Refs Blatantly Steal Game From Clemson (Update: ACC “Handles Internally”)

06-07 Basketball General Headscratchers NCS Basketball95

SFN commentary: Just yesterday Duke Basketball Report took a shot at SFN for daring to discuss officiating in Duke games. LOL! and kiss our ass.

January 26 Update: The ACC does acknowledge the mistake, but nonsensically, it appears no discipline is forthcoming. Quote from Clueless Clougherty:

“At this point, as with most league officiating matters, this situation has been handled and resolved internally.”

I shouldn’t be shocked, but I am. This was no run of the mill judgment error. A strong statement needed to be made for the integrity of the league…and we didn’t get that. I can only imagine how incensed the Tiger faithful must be. Oh, and hat tip to one of my rare work colleagues who is a fellow Wolfpack fan (and SFN lurker).

(Original post follows.)

I don’t know how many of you saw what I just saw. The ESPN announcers (Mike Patrick and Len Elmore, I think) completely soft-pedaled it. The game recap doesn’t even mention the clock change as questionable! But Clemson just got screwed worse than any team since Missouri lost to Colorado on the infamous “5th down” play.

Watch the video on YouTube.com

Here’s the scene – Duke inbounding the ball, up 3, with 5.0 seconds to play. McRoberts throws the ball directly to Tiger guard Vernon Hamilton. Hamilton steps one foot back and nails a 3 to tie the game. However, there is a delay in both starting and stopping the game clock. The teams go to timeout with 1.8 seconds on the clock. However, the officials look at the replay and either stupidly or crookedly decide that there was a timing error and the previous play really only took 0.6 seconds total – laws of physics be damned. Given 4.4 seconds, Duke runs a play to get McClure a runner in the lane, released with 0.2 seconds on the clock.

I’m serious – if you are a Duke fan, you should be ashamed to call that a win. If you are Oliver Purnell, you had better complain as loudly and publicly as you can – to hell with fines and the league office. If you are ACC Commissioner John Swofford, you must suspend the official who made that decision for at least the rest of the season. Otherwise, the credibility of the entire league should come into question. It’s one thing not to call the perpetually hand-checking Devils for any fouls (Paulus had to foul intentionally in the last minute to ensure that Clemson would be in the bonus should Duke need to foul later), but to give them at least 2 extra seconds for a final shot in a tie game? You are entering the 1970s USA/USSR Olympic gold medal game territory.

As a departing shot, thanks to 850TheBuzz for reminding us all that ‘Duke is too good to be celebrating like that’. I wonder how Coach K justifies the hypocrisy?

About BJD95

1995 NC State graduate, sufferer of Les and MOC during my entire student tenure. An equal-opportunity objective critic and analyst of Wolfpack sports.

06-07 Basketball General Headscratchers NCS Basketball

95 Responses to Refs Blatantly Steal Game From Clemson (Update: ACC “Handles Internally”)

  1. Champs 01/26/2007 at 5:12 PM #

    Anyone who can watch the refs consistently steal games for Duke and continue to deny that it happens is plan and simply a liar. I put the integrity of ACC BB just above WWE wrestling and just below NASCAR. It is about that realistic. Do these guys work off of a script?

  2. VaWolf82 01/26/2007 at 5:50 PM #

    Here’s a question for our “friends” at DBR….When was the last time Duke lost a game because of a blatantly bad officiating call?

  3. vtpackfan 01/26/2007 at 6:53 PM #

    VaWolf, I think in the NCAA tourney when refs don’t tremble at the K, DBR and Duke feel like they get screwed. It’s really weird how they seem to get in foul trouble in big NCAA and OOC games.

  4. redfred2 01/26/2007 at 7:02 PM #

    tractor57

    Ol’ Leonard, Dean’s little salad bowl hairdo, just up the street and living in the same neighborhood, buddy. I remember him well.

  5. vtpackfan 01/26/2007 at 7:02 PM #

    I could honestly care less about Clem or Duke and this game. I would love for State to be this close against anone right about now (not as excited if it WF, or Miami).

    Oliver Purnell got to do something. Anything. He doesn’t have to pitch a fit (if the shoe was on the other foot K would still be frothing like a pit bull and standing a mid court as we sit here). Just asks some questions, do some thinking on your feet Oliver. Don’t stand by with the “ACC officials got this one handled attitude”. His players got their money’s woth out of trip to Durham, but something tells Purnell didn’t.

    Oh, well. The sad thing is this is what ACC basketball is come to this year. UNX, Dook, and a bunch scrappy teams. No quality games night in and night out. Mostly boring games that are punctuated by 5 seconds of excitment or a clock malfunction. Maybe just a down cycle for the league, I hope, but I could easily see the ACC sending one to the sweet sixteen and maybe nothin’ better.

  6. redfred2 01/26/2007 at 7:30 PM #

    Nobody expected the inbounds pass…the three by CLEMSON?…in CAMERON? Not anybody, not Purnell…and especially not the officials. I’m sure Purnell was feeling fortunate and thinking, OK, we’re going to OT, what do we need to do now. So were the officials, quick delay, game clock reset to a more than fair amount of time to placate Coach K, and the Cameron crowd, but still not likely that Duke would score in 4 seconds.
    Bodda boom, bodda bing, game over.

    Play the percentages and it would be OT with nobody complaining. Didn’t work…terrible call by the officials.

  7. MrPlywood 01/26/2007 at 8:24 PM #

    Insult to injury, I just caught a repeat of the Best Damn Sports Show’s Top 50 Plays… and while the Pack’s last second shot to win the NATIONAL championship was 10th, Laettner’s shot to win the Kentucky quarterfinal game was 4th… Will it ever end?

    As far as Duke getting calls, I remember a game at Reynolds back in the Gminski era. State led by 3 at the half, then it began. State could do no right, Dook could do no wrong. It seemed like Gminski was on an endless treadmill to the foul line. It got so bad that at one point the Pack fans littered the floor with cups and programs, and the game had to be stopped for a bit to clean the floor. It was nuts.

    Check this stat sheet out (scroll down to the Jan 21 game):

    http://www.sportsstats.com/ACC/boxlines/NCSU/1979

    State shot 44.6%
    Dook shot 39.6%
    State outrebounded Dook 49-34

    Fouls called on State: 35
    Fouls called on Dook: 14
    Gminski shot 20 (!) free-throws, made 17
    The entire State team shot 7, making only 3
    Dook shot 49 free-throws, making 33!

    I thought my head was going to explode, and I wasn’t alone. Even so, State only lost by 6… Pretty good considering Dook had 8 guys on the floor…

  8. gumbydammit 01/26/2007 at 10:04 PM #

    So, if the clock did not start when it should, and it was at 1.8 seconds after the shot, then should the 1.8 seconds have been REDUCED, not INCREASED?

    The real travesty is that the officials really had no way of accurately knowing what the correct time should be, so rather than leaving an obviously wrong time remaining number alone, they decided to change it to another equally obviously wrong larger number. This defies logic, unles you add to the equation that it was Duke’s ball with the obviously wrong larger number.

    “Conspiracy” may be the wrong term for it, but “biased bullshit” would not be too far off….

  9. dallas-pack 01/26/2007 at 10:33 PM #

    “Arenas boasts he’d score ’84 or 85′ against Duke”
    A little “off-topic” but an interesting link to an article on Gilbert Arenas who says he’s give up a year of NBA salary so he could hang 84 or 85 points on Duke. You gotta love someone who hates Duke and Coack K so much….. maybe Sydney should offer him a chance [laughing]

    enjoy: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/basketball/nba/01/25/bc.bkn.arenas.duke.ap/index.html

  10. forst8 01/26/2007 at 11:13 PM #

    “Just yesterday Duke Basketball Report took a shot at SFN for daring to discuss officiating in Duke games. LOL! and kiss our ass.”

    I just love you guys and Duke can kiss my ass also for all the years I’ve had to put up with their intimidation of the refs and their holier than thou attitude.

  11. DaPackster 01/27/2007 at 12:12 AM #

    Clemson miss 30 shots, committed 12 turnovers, and was outrebounded by 14 boards. It was a fluke that Clemson tied the game. Duke won and Clemson did not deserved to win. Quit crying and worry about our team issues.

  12. RickJ 01/27/2007 at 9:56 AM #

    This just keeps getting better. Guess who the clock operator was at this game. None other than Tommy Hunt, the ACC supervisor of football officials who lives in Durham. This is the same jackass that laughed at the idea that the last second touchdown by Akron against NC State should have been reviewed.

  13. lush 01/27/2007 at 10:35 AM #

    did anyone catch the k’s comments in the lockeroom after the game. something to the effect of

    “yeah i heard that some of the tv guys are questioning the clock, trying to make a big deal out of it. but thats what tv guys do. especially certain tv guys”

    what a jackass

  14. tvp 01/27/2007 at 11:02 AM #

    http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/articles/?p=21798

    http://www.dukebasketballreport.com/articles/?p=21799

    ^The DBR “response”.

    “If there are any officials out there who would like to serve as interpreters for us laypeople, we’d love to hear from you.”

    OMFG – Watch the video clip you douchebags! What an absolutely hilarious disingenuous statement. “Uh…gee…we don’t really know what happened?”

    What happened is that you stole yet another one.

    The only time I can remember Duke getting screwed was last year at FSU, and that was a blatant makeup game after the loud public outcry when FSU got screwed earlier that year at Cameron.

  15. dthompson44 01/27/2007 at 12:27 PM #

    sorry guys, but your paranoia is showing….
    the aforementioned Tommy Hunt, clock operator at the game, is a UNC grad–I’m sure he’ll be leading a Duke “conspiracy”.

    This was an unfortunate example of human fallibility–and how many times catching one error leads to overlooking another. Everyone realized the clock ran too long after Hamilton’s trey went in–but NO ONE caught that it started too late. In their fixation on correcting the second mistake, the officials missed the first. Greatest blame, however, should fall on Oliver Purnell–he should have stood up for his team and realized the time was wrong, and forced the video replay be run back far enough to see the late starting clock. He would have won his point, too, when they saw the evidence–0.6 seconds is not long enough to catch a pass, get set, launch a three, and have it pass through the net.

    All that being said, however, Clemson had no business even being in that position. (What are the odds against such a brain-fart pass as McRoberts’ going directly to a good opposing shooter standing right behind the line? one in a thousand?) Then lousy defense allowing your opponent to get a layup instead of forcing a rushed long shot…

    Oliver Purnell deserves the most blame for this one–and he probably knows it, and that’s why his response has been “classy” and subdued…

  16. redfred2 01/27/2007 at 2:27 PM #

    ^I’m not ready to go that far. Duke screwed up royally at the end, just as everyone else does. That doesn’t mean they didn’t deserve to loose too, or that they earned a “do over” and some extra time to make amends, just because Clemson had played poorly earlier, it’s Cameron Indoor, and they’re Duke.

    I do agree that Purnell’s immediate NON-reaction makes him just as responsible as anyone though.

  17. Glen Sudhop54 01/27/2007 at 3:28 PM #

    For years ACC buffs have boasted of the infamous UNC-Duke game where the Heels scored 8 points in 16 seconds to tie Duke and later win in OT.(1974 season)
    According to the clock operators in Durham, Clemson scored 5 points in .08 seconds. Even without 3 pointers that would prorate 64 points in 16 seconds….that is according to the Duke clock operator.
    I’m glad that clock operator isnt in charge of our clock at work, we’d have to work till 10 oclock instead of 5 to make our 8hrs.

    ^I’m with Red, Oliver should have sat down on the scorers table and NOT BUDGED until they took some time away from 4.4. I too blame him for being far too passive. Situations reversed do you think Coach K would have allowed for 4.4 to remain?

  18. BoKnowsNCS71 01/27/2007 at 9:35 PM #

    Mayor: Officer Barbrady, pretend for just a minute that we had a competent law officer in our town. What would he do?
    Officer Barbrady: That’s a good question, ma’am. Let me get right on that … with thinking.
    Officer Barbrady: Hey, I just thought of something. No, wait, that’s subtraction.

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