An avoidable ripple effect?
Bill Koch, National Columnist
Sandwiched in the middle of West Virginia’s current three-game losing streak sits one of college basketball’s most controversial moments of the season to date.
A goaltending call that wasn’t marred the finish of the Mountaineers’ 63-61 defeat against Syracuse on Saturday afternoon, a mistake that could have a ripple effect leading all the way to Selection Sunday.
Deniz Kilicli’s potential game-tying layup with less than 10 seconds to play was blocked off the glass by Orange center Baye Keita, an alert defensive play that helped Syracuse and the 28,000-plus at the Carrier Dome escape with their league lead preserved for at least one more day. There was only one problem – replays showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that Keita slapped away Kilicli’s shot after it had kissed off the glass, an illegal defensive play that likely would have put West Virginia in position to extend the game into overtime.
Bob Huggins is a man who can be described using several words, most of which wouldn’t be completely flattering considering his occasional volcanic temperament and propensity to be prickly with the media. One word that would apply to Huggins in this case? Correct. He protested the call in his postgame press conference and was absolutely right. The fact that the Big East declined to issue an apology on Monday and offered no public rebuke of the officiating crew likely stirred Huggins’s ire even further heading into the Backyard Brawl with Pittsburgh. For West Virginia to lose that game to the suddenly surging Panthers, 72-66, and now sit at 5-5 in conference play is bound to be even more vexing.
And here’s why the stakes of such a missed call are so high. West Virginia came into this week sitting a healthy 17th in the RPI rankings, meaning that its NCAA Tournament hopes are plenty solid – for now. A signature road win against a Syracuse team that tops the list at No. 1 in the RPI couldn’t have hurt matters. The Mountaineers would still be over .500 in league play and losses to St. John’s (No. 147 in the RPI), Kent State (No. 105 in the RPI) and Pittsburgh (No. 77 in the RPI) could be more conveniently overlooked.
That won’t be the case if West Virginia stumbles into Madison Square Garden in March with a sub-.500 record in league play, something that is now in the conversation. The Mountaineers play five of their final eight games against teams currently above them in the standings, including two against ranked teams in Louisville and Marquette, two with Notre Dame and the regular season finale at surprising South Florida. A 9-9 record in Big East play – or worse – is now a very real possibility, and this conference isn’t the 2010-11 juggernaut that sent 11 of its 16 teams to The Big Dance.
With all that said, I know that replay in sports is a thorny issue. The NFL is really the only major professional sports league in this country that comes anywhere close to maximizing technology, with the NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball all limiting its application. Basketball has relented to the point where 3-pointers and timing decisions with both the shot and game clocks can be called into question, and that only applies at schools that are fortunate enough to have their games broadcast on television.
Saturday’s West Virginia-Syracuse contest was one such game, so I’ll ask the question – why can’t calls like Keita’s block on Kilicli earn a second look? The proposal to fit such reviews into the framework of the game is a simple one. Coaches may use full timeouts as a form of challenges similar to the ones we see in the NFL. With the media stoppages every four minutes and the seemingly endless supply of timeouts granted to coaches each game this seems a simple enough fix. Most veterans on the sideline keep one in the pocket until a critical late-game situation anyway. A chance to review such a play would certainly qualify.
There are a handful of instances each season similar to what took place on Saturday. Some of them will happen during a meaningless game in October between two teams destined to go 10-20 and not qualify for the postseason. Some of them will feature a team leading by 15 points with a minute to play falling victim to something that doesn’t end up hurting.
And some of them, like we saw on Saturday, could have real consequences. Would West Virginia have won the game in overtime? Would Syracuse have finished off the Mountaineers anyway thanks to a last-second shot? We’ll never know. And that’s an avoidable shame.
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