Partially due to a blown call, Illinois basketball has beaten a higher seeded NCAA Tournament team just twice in school history. Trailing 57-55 with 40 seconds remaining, replays clearly showed the Illini should have maintained offensive possession on an out-of-bounds call. Instead, the ball was wrongly awarded to the Miami Hurricanes. And even a Miami player admitted it.
Now the NCAA is going to going to make sure this type of thing doesn’t happen again.
First, check out this tweet from Chicago Tribune Illini beat reporter Shannon Ryan:
Was told Miami’s Julian Gamble said in the locker room that the ball went off teammate Kenny Kadji on the blown call.Looked like it.
— Shannon Ryan (@sryantribune) March 25, 2013
Well, here’s some news about how that’s going to change in the future.
The 12-person committee had 11 members present and voted on changing the replay rules, as well as adjusting the elbow-clearing rule and block/charge clarification.
Pending approval from the Playing Rules Oversight Panel, which will meet on a conference call on June 18, these rules will go into effect for the 2013-14 season.
[Rules committee chair John] Dunne said there was a lengthy discussion to allow officials to go to the monitor in the final two minutes of regulation and overtime to determine who should retain possession for a play out of bounds. The original proposal was for the last minute.
“We felt that two minutes was better than one minute,” Dunne said. “Obviously, a possession with 1:10 left is just as important as one with just under a minute left.” (h/t Champaign Room)
Illini head coach John Groce responded to a question about the critical in-bounds call at the postgame press conference:
“You saw the same video that I did. Those guys did a good job though. They did. It’s a hard game to officiate, it’s both teams physical, both teams desiring the same thing. 50/50 calls are hard sometimes.That’s how he saw the play in life speed, and certainly respect him and respect the call that he made.”
Groce took the high road, but on Twitter, just about everyone watching the game on television tweeted that it should have been Illinois basketball.
Had the call been correct, maybe the Illinois basketball program would have it’s third tourney win over a higher seed in school history. The Illini were a #5 seed when crushing the #4 seed Cincinnati Bearcats in 2004 (a moment chronicled on MTV’s reality show The Newlyweds, as Mr. Jessica Simpson, Nick Lachey is a huge Cincy fan) and #9 over #8 UNLV in ’11.
Illinois basketball is now 1-8 vs Top-2 seeds (only win: 1989 vs Syracuse when Illinois was a No. 1 seed). Illinois basketball was also a #1 seed in 2001 and 2005. Brandon Paul played his final college basketball game with authority, scoring 19.
Paul M. Banks is the owner of The Sports Bank.net, an author and regular contributor to MSN, Fox Sports , Chicago Now, Walter Football.com and Yardbarker.
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