The Boise State Broncos and Colorado State Rams went toe-to-toe in an epic battle which took 50 minutes, not the usual 40, to settle.
Advertisement
Boise State suffered a devastating loss on Wednesday night at Colorado State after James Webb III appeared to knock down a game-winning 3-pointer in the first overtime period that was inexplicably called off. After much debate and uproar, the Mountain West admitted Friday afternoon that the officials had indeed made an error, which should have given Boise State its 17th victory of the season.
The video showed that the replay technology referees used to wave off James Webb’s buzzer beater featured a clock mistakenly operating about twice the speed of the game clock at Moby Arena. Clearly, when he caught it to when he got it off, it took 1.3 seconds…. Throughout games in both college basketball and the NBA, time is judged by the game clock and the clock operator, whether it’s starting the clock when the game begins or on simple in-bounds.
And the biggest play of the game came at the end of the first overtime in which it looked like Boise State would walk away victorious. “Maybe this is a situation where they say, ‘We have a different victor, ‘ and I’ll accept it, I’ll take it”, Rice said Thursday, reiterating it Friday to ESPN.com, saying “the game should be over and Boise should get the W”. “We’ve had numerous close games over the past month, and there have been two issues arise over that time frame”. Colorado State ended up beating Boise State 97-93 in the second overtime.
But conference commissioner Craig Thompson insisted in a statement that the Mountain West didn’t have major problems regarding those who call league games. That mismatch is what we believe led to the replay system’s on-screen “stopwatch” counting time at double-speed.
Rice said one of the officials told him Wednesday that they would take as long as needed to get the call right. “The game officials correctly administered the play and, based upon the available video evidence and timing data at their disposal, made the correct decision to disallow the basket”. They saw what they saw and they made their ruling off that.
“We’re doing all we can, ” Rice said.
Advertisement
This controversy would be bad enough for the Mountain West by itself, but it also came on the heels of what happened last Saturday at San Diego State. Boise State inbounded the ball to Webb with 0.8 seconds left. “I don’t know. This is uncharted water for me, for my team”. We didn’t get the game done.
