Home Court Advantage?

The Tennessee woman's basketball team beat Rutgers tonight in Knoxville by 1 point. The game ended on a very controversial play that left the Scarlet Knights feeling a little bit cheated. Here's how it was explained at ESPN.com

Trailing 58-57, Anosike [on Tennessee] grabbed an offensive rebound and was grabbed by Kia Vaughn from behind. Unclear whether the foul had come before time expired, the Rutgers bench began to celebrate, but officials reviewed the play and determined that the foul had been committed just before the buzzer.

Television replays showed the game clock seemed to pause as Anosike came down with the ball and two-tenths remained on the clock, leading to the controversial finish.

Basically, what happened is that what the first shot was missed, the clock stopped at 0.2, allowed enough time for Anosike to grab the rebound, and get fouled, and then the clock started back up.

While watching highlights on ESPN, they said it was a "glitch", but I don't know - just seems a little fishy to me.

Anosike would sink both free throws to give Tennessee the lead, and the win.

Apparently, the Scarlet Knights also had a Villanova moment earlier in the year:

It wasn't the first time this season Rutgers lost a game on a controversial call at the end. The Scarlet Knights were beaten by Stanford on two free throws by Candice Wiggins with one-tenth of a second left when she was fouled by Prince 80 feet from the basket.

I'm curious to know if Rutgers can (and will) protest the finish to this game. If that clock doesn't pause, they win this game - and the video proves that.

Photo Credit: ESPN

Bad Call in Memphis/A&M Game?

I'm sure many Texas A&M fans will be up in arms over the call in the game this evening between the Aggies and the Memphis Tigers. With 3.1 seconds left - the Aggies were inbounding the ball from underneath the Memphis basket, and an errant pass was deflected out of bounds by a Memphis player. During the play, no time went off the clock. That sent the officials to the scorers table to review the play. During the timeout, Bill Raftery was actually praising the officials for the excellent game they had been calling up to that point. Me personally, I was doing the play-by-play over the phone to my buddy who was in the unfortunate situation of being in his car during these critical moments. As I'm watching the replay - I was telling him that it didn't appear that the ball had touched the sideline and therefore bounced in bounds before it then landed out of bounds. As far as I knew, the clock shouldn't stop until the ball actually lands out of bounds, not necessarily when it crosses the plane. The refs (even though it took them a while) finally made a decision and decided to take a full 1.1 seconds off the clock giving Texas A&M then only 2.0 seconds to get the ball in bounds and throw up a desperation half court heave. Was it the right call? I think so, although I think they could have made the clock read 2.9 seconds and still had the same result with none of the controversy. Both Raftery and play by play man Verne Lunquist were confused by the call, and describing the ball landing in bounds before going out of bounds wasn't brought up until Greg Gumble brought it up during the post game show. Seth Davis even thought it was questionable and would cause controversy. My opinion is that considering the clock operator thought it immediately went out of bounds, and to the naked eye it appeared that it immediately went out of bounds and even on replay, it was close, the refs should have just taken 2 or 3 tenths of a second off the clock. But you can't fault them for making an accurate call either.