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Wallace steamed after 'fiasco at Reno'
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL
Posted: 2/6/2007
Hawaii basketball coach Riley Wallace called it "the fiasco at Reno."
The ending of the ESPN2-televised Nevada-Hawaii game at Lawlor Events Center was enough out of the ordinary the Western Athletic Conference made a clarification on the officiating call at the end of the Wolf Pack's 69-68 win Saturday night.
After referee Bill Gracey, Brian Sorenson and Kelly Self huddled twice before finally disallowing a basket by Hawaii's Ahmet Gueye with 5.8 seconds left, WAC Commissioner Karl Benson said Monday they got the call correct.
"While I am satisfied the officials got it right I am disappointed that there that there wasn't better communication between them immediately following the play. Better communication would have led to the situation being managed in a more efficient and effective manner."
Wallace made it clear on the WAC coaches weekly conference call that he believed the officials not only got the call wrong, but also should not have waved off P.J. Owsley's putback that was ruled after the buzzer.
"I was very proud of my kids, how they handled the game and stayed there. That's a tough atmosphere," Wallace said. "Hawaii never won (against Nevada in Reno) until that one. I told the guys, 'We did win it.'"
Minutes after the game, Wallace wasn't directly critical of the calls. But he said if the game hadn't been on national television the officials would have counted Gueye's basket, Then Wallace watched the game tape.
"After the game when I reviewed it, the way the calls went down and everything, the officials, it's a tough last 32 seconds when we got the ball," Wallace said. "They made some late calls but as the calls went, the basket (by Gueye) was definitely good.
"Now, if they can go back and say, 'We made a mistake,' they should have called it sooner. Well, they didn't. They made the call so the basket was definitely good."
Originally, Gracey had counted the basket and was going to award Gueye a free throw. But after two meetings, Sorenson made it clear that he had called a non-shooting foul before Gracey called the shooting foul. Benson said it is obvious on tape that Sorenson raised his arm for a foul call and that it was a non-shooting foul.
"Even on the last part, if you have the replay advantage you can see that there was still 0.3 seconds left when the basket went in from Owsley," Wallace said. "There's no way the officials could have changed that one because the monitor at the arena. They probably don't have that (inset game clock). If you have the advantage of it like I do at home and the replay and stop action, the red light on the basket and the shot clock are not in sync. So, actually we won the game twice. We should get two wins for that one and make up for a couple of bad games we had somewhere else."
Benson said the ESPN inset clock doesn't always correctly reflect the official clock.
"We have yet to see a video that would show the clock, which is above the backboard," Benson said. "I can't say what the clock read when the red light went off."
Benson said college basketball rules state that officials should determine the end of the game first by the clock and then the red light."
Benson said he wouldn't comment on Wallace's remarks.
"He's entitled to his opinion," Benson said.
But Benson agreed on Wallace's assertion that time, maybe a second, could have been placed back on the game clock because of the discrepancy in time between Sorenson's initial call when Gueye was fouled and the call by Gracey that had stopped the clock at 5.8 seconds left.
"I didn't ask for more time on the clock because I had other things to think about," Wallace said. "We should have had about 6.8 or so. As it turns out, that would have been the difference on the red light (at the end). Actually, we got screwed twice on it."
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