I'm starting to come around more and more after you ask the question "how would you have handled it?" after watching the replay again. I could swear I could hear a whistle before the ball went OOB on the youtube replay but: 1) youtube quality stinks, 2) that whistle could have been some other noise (squeaking of shoes, whatever), 3) there could easily be a slight delay between audio/video, 4) i don't believe the officials can listen to audio on replay equipment (can they?)
But to answer the questions, assuming there WAS a whistle/signal, and it could be seen clearly before the ball went OOB:
1) Is that an IW?
No, the definition of the IW is in the book and is clear as follows:
Art. 1. An inadvertent whistle occurs anytime an official blows the whistle as an oversight and does not have a call to make.
The ref had a call to make, and made it. It would make sense to believe he thought the ball was OOB when it bounced off the Memphis player. This call cannot be reviewed, and shouldn't matter that the replays showed otherwise.
2) If it isn't an IW, then what is it?
The whistle was for an OOB violation. Call it a blown call, but it should have stopped the clock.
3) How do you handle this play if an A&M player was the last player to legally touch the ball in-bounds on the throw-in?
Assuming we just switched the Memphis player's jersey to A&M and everything else was exactly the same - ball goes to Memphis. Check the monitor to see how much time elapsed between the touch and signal/whistle.
4) How do you handle this play if a Memphis player was the last player to legally touch the ball in-bounds on the throw-in?
Again, much the same as before, ball goes to A&M - Check the monitor to see how much time elapsed between the touch and signal/whistle.
5) Who gets the ball in both #3 and #4 above if (a)Memphis has the arrow, or (b) A&M has the arrow.
I don't believe the arrow would matter here - there is no IW (unless there is another reason that it should, which I could easily be missing)
Had the time difference been much larger between the point at which the whistle was blown and the ball actually went OOB AND there was an even 1% chance that anyone could have gotten to the ball between the whistle and point at which the ball went OOB AND had the whistle/signal been clear - I think this would have mattered, and I would have handled it differently. But I believe now that most on this thread are right - this is making a big fuss about nothing. In this situation, the officials did what I would have done (except that I had 2 days to think about it) - in general, this would not the right thing by NCAA rules as Scrapper says, the point should be measured til when the official signals - but I don't know if that's possible in this case... no whistle could be heard by the officials on their replay system, and by the time the official signals, the ball is truly OOB. I think in our youtube replay we can hear the official whistle.
So basically, I just showed myself that when you said originally, "the officials did the right thing," that was right (AND this was the most fair outcome, as it rectified the official's mistake, through some form of not having perfect information) and I just wasted a lot of words saying that.
