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Originally Posted by Nevadaref
I come off as rather harsh, but I expect an experienced D1 referee to get this right.
I will give you that he may not have had the angle the TV news showed, but I still happen to believe that he also had an incorrect understanding of the rule.
I'll have to speak to some friends who work D1 and see how many of their courtside monitors don't have a game clock superimposed on the screen. I'm having a hard time believing that the courtside monitor would lack clock info.
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Even if there is a clock super-imposed, it still has to be synched up with the game clock somehow.
Given his experience, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Who was he speaking to when he made his comment about the lights? Was he talking to another official, who would understand the differences between lights, clock showing 0.00, horn, and the proper order, or was he talking to a member of the press? How many times have you tried to explain the travel rule to the "common folk", only to see their eyes glaze over when you start talking about lifting and/or replacing a pivot foot? You might keep the explanation a little easier; this might be what John did in this case.
How many, really close, last-second-in-the-game-situations like this do we have in a season? It's easy for us to watch this after the fact, look it up (like I did), and notice the subtle difference between lights vs. clock in this situation. In most cases, he would be right in saying the light was the deciding factor. But this was one of those rare instances where it might not have been. And I don't care how experienced you are, there's always some situation, like this, that we haven't seen before and we aren't as prepared as we should be. If that's the case here, you can bet he won't get it wrong the next time.