Finally, it happened.

Just as my friends, my family and the gang at the office said it would.

While taking in Illinois’ thrilling 70-67 win over Indiana Sunday afternoon on ABC, Dick Vitale caught up with me.

Finally, I had to laugh as Vitale—for the umpteenth broadcast in a row—was describing the play of the two best college teams that ever played the game.

Finally, I grew tired of each team having six All-Americans on the floor at one time.

“Freeze it, Dick!” I thought to myself. “You need a TO, baby!”

Now I’ll admit, throughout all of ESPN’s and ABC’s NCAA telecasts—right up until the time Vitale heralded the Hoosiers’ Brian Sloan as a P.T.P. (Prime Time Player) for setting picks, I’ve been an avid fan of the man with 40 Top 20 teams.

But it took as much as a title game in the Big 10 (the third conference Vitale has referred to as the nation’s best this year), for me to really grow tired of Vitale’s tendency to love the one he’s with.

And it’s not like Sunday was the first time I had noticed it, or anything. It’s just that until Jay Edwards joined Mookie Blaylock, Sherman Douglas, Chris Jackson, Kendall Gill, B.J. Armstrong, Jay Burson, LaBradford Smith and Rodney Monroe as one of the top two guards in the country, I thought Vitale’s vast knowledge and creativeness made up for any shortcomings.

Now give Vitale this much credit—there is no one anywhere who knows more about the people of college basketball. He knows everything past and present about the players and coaches, and has developed an unbelievable number of sources in his relatively short time with the big networks.

And there are still instances where Vitale’s anything-goes style makes him the man for the job. Only Vitale could make a 30-point Iowa win over Northwestern worth watching, as he would rival Bill Murray in his ability to ridicule the inept Wildcats.

But when a game advances to the level of Sunday’s contest—and big games are where Dick’s obnoxiousness hits record levels, Vitale’s versions of “slam, jam, bam” and “the helicopter man” need to be replaced with more X’s and O’s.

And Vitale, a former coach, has shown early in games—before he gets wound up—that he knows the game. But on Sunday, Vitale was more interested in jumping on Nick Anderson’s bandwagon after the forward pulled the game out of the fire.

You can bet your 60-foot baseball pass that Billy Packer wouldn’t have been hailing Robert Montgomery Knight (as Vitale constantly does) after “The General” failed to apply pressure to Steve Bardo’s inbounds pass. And you can rest assured that had the Illini and Hoosiers reversed roles in the game-winning sequence, Vitale would have been all over Lou Henson—and thrown in a couple cheap shots about the “Lou do,” Henson’s not-so-stylistic hairdo.

So maybe what Vitale needs is to avoid games involving the best players and the best coaches. Or maybe he just needs to slow down and realize he is ruining what credibility he might have had by putting everybody he sees on the highest pedestal.

But one thing’s for sure. Until he can stop jumping to his outrageous conclusions, Vitale’s opinions won’t hold any more water than those of the average fan.

And that’s a fact, baby!