The answer to the question posed here yesterday is, says Sports Illustrated:

If you are a diehard fan of the men’s basketball teams of Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky or Wisconsin, CBS Sports and Turner Sports will conduct a television experiment this Saturday that might appeal to you.

For the first time in the tournament’s 76-year history, both national semifinal games will be televised on cable. The TBS broadcast will feature play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz, analysts Greg Anthony and Steve Kerr, and reporter Tracy Wolfson. That telecast, as is the case with most national broadcasts for sports, will aim for broadcaster neutrality.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. While each semifinal game is airing on TBS, the networks of TNT and truTV will simultaneously air team-specific presentations (with separate production crews) tailored to each of the schools competing in the semifinals. These “Teamcasts” will feature custom music, custom graphics, team-specific replays, additional cameras geared toward one team, and a custom halftime show. Most importantly, they will feature broadcasters who have been hired specifically to appeal to that fan base. The broadcasters will be encouraged by Turner and CBS to be over-the-top homers for those schools. …

The Kentucky Teamcast will air on TNT. Longtime Kentucky sportscaster Rob Bromley — he works for WKYT-TV in Lexington — will serve as the play-by- play announcer. He’ll team with former Kentucky basketball star and 12-year NBA veteran Rex Chapman, who will serve as the analyst. WKYT-TV staffer Dave Baker will be the courtside reporter.

The Wisconsin Teamcast will air on truTV. Wayne Larrivee, the radio voice of the Packers and a Big Ten Network college basketball and football announcer, will provide play-by-play commentary. He’ll be joined by former Wisconsin basketball player Mike Kelley, who played on the school’s 2000 Final Four team and was the 1999 Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year.

Obviously Larrivee is qualified for this. (So am I, but TBS didn’t notice.) I don’t think Larrivee is an “over-the-top homer.” Kelley works on two levels — he analyzes games for the Big Ten Network, and of course was the starting point guard on UW’s last Final Four team.

Hopefully we’ll find out the answer to the question the headline poses, since that would require a Badger win to find out.

(Some people don’t like Larrivee’s “dagger.” There is far worse out there — for instance, former Marquette TV announcer Rod Luck denoted the game-clinching moment as claiming “the cat’s in the bag and the bag’s in the river.”)

One innovation of the Turner family of networks’ coverage of the Final Four semifinals Saturday — which happily includes Wisconsin — is the ability for fans to choose three sets of announcers — TBS’ announcers and team-oriented announcers on TNT and truTV.

Awful Announcing reports, however, a significant snag in Turner’s plans:

When CBS/Turner announced there would be team-centric telecasts for the NCAA Final Four, it was thought that the networks would hire or simulcast the radio announcers and go from there. However, as the games are fast approaching, we learn that the radio voices of the local teams are not jumping on board. In some cases, the local radio rightsholders have given a flat out “no” answer to CBS/Turner.

Instead of pulling the local radio feeds and building a telecast around it, CBS/Turner want to use a local voice for its TNT and truTV team-centric telecasts which will compliment the traditional national telecast on TBS. So with Florida and Wisconsin already in the Final Four, CBS/Turner will utilize an announcer familiar with both schools for their productions.

The New York Times’ Richard Sandomir reports that despite the potential for national exposure and a huge audience, the radio voices like UConn’s Joe D’Ambrosio or Kentucky’s Tom Leach are reluctant to leave their loyal audiences at this point. And Wisconsin’s radio voice Matt Lepay tells the Times:

“Anytime network television reaches out, your knee-jerk reaction is to say, ‘Where do I sign?’ But we’ve been with Wisconsin on radio all season long. Why change up now?”

In addition, Sandomir writes that IMG College and Learfield Sports which own the rights to over 150 colleges across the country including some in the NCAA Tournament have also told CBS/Turner that its announcers would not be available for the national telecasts.

It leaves CBS/Turner in the lurch and having to scramble just less than a week until the Final Four. It may have to depend on announcers who have worked on local or regional network TV to fill out their roster.

Whether Lepay wants to do the Badgers on TV or not, Learfield apparently has said he can’t. I speculated last week on a couple of Wisconsin-connected announcers who could do Saturday’s game — Packer announcer Wayne Larrivee, who has done a ton of basketball over his career; and Brian Anderson, who did first-weekend tournament games. Anderson’s availability is questionable, though, because the Brewers have now started.

The third person who should have come to mind last week is Kevin Harlan, son of retired Packers president Bob Harlan, who has also done a ton of basketball over his career, including, on radio, the 2003 through 2007 Final Fours. He is not doing this year’s Final Four on radio.

If for some inexplicable reason none of those are available or interested, well, there is an obvious candidate, and I’ll make myself available.