A Look at the St. John’s-Rutgers Finish

The eight-month long Big East tournament is in its’ second round today, and while we’ve still got a lot of basketball left to be played before crowning a champion, we might have already had the wildest finish (or lack thereof) of the entire tournament.

St. John’s and Rutgers did battle in the second game of the afternoon, and it started off like most games. Both teams playing hard and going at it for a chance to advance to the next round.

Second half, things were still fine. Until we got under a minute, that is.

There were several “questionable” calls/no-calls you could say that happened to favor the Red Storm and put the Scarlet Knights in a tough spot. And it wasn’t that they were just randomly sprinkled around at different times in the game. They all sort of just piled up at a crucial point in the game, and they didn’t make things easy on Rutgers at all.

But Rutgers still had a chance. They had one last opportunity to tie the game or win the game with a three. One stolen inbounds pass later, and we’ve got ourselves a whole lot of controversy.

Here’s the video for those who haven’t seen it:

Wow, where to begin. Oh wait. I know where to begin. How about where the St. John’s player stepped out of bounds with 1.7 seconds left in the game, but yet the referees decided that 39 minutes and 58.3 seconds was more than enough time to decide this game?

Give me a break.

This is embarrassing. Absolutely embarrassing. Don’t tell me that the referees can’t see everything. I agree that not every call can be made in a game. But I absolutely, positively, without a doubt think it is their job to make a call in this situation.

Instead, they just walked right through the tunnel and didn’t give Rutgers the rightful chance they deserved to have a shot to tie or win the game.

I’m not saying anyone on Mike Rice‘s squad would have made the shot. I’m not saying they wouldn’t have thrown the ball away like they did in the beginning of this whole fiasco. But they at least deserved the chance to make a play.

I’m pretty sure that’s the game of basketball. You get the ball and you attempt to make a play. Yet in this situation, Rutgers didn’t get that chance.

I’ve heard some say that Rutgers had plenty of opportunities before that. That’s an asinine stance that takes no thought whatsoever. If the NCAA wanted college basketball teams to one half for 20 minutes and one half for 19 minutes and 58.3 seconds, they would have specified that in the rulebook. But the rules as I know them state this:

"NCAA basketball games consist of two twenty-minute halves."

So to put it simply: Rutgers got screwed.

The Big East head of officials called the finish “unacceptable” and that’s all well and good, but it changes nothing. And of course they mentioned that the ending to the game was not a reviewable incident because there was no call to review. To put that more simply: the refs swallowed their whistles and got out of there as quickly as possible.

I suppose the only good to come of this was the way that Rice handled the whole situation. He could have completely blasted the refs in the post-game press conference, but he took the high road and talked about how proud he was of his players instead.

Of course, he also admitted that he didn’t notice there was still time on the clock, and probably would have pulled a Jeff Van Gundy and hung on one of the referee’s leg had he noticed the situation in real time.

In the grand scheme of things though, it’s just a shame that it had to end this way. Officials aren’t suppose to “assume” anything. But clearly, they assumed that since a player decided to start celebrating, time must have ran out on the clock.

That’s not always the case, however. I’m pretty sure a cheerleader in the Bluegrass state could tell you that.

No one is claiming that Rutgers would have went on to win the Big East tournament and in the process, qualified for the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1991.

But they could have. And that’s why they play the game. The entire game.

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