The tournament, the announcers, and the calls

[A Pennsylvania Coach]

I was at Duke on Sunday for the two first-round games in the NCAA Tournament. It was my first trip to Cameron--wow, is that place cool. It's small, and the media requests exceeded the media space, so some of them were moved into the stands, into the last row where they could connect to power, etc. We watched the first game (Marquette vs ODU) from the third-to-last row (we moved down to the front for the Duke game) with a radio broadcast team behind us.

The female was the analyst and she was talking to us during all the breaks. There was a mess in the first half that was never clearly explained. There was a free throw attempt in which the opponents of the thrower went in early. As the shot was being released, one of the officials hit his whistle. The shot went in, and after a conference they decided to count the shot. The analyst asked me what happened, and this was before I told her I was a basketball coach. Then, maybe a minute later, there was another conference and they ended up awarding Marquette a free throw, just one, with the lane cleared. I guessed that the attempt with the violation was the first of two and with the confusion they forgot to award the second. It would be odd that the rebounders would be in a hurry to get in the lane on the first of two, but I had no other guesses. I don't think there was a technical called either. However, I think there had been a basket scored in between the FT attempt and the awarding of the other one, so if they were trying to correct an error, it was too late.

I told the analyst what I thought. She told me later that back at the station they were watching on TV and she told me I was right, they forgot to award the FT. But I don't think the scoreboard ever changed. (You should be as confused as I by now.) Did anyone see this on TV?

And how funny is it that a radio analyst is asking some random fan for his interpretation on what the call was or should have been?

[Mark Padgett]

Originally posted by A Pennsylvania Coach
And how funny is it that a radio analyst is asking some random fan for his interpretation on what the call was or should have been?

Compared to most media analysts, random fans are rules experts.