Butler vs. Wisconsin-Milwaukee
 

Classic example of clock starting issue -

Last night in Milwaukee, Butler vs. Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

(Presumably after a made try)
With 5.9 seconds left, Butler A1 passed the ball to A2 behind the baseline and the clock appeared to start prematurely. A2 passed the ball to A3 who never got a shot off before time expired.

Milwaukee fans rushed the court. Officials looked at a replay, found there was no view of the clock available.

''We couldn't tell from the TV if the clock started early,'' referee Todd Williams said.

Butler coach said, ''The referees did what they were supposed to do, they went and looked at the monitor and there was no way to look at the clock,'' Stevens said. ''I'll have to go back and look to see how long it took Zach to get from there to just past halfcourt. I don't know. I don't want to jump to any observations.''

Moral of the story - Some one needs to count.

I've never jumped to observations before, I'd hate to start now.

How could you do anything but jump to them? They're not observations if you infer them. :rolleyes:

I approach them slowly, with caution; it avoids deception.

I'm not sure if I get what you mean by this. How would a count have helped this situation? Who was starting the clock, the officials or the table?

If an official has his own count, he can put time back on the clock when the replay does not show a clock.

Agreed, but we are talking about tenths of seconds here. I think it is very difficult to have defininte knowledge of partial seconds. I think the bigger issue is one their league needs to address and that is the fact that the clock was not shown on their replay monitor.

I don't know that we are talking about tenths of a second here.

Most likely scenario here is:
A1 to A2 -> Clock starts -> A2 to A3. A3 catches ball (official starts his count). If horn goes off before or when official gets to 5, official then has reason to reset the clock.

While it is possible that the clock, if started early, did not start early enough for .9 seconds or more to have run off the clock in error it is also possible to have happened.

When faced with this situation, if you have your own count, you have done all you can to rectify any clock errors.

The fact that it is thought that the clock started early is another reason that someone (an official) should always have a count in an end of period situation.

Here's a video of the play. You can see the game clock above the shot clock, and it does start after the first pass, but then stops. Then it starts again when the ball is inbounded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7nVxQw93vM