If you want to look at the bright side, it took 53 games for the 2014 NCAA tournament to have its first officiating controversy. If you're a Tennessee fan, that's of little consolation.
A furious Volunteers comeback against Michigan in Friday's regional semifinal was both aided, then halted, by questionable whistles from the refs. Though the calls seemed to even out, all anyone in Knoxville will talk about this week is the controversial charge on Jarnell Stokes with the Volts down one point with six seconds left in the game.
Tennessee had stormed back from a 72-64 with less than two minutes left. After a fourth-straight Michigan turnover gave Tennessee the ball back with 10 seconds remaining, the Vols inbounded under their own basket with a chance to go ahead. But a quick whistle and a charge call on a bang-bang drive by Stokes gave Michigan the ball and effectively ended Tennessee's comeback bid.
'Tough call, but the right one,' Clark Kellogg said on CBS after the game, putting him in disagreement with the majority of viewers not wearing maize and blue. Maybe it was a charge, maybe it was a block. The right call was none at all - not with six seconds left in a one-point Sweet 16 game.
Tennessee fans, and neutral observers on Twitter, were upset about the call. Anyone who lets the anger linger will have a very short memory. Because with 28.6 seconds left and Michigan leading by five, Tennessee missed a three-pointer that bricked so badly it caromed to a scrum in the middle of the key. A group of hands went up and the ball was quickly deflected out of bounds. Officials ruled the ball belonged to Tennessee, but a replay clearly showed the Vols' Jeronne Maymon had been the last to touch it.
With officials reviewing the monitors and CBS announcers doing the same, Jim Nantz and Greg Anthony were certain the ball would be awarded to Michigan. It wasn't, leading to the obvious question about why replay even exists if refs still can't get simple calls right. Before that question could be answered, a Tennessee basket cut the game to three points.
Neither call swung the game. If anything, they balanced each other out. No matter how the game finished, neither side should have had beef. Michigan's inability to inbound the ball, hold it like it wasn't covered by Vaseline or realize that they could call timeouts for bailout situations (the anti-Webbers, if you will) helped Tennessee get back in the game. The Vols' early struggles, then failure to foul late to put Michigan on the line and shorten the game was their undoing.
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Posted by Unknown on Friday, March 28, 2014 - Rating: 4.5
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