NEW YORK – People may talk about this for a while, if the initial reaction is any indication. It may have been a second round game in a conference tournament, but it was a visible one and it was nationally televised, meaning replays are certainly available. St. John’s head coach Steve Lavin, whose team came out on top struggled to find the words, calling it a “kind of a chaotic, you know, flurry of sequences.”
That was certainly one way of putting it.
Moments after the final buzzer sounded in St. John’s 65-63 win over Rutgers in the second round of the Big East Tournament, Twitter was abuzz with comments about how bad an ending it was. Not only that, but it didn’t take long for a video of it to wind up on YouTube, as Rutgers head coach Mike Rice informed the media right away.
“I saw it on YouTube,” Rice said when asked about the play, about 20 minutes after the game had ended.
As if that wasn’t enough, a statement was released following the game by Big East commissioner John Marinatto.
“The BIG EAST Conference acknowledges that two separate officiating errors occurred at the conclusion of the St. John’s vs Rutgers game. Both missed violations should have caused the game clock to stop and a change of possession to occur prior to the end of the game. Neither error is reviewable or correctable under NCAA playing rules.”
It was talked about for the rest of the day in college basketball circles. Replays of the last play showed that Justin Brownlee stepped out of bounds before time had expired, and after that, he traveled. All of that came before he tossed the ball up into the stands to run out the last second or so of time on the clock.
Since there was no call by an official for a dead ball, there is nothing that could be done to put more time on the clock. An official is not allowed to go to the monitor and determine that a violation that was not called actually occurred, then call it and put time back on the clock. Had the clock not run, stopped when it should not have, or continued running after it should have stopped, that would be a different scenario.
As if all the attention it is getting is not enough, another statement was released by Marinatto before Thursday’s quarterfinal games regarding the situation.
“Our officials are a very dedicated and loyal group of professionals who care deeply about The BIG EAST Conference. In the best interests of everyone involved – including coaches, student-athletes, game officials and BIG EAST member institutions – the officials who were assigned to the St. John’s-Rutgers game Wednesday have voluntarily withdrawn for the remainder of the 2011 BIG EAST Championship. With three days of competition remaining, it is our hope that everyone will now focus on our outstanding teams and the exciting games ahead.”
Clearly, the conference knows this has been the subject of much conversation since it happened, and it’s not the kind of publicity it wants. Of course, anyone who knows how officials work can figure that those officials will probably work games in another conference tournament this weekend.
Most unfortunate of all is that it comes at the end of a great game between one school that’s experiencing a resurgence and one that’s expected to make a big leap starting next year. A day after an overtime win over arch-rival Seton Hall, Rutgers was able to hang tough against a St. John’s team that has been very tough to beat in Madison Square Garden this season. Rutgers battled early on, and had a lot to do with St. John’s not playing very well. The problem was that the Scarlet Knights couldn’t make shots, shooting 27.3 percent from the field in the first half and just over 36 percent for the game.
But the Scarlet Knights rallied, eventually taking a 61-60 lead on a conventional three-point play by senior Mike Coburn. That helped set the stage for what happened late, which included another drive by Coburn with a no-call that might be debatable before the final play. Rice, who is known as a fiery coach on the bench, admitted he could live with the no-call there.
The Big East hopes that discussion will center around the games to come and what its teams do in postseason play. Nothing it tries, however, is likely to stop this from being discussed for a while to come.
