I believe Dakich was originally slated to do color on the game, but was bumped for Vitale.
Dakich would have been perfect. He would have of course paid the requisite respect to RMK but he wouldn't have allowed it to become such a fiasco for many reasons.
Metaphorically speaking, Dakich knows where the bodies are buried. He saw and experienced too much to let the praise get totally out of hand as it did with Vitale.
He also has enough professional and technical acumen to realize that there was a team on the court that was playing more like a Knight team than this Hoosier squad, and he would have pointed it out. This eluded Vitale.
Dakich would have noted that, played up the Knight-Keady era more, and talked about the influence thay have had on Painter's philosophy. It would have made the broadcast more about the game on the floor while still interweaving the RMK angle.
The production of the game was so distracting and semi-professional: Those clowns even misspelled Randy "Whitman's" surname in their highlight package; the rushed interview with Mike Woodson was awkward and hurriedly ill-timed with the media timeout; the split screen was unnecessary and frustrating to everyone regardless of allegiance.
Of course the return of Knight was significant. But ESPN totally botched it with Vitale's barely-literate, boring, and repetitive self-aggrandizement. He turned what should have been a dignified tribute into a nauseating hagiography.