St. John's and Rick Pitino have NYC and CBS broadcast team excited for NCAA Tournament

Ian Eagle grew up 10 minutes from the St. John’s campus in Queens, so he knows a buzz around the program when he feels it. And he feels it now.

“In the 1980s, when the Red Storm were out there, nationally relevant, great players, great teams, that was part of what attracted me to college basketball as a young person,” he said Tuesday on a CBS/TNT video news conference to promote coverage of the NCAA Tournament.

“To see it now, all these years later, there is electricity in New York City. It's legitimate. You can feel it.”

Eagle and Bill Raftery were on the call when St. John’s clinched the outright Big East regular-season championship by beating Seton Hall in a sold-out Madison Square Garden on March 1.

Eagle, Raftery and Grant Hill will work together throughout the NCAAs, up to and including the Final Four if St. John’s gets that far for the first time since 1985.

“I do think it has an impact on a national scale, because it gets the part of the country involved that sometimes doesn't have much of a rooting interest, and now New York City and the tri-state area feels like they're part of this,” Eagle said.

“So it's real. It's tangible. Rick Pitino has done an incredible job in two years to make them a factor again. I'm not sure many could have predicted that it would happen this quickly.

“There was a sense that he would be highly successful. I don't think anyone presumed it would be in about a finger snap. It's been a fun ride already."

Three of the four members of CBS’ No. 1 college basketball team grew up in the New York area — Eagle, Raftery and sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson.

“The Big East over the years has not really had a team in [the league’s] three biggest markets— Chicago, New York and Washington,” Raftery said. “The thrill for me is traveling around doing these other conferences. People are really concerned about this St. John's team. What's going on there?

“They moved three or four games to the Garden just because of what Rick's been able to do. He's got the courage to wear a white suit in the middle of the day in New York [for the Seton Hall game], which is very admirable. Only he could get away with it.

“But I just think the idea that a team out of New York can get it going, the excitement it brings, the following it brings, is just absolutely extraordinary. And I think it bodes well, not only for St. John’s, but for the Big East as well.”

Said Wolfson: “Just to have Rick Pitino back in the tournament, especially with so many veteran coaches stepping away from the game, I think it's great to have him back in."

Wolfson said she is intrigued by the notion of a regional final between likely No. 1 seed Duke and St. John’s at the Prudential Center in Newark.

“I think that would be an incredible scene,” she said. “As a New Yorker, I would absolutely love to see that. So maybe we could put a little word on the side of CBS and TNT to that [selection] committee to make that happen.

“Of course, they have to get there, but that would be an awesome experience for a lot of New Yorkers.”

Earlier NCAA championship game start time

CBS will televise the NCAA championship game from San Antonio on April 7, with tipoff set for 8:50 p.m., 30 minutes earlier than what has been the start time for decades. “We want to appeal to people of all ages, and the later you go, the more challenging it is,” CBS Sports president David Berson said. “So it's just us working with the NCAA to be more fan friendly.”

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.