rulesmaven |
Fri Mar 25, 2005 01:19pm |
Critical possession of the game. WVU up 2, without about 45 seconds left. Tech has repeated tip in tries, all missing, multiple player scrum underneath and the last rebound gets tapped out along the baseline. West Virginia player corrals the rebound at the sideline and calls timeout before falling out of bounds.
The announcers questioned the call and Clougherty's positioning, but the replay showed that Clougherty plainly got the call correct, in that the player's feet were in bounds.
But did anyone else hear an accidental whistle during the rebounding action just before the WVU player gained possession? It sounded as clear as day on television. One player seems to stop playing; they went quickly to commercial but there didn't seem to be much argument other than whether the WVU player got the timeout.
Did the inadvertent whistle get called, and the announcers just missed it? If the WVU player had possession, then it would be the same result and probably the same throw in spot. But I don't think the WVU player did have possession when I heard the whistle. So I guess the question is whether this would be an alternating possession situation.
One of the cases in the clarifications talks about inadvertent whistles during loose balls and refers to the ball being loose "in the vacinity of other players who are trying to secure the ball." That wasn't really this case. If there was an inadvertent whistle, the WVU player was imminently about to secure possession (and indeed did) with no other player in the vacinity. Alternating possession nevertheless?
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