NCAA: Referees should’ve been ‘more patient’ reviewing out-of-bounds call

The officials at the NCAA championship game Monday night did, in fact, have access to all the angles seen by TV viewers during a crucial replay review late in the game, the NCAA’s vice president of men’s basketball championships, said Wednesday.

Dan Gavitt told the Associated Press that John Adams, the head of college basketball referees, “misspoke” Tuesday when he told SiriusXM College Sports Nation that the referees didn’t see the angle TV viewers saw when reviewing an out-of-bounds call on Wisconsin’s Bronson Koenig.

What those officials didn’t see, Gavitt said, was a magnified view of one of the angles, eventually aired by CBS, that clearly showed Duke’s Justise Winslow last touching the ball with the tip of his finger before it went out of bounds.

So the call went in Duke’s favor, instead of giving Wisconsin possession with 18 seconds left and trailing by five. The Blue Devils went on to claim a 68-63 victory.

Gavitt said the officials could have been “more patient” at the replay monitor given that they had already made their call before the magnified view was available.

“All I’m saying is that I think there’s a chance that if there had been a longer review, especially on the blown-up one, the magnified version, there’s a chance there would have been enough evidence to overturn the call,” Gavitt said. “But it’s still a judgment call.”

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