Q&A: Bill Raftery on preparing for the Sweet 16, playing at La Salle, and his signature ‘Onions!’ call

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is down to 16 teams, and we’ll have a Final Four by the end of the weekend. It’s Bill Raftery’s time to shine.

The Big 5 Hall of Famer, who played at La Salle in the 1960s, has long been one of the faces of college hoops. Raftery will turn 81 in a few weeks, and he still calls games with the verve of a younger man.

The Inquirer caught up with Raftery this week after he spent the day doing some Sweet 16 preparation before flying to Dallas to call the South Regional.

(Editor’s note: The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.)

» READ MORE: Q&A: Jay Wright on his role with Villanova basketball, his legacy ... and where are all the suits?

A: We all have our own responsibilities. I look at a lot of games, old games of the teams, as much as I can, sort of catch up to what they did the last couple weeks. That’s basically what I do, and read. Get a cheat sheet ready. Brain-dead stuff, putting names and numbers in. Not that it’s time-consuming, but it takes a little while.

The eight teams [during the first and second rounds] is obviously a bigger challenger versus this four. The fortunate thing is you’ve had them or you’ve seen them at this point, just naturally.

A: Yeah, pretty much.

And I’ve watched N.C. State for a variety of reasons. They got playing better at the end of the year, so I had some notes that I’d taken earlier in the year. When I see something, I write it down. You never know come tournament time, plus you want to know who’s good during the year.

» READ MORE: NCAA men’s basketball transfer portal already loaded and impacting Big 5 schools

A: Yeah, but [Jay] Bilas destroyed all the good humor with his “dancing bear” and that kind of stuff. I’m going to have to call him to see what he didn’t use during the course of the year with him.

Boy, is he agile. He reminds me a lot of when linebackers were in 4-3 and Lawrence Taylor changed it, I think, like he could play wherever he wanted because of his agility and mobility. Not that this kid can play wherever he wants, but he’s quick when it counts. He’s got a lot to lug around but his touch and his feel are amazing for a guy that big [6-foot-9, 275 pounds]. And he uses his feel for which way to go probably better than most big men.

I think I’m just lucky. Basketball to me has been … not necessarily my life, there’s more to life than that … but I always liked it, and to get to be able to do these kinds of games was never my ambition in the early ‘80s. I was delighted to just get whatever ESPN gave me and the Big Monday games that the Big East were involved in.

I just feel that the coaches and the kids work so hard that I think you have a responsibility to be as prepared as you can be. They put their heart and soul into it and I know we do, too.

A: I think either way there’s always great stories going back to George Mason years ago, VCU, Butler. That’s the magic of the tournament, when somebody can get that far. A lot of times it’s just the first round where these Jersey teams beat the national teams.

It piques the interest of the casual viewer a little more when they have recognizable names, that’s what I think happens quite a bit. Whereas you’re going to watch anyhow, no matter who it is, whether it’s Drexel and Seton Hall in the final. But I think when you see the marquee names, the guy who watches just at the end of the year is certainly going to tune in.

» READ MORE: Jack Gohlke and the Oakland Grizzlies are what March Madness is all about

A: I just think it’s all about the entity. I think everybody I’ve worked with is all about presenting the best show you can and presenting the product as well as you can. I guess you can tell if somebody doesn’t get along.

[Steve] Lavin’s favorite line is “share the sugar,” which I would never use by the way, I think that’s part of it. We eyeball or connect. There’s certain things, I can tell by [Grant Hill’s] body motion that he’s excited about something. I think he feels the same, maybe it’s not my body motion but something I’ll be more comfortable with. It’s almost instinctive after a while, even though we’re together only these three weeks.

A: When all this stuff started, I didn’t think or plan anything. In fact, I never said the word onions ever. Bird [Ian Eagle’s nickname] and I were doing an Orlando-Nets game and they were having one of those really bad years, like an 18-45 kind of thing. Kevin Edwards hits a corner jumper to win the game, it was like winning the championship, and I blurted out “onions.” I had never said it before.

A: It just proved something that they still competed, still worked, didn’t give up whether their record was good or bad or indifferent.

I never knew I was saying man-to-man. The only reason I did that, in retrospect, was to get out of the play-by-play guy’s way because now they’re in the process of identifying who has the ball and that kind of stuff. So I started saying man-to-man and I didn’t think anything of it until a couple of trips to Newark airport, somebody would say “man-to-man.” I’m going, what the hell is wrong with that guy?

Sometimes I say to myself, are you kidding me? Anyhow, it’s become sort of a nice way of introducing the three of us, too.

It’s been fun. I loved doing La Salle. I loved playing there. We all wish we did better. We only got to the NIT, but that damn Jack Ramsay or Villanova, they always seemed to knock us off.

But my line, which is pretty true I guess, I wasn’t that good of a player so I became a coach. I wasn’t that good of a coach, so I became a broadcaster. It’s been an enjoyable ride. It keeps you young and keeps you interested.