Tuesday night’s game was on ESPN News. Eamon McAnaney and Malcolm Huckaby were there to call the game and Jeff Goodman was the sideline reporter and — what’s that? McAnaney wasn’t there? Huckaby wasn’t, either? Inconceivable! I know Goodman was.

Kentucky fans: Guess who this is? pic.twitter.com/gWPlsY6KbO

— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanESPN) January 13, 2015

Turns out the announce crew, sans Goodman, was back in Bristol, Conn., at an ESPN studio watching and calling the game, part of a plan the Worldwide Leader rolled out in the fall.

In its infancy, the idea jas led to some interesting moments — one crew called Temple v. Tulane in New Orleans and then Cal v. USC in Los Angeles without ever leaving The Constitution State — and some lesser ones — fans have griped about the audio or the connection the announce crew doesn’t have with announcements made by officials or the PA, which are intimate and integral parts of the game.

Tuesday night saw some of that.

Some viewers weren’t sure what the students were chanting at Oklahoma. Others felt announcers were lagging or just lost on who was being called for fouls, or why, and the latter is a pretty important part of a game that features WVU and its press. Did the Sooners seem fatigued? Were there outward expressions suggestion frustration? What was Lon Kruger’s demeanor through it all.

Telecasts owe their viewers some or all of those things. Most of the play-by-play duties and the addition of back stories and color are mobile tasks that can happen anywhere. But an analyst’s job is to see something viewers don’t or can’t, and that’s difficult when the analyst is left with the same vantage point viewers have.

And we haven’t even covered the ethical part.

Timothy Hudson, a communication professor at Point Park University, said remote broadcasts could raise ethical concerns depending on the network’s transparency. If the broadcast team neglects to disclose its location, for instance, it could be read as “deceptive by omission.”

Though the broadcasters didn’t make it apparent that they were broadcasting from a studio in Connecticut, not courtside, they didn’t try to trick the audience, either — moves Hudson called “overtly deceptive,” like using a green screen or other television magic — to pretend they were elsewhere.

While the producer, director and broadcasters were in Bristol, ESPN sent sideline reporter Jeff Goodman and a camera crew to Morgantown.

West Virginia spokesman Bryan Messerly said the off-site broadcast created no problems for the host school. “The crew was well prepared as all the crews are. Other than a conference call instead of an in-person meeting with the announcers, the broadcast was not any different for us.”

There are two realities here: First, this is how you afford to get so many games on the air. Let’s be frank here: WVU v. Oklahoma could have been on a harder-to-see network. Other schools in smaller conferences would be happy to have ESPN News as opposed to, say, nothing. Secondly, this is a weird balance that can’t yet be perfected. It’s something ESPN is sure to look into and seek to cure moving forward because though this is labeled a “test,” it’s also something the network seems to take seriously.

“Despite the changes behind the scenes, viewers should receive the same quality production level that they’ve come to expect from ESPN,” Miller said. “In short, we will maintain a consistent level of quality in a more efficient way.”

What will be the impact, short and long term?

“Efforts like this will allow us to reinvest in resources to make our overall productions bigger and better,” Miller said. “Innovation has always been a hallmark of ESPN.”