enough to not have rabbit ears, too, but apparently that’s too much to ask in Adams’ case.

Menzl deserves credit for being professional enough to not pop off on the air about Adams’ bullylike behavior. (Adams apparently is a legend in college basketball, and not for good reasons.) There have been announcers over the years who have not been so self-controlled over official calls. That includes legendary Wisconsin announcer Jim Irwin, who would heckle NBA officials on the air during games.

Menzl is not the first radio announcer to be asked to leave a game. Apparently in 2003 during an NCAA tournament game between Cincinnati and Gonzaga at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, this happened:

For a recap of Thursday’s action, we turn to Bearcats play-by-play radio announcer Dan Hoard, who described the key moments of second-half action on WLW-AM 700.

“Coach Huggins has just been ejected, and he’s about to be joined by my partner!”

It was nuts, all right.

With Gonzaga up 47-40, Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins went gonzo on referee Mike Kitts after Bearcats forward Jason Maxiell was called for traveling in the back court when Huggins clearly thought his player was fouled.

Huggins screamed in protest and received a technical for leaving the coaching box. A few seconds later, Huggins was hit with a second technical for refusing to leave the floor. He was escorted away at the 16:17 mark, jawing to police officers as he was led up the corridor.

This is the same Huggins who, last Sept. 28, suffered a near-fatal heart attack in Pittsburgh, a traumatic experience that apparently has not tempered his on-court passion nor his hair-trigger temper.

Meanwhile, courtside, Bearcats color commentator Chuck Machock did not wish to confine his feelings only to his listening audience. When Kitts got within earshot, Machock blistered the referee with a foul-mouth tirade.

Officials of other sports sometimes butt heads with announcers as well:

This also reminds me of my favorite college basketball technical foul, well earned by former Oklahoma coach Billy Tubbs: