Inside Casey Morsell’s journey to becoming a color commentator

After former NC State men’s basketball guard Casey Morsell led the Wolfpack to a first-round ACC Tournament win over Louisville last season with a team-high 25 points, he sat down to talk with the ACC Network’s “Nothing But Net” studio show.

Once the crew, made up of Kelsey Riggs and former college basketball stars Joel Berry, Carlos Boozer, Luke Hancock and Jim Boeheim, finished interviewing Morsell, they told him he gave great insight about the game.

Morsell had never considered a career in broadcasting, but as NC State made its run to the Final Four, he received the most media attention in his career and forged connections with producers from ESPN, TNT and Fox. He made an effort to talk to as many broadcasters as possible to see if it was something he’d want to pursue after the season.

“As we started winning games, I just started getting in touch with more and more producers,” Morsell said. “The analyst and play-by-play people that I met throughout the run, [I] just kind of wanted to hear them out, pick their brains, figure out how they got there.”

Ironically, the color commentator Morsell talked to the most was former Duke star Grant Hill, who Morsell and company beat to make the Final Four. Hill covered most of NC State’s games in the NCAA Tournament, allowing Morsell to seek advice from one of the most experienced color commentators in basketball.

“Grant Hill was also a good guy I talked to a good amount about it on our run,” Morsell said. “Just gave me great insights on his style and kind of how he likes to do things.”

Not only did Morsell learn from Hill, but he built connections with Hall of Famer Debbie Antonelli and NBC’s Terry Gannon, who was a member of NC State’s 1983 national championship team. After talking to some of the most accomplished broadcasters and producers in television, Morsell decided he would try it out.

Soon after NC State’s Final Four run, Morsell began training with NC State’s production team in May. Josh Monk, NC State Assistant AD for Video, Broadcast and Network Services, showed Morsell the behind-the-scenes aspects of broadcasting and everything that goes into running a smooth show.

Since baseball was the only sport the production team was working on, Morsell made his debut on air during a baseball game where he acted as a secondary color commentator and told stories of the Wolfpack’s postseason run. It was a soft introduction to television but Morsell enjoyed it and kept working to improve as a color commentator.

Over the next few months, Morsell commentated over recorded NC State basketball games to get a feel for his broadcasting style. Tony Haynes, who works for NC State as a sideline reporter and color analyst, sometimes acted as Morsell’s play-by-play guy during these mock games to help Morsell understand the flow of a broadcast and how two announcers bounce off of each other.

After a few months of training, Morsell was offered the role of TV analyst for NC State men’s basketball games on ACC Network Extra. And when he sat down to do his first live game for NC State’s season opener, he was loose because of the work he put in and what he had just done earlier in the year.

“I wasn’t nervous,” Morsell said. “After last season, being on the ropes, after playing 11 elimination games, nervous, you just don’t feel it anymore.”

Being a part of a team that made history last season — becoming the first ACC school to win five games in five days for the conference championship and making the Final Four as an 11-seed — already makes Morsell stand out as a color commentator.

“He has a unique perspective,” said Andrew Sanders, who’s worked as Morsell’s play-by-play commentator for two games. “That’s a short list of people that have been an ACC Champion. It’s a short list of people [who] have gone to a Final Four, and he’s done both. And so that’s been really cool to get his perspective on those things.”

To go along with last season’s accolades, Sanders believes Morsell’s two-way playstyle gives him a wide-ranging perspective. Morsell could be the team’s go-to scorer like he was against Louisville while also guarding the opposing team’s best player. One of the most iconic moments of last year’s run was when Morsell emphatically rejected UNC-Chapel Hill’s RJ Davis in the ACC Championship game.

“He can talk about his scoring, but he wasn’t just a scorer,” Sanders said. “He was a high-level defender. So I think that gives him the ability to talk about both sides of the game.”

Not only do his experiences in college basketball make Morsell an exceptional analyst but the work he puts into his craft makes him stand out. Sanders said Morsell reached out to him shortly after the Final Four run to build a chemistry with Sanders because he understood how important it was.

“He’s sharp, he’s detail-oriented,” Sanders said. “He put in a lot of prep work for these broadcasts … just doing whatever is necessary to happen, to put together a really good broadcast.”

Morsell watches film on both teams he’s going to cover and goes to each squad’s shootarounds. He said the shootarounds are where he gets most of his information for the broadcast. Not only is he getting a feel for how the teams play, but Morsell also wants to know what the program is about outside of basketball.

“I ask some more questions that involve their culture, messages that they want people to know about the program,” Morsell said. “Things that they’ve done in the community that they want me to highlight throughout the game. Just trying to display the teams in a greater light for the broadcast.”

With all the experience Morsell had and the preparation he put in, the most difficult part has been talking about the game in a way everyone can understand. Since Morsell thinks of the game at such a high level, it has been challenging to break it down in layman’s terms.

“The basketball culture has its own code, own phrases,” Morsell said. “There could be someone’s grandmother or someone who has no clue about basketball that’s watching this game. So how can she process, or how can she understand or take away something from the game as someone [who’s] a college coach who’s been coaching for 20 years can take something from the game? You gotta try to find that middle ground.”

Morsell is three games into his broadcasting career and has enjoyed it up to this point. He currently works full-time as a commercial real estate agent and has liked doing color commentating part-time. Before NC State’s improbable postseason run, a career in broadcasting wasn’t really on Morsell’s mind but now that he has a few games under his belt, he sees a world where this could become his full-time gig.

“It could pick up with potential opportunities,” Morsell said. “If it is a full-time thing for me, then it’s probably because I believe that it was the right time and right place to make the transition.”