Seton Hall took a narrow win over Louisville on Thursday night, 80-77, but the interwebs are buzzing about the bizarre finish to the contest and a no-call on an inbounds violation.↵
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Thursday’s College Hoops: A Questionable Finish and a Buzzer Beater
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↵Watching it there, it’s easy to see how Seton Hall’s Keon Lawrence -- who already had a bad day on Thursday after being charged with “assault-by-auto” -- could’ve been confused. The whistle sounded, and it seemed like one of those scenarios where the team that just made a shot was calling a timeout. When hearing the whistle, there’s a sort of force-of-habit at work. Lawrence stepped over the line as if he was going to walk to the bench. But Lawrence looked over at the same official who had blown his whistle, and saw he was making a motion as if he was counting for a five-second call, and Lawrence began to try an inbounds play from easily two steps over the baseline.↵↵The official even appeared to make the motion for a violation of stepping over the baseline while trying to inbound, but Lawrence tossed the ball to the ref, and the ref tossed it back with Lawrence in the proper position. And well, you saw how the rest of it played out if you watched the video.↵
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↵How bad was this? Obviously it was a mistake. The explanation via the Courier-Journal was an inadvertent whistle. You can clearly hear that inadvertent whistle after the 3-pointer is made. Louisville fans won't like it, but it's a reasonable explanation. Inadvertent whistles happen, and it's unfortunate it happened with less than a second remaining when the Cardinals were down 2. And keep in mind, they were down two. The changing of possession would not have assured a win or even overtime. There's a lot of outrage over this play, but to me the right call was made based on the bad whistle. Had Louisville made a 3-pointer in that 0.7 seconds, Seton Hall fans would be going nuts today about the whistle that caused the violation.↵
↵↵On a more straightforward hoops front, Mustafa Abdul-Hamid, a former walk-on player, hit a shot that has to be one of the absolute highlights in what has been an otherwise dreadful season for UCLA.↵
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↵Full recap of the game via the Associated Press. Video courtesy of Bruins Nation.↵
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
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