NCAA official: Out-of-bounds replay lacked same angle as TV broadcast

ByEamonn Brennan ESPN logo
Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Controversy over the officiating in Duke's68-63 national championship win over Wisconsincontinued Tuesday when the NCAA's supervisor of officials said the game's three floor officials did not see the same angle as TV viewers during a late, controversial video review.

With just under two minutes to play and Duke up by five, a baseline out-of-bounds call was initially ruled in Duke's favor.

When Joe DeRosa, Michael Stephens and Pat Driscoll went to the scorer's table for a video review, they spent nearly two minutes watching various angles of the play, and confirmed that the ball was last touched by Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, broadcast viewers saw an angle that appeared to show Duke forward Justise Winslow touching the ball with his fingertips just before it went out of bounds.

"All four of our officials were involved in the review -- Jeff Clark was our standby," John Adams told SiriusXM College Sports Tuesday. "We never saw on our monitor what everybody saw at home, if you can believe that."

Adams said he saw the broadcast angle only after the referees left the scorer's table, and considered taking an unprecedented step -- calling the officials back over to the monitor -- before deciding against it.

"I saw it after they had left the monitor, and actually thought about: Is it in my prerogative to get up, run over the table, buzz the buzzer and tell them to come back and look?" Adams said. "That's how critical I thought the play was, and concluded that this is a job for the guys on the floor and I've never done this before, why would I do it tonight and perhaps change the balance of the game?"

"We had been told time and time again, 'Nobody at home will see anything you didn't see.' And I will tell you that's not what happened last night. That is not an excuse. That is just laying it out for you."

Officiating was a dominant storyline in Monday's national title game. In the first half, Duke was whistled for seven fouls to Wisconsin's two. Both Winslow and star center Jahlil Okafor missed large portions of the game with foul trouble, and Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was seen talking to the officials throughout.

In the first 11 minutes of the second half, the Badgers -- who committed the fewest fouls per game (12.5) in college basketball this season -- were whistled for nine team fouls, some of which led to three-point plays that sustained Duke's effort with Okafor on the bench.

"We practice in our practices where if an offensive player jumps into you, we always call it on the offensive player," Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan said Monday night. "It's just what we do. So there were some situations where obviously our guys felt they were in position. I'm sure [Duke] felt they were in the right. Both teams are always going to feel that there's a question or two. So it's just the way the game's played. But I've been with these guys a long time, and I've watched a lot of basketball. Sometimes games are played differently, and you have to go with the flow."

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