Four Inane Questions with TV sportscaster Brenda VanLengen

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Hoop—there it is! For nearly three decades, TV sportscaster Brenda VanLengen has been injecting insightful running commentary into women’s basketball games. You name the team; she’s probably analyzed their gameplay live on the air.  

Before she was a broadcaster, VanLengen was an assistant coach for women’s basketball at the University of Nebraska for five years. Now she covers the Big 12, SEC, and Big Ten on ESPN, SEC Network, and Big Ten Network, just to name a few. 

While being a basketball color commentator is her jam—including 12 college women’s basketball national championships and the 2013 World University Games in Russia—she’s also “provided play-by-play for softball, volleyball, and soccer broadcasts,” she tells us. 

VanLengen is currently producing a multi-episode documentary series on the origin story of college women’s basketball entitled If Not For Them. The documentary’s tagline says it all: “An epic story of the forgotten women who changed the world through the love of their sport. (If you haven’t watched the promo, you need to.) The docuseries—about women who broke down barriers, changed social norms, and built the foundation for intercollegiate women’s sports—is being produced right here in the metro. 

We caught up with VanLengen—and her lovely wife Capri Hales—out in the ‘burbs of JoCo, where the broadcaster has a mind-blowing media room set up in their family’s abode. (Yes, if need be, she can call games from the comfort of her own home.)

Naturally, we had to reign VanLengen in with her answers to our stupid questionnaire. For God’s sake, she talks for a living, so we shouldn’t have expected any less. 

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The Pitch: What sport would you absolutely NOT excel at? 

Brenda VanLengen: Gymnastics, definitely. I’m 6 feet tall. I am not flexible at all, and I have never been able to do a flip—not even on a trampoline or off a springy diving board—in my life.

What’s the single best hors d’oeuvre in the history of hors d’oeuvres? 

I love those sweet and savory combinations where a caramelized slice of fried bacon is wrapped around pretty much anything—shrimp, scallops, smoked oysters, pineapple. Anything. 

What’s the weirdest basketball term (or terminology) in the sport?

[laughs] Well, when the ball handler makes a driving move toward the basket, some people refer to that as “penetrating” the defense. Since the basket is a round ring, some people call it a hole and say things like “put the ball in the hole” when referring to making a basket. 

When calling games on television, especially women’s basketball games, you have to be careful not to say “penetrating to the hole” too enthusiastically.

What’s been your biggest on-air blooper/mishap?

Well, I’m quite sure I’ve said the line above before I caught myself—and found other ways to, uh, say that.