Jay Bilas, a Lawyer?, He can not even read.

[just another ref]

Originally Posted by LeeBallanfant

To me it appeared the TO was granted while there was player control , the whistle was blown when there was not player control. In other words, the referee, I think it was Cahill, heard the request, but by the time he could blow the whistle, there was a loss of player control.

A good call by Cahill since last time he worked these teams, it went 6 OT's. Got it done in regulation this time.

In the replay, it appears to me that the ball is already in the UConn player's hands when Cahill turns his head in Boeheim's direction. Impossible to say when he actually heard/recognized the request in relation to his visible reaction.

[mutantducky]

I was watching the game live and I thought it was way too late. However, and this has happened to me, perhaps the coach verbally called a TO and the ref simply did not recognize it right away(brain freeze) and blew the whistle but the ball was with UCONN.
The Cuse coach better say he verbally requested a TO to help out the ref. Otherwise I would have been much more impressed with the ref admitting an inadvertent whistle.

[fiasco]

Originally Posted by just another ref

In the replay, it appears to me that the ball is already in the UConn player's hands when Cahill turns his head in Boeheim's direction. Impossible to say when he actually heard/recognized the request in relation to his visible reaction.

This is what I saw as well. There was a camera angle from the endline that showed Cahill's head turn after the ball was already in the UConn player's hands.

HOWEVER, I have, on occasion, heard a timeout request when a player had control, then as he passed it, I looked to the bench to confirm that it was the HC calling timeout, and I then blew my whistle, to the chagrin of the opposing coach. It's still a valid timeout, though.

[Rufus]

Full disclosure: I'm a UConn grad and fan.

That being said I sympathized with Cahill on this one. How many times has a coach been sitting right next to you screaming for a timeout only to have you realize it only after the 10th time? Combat pilots call it sensory overload (there are numerous examples of pilots missing a clear bandit call simply because there were too many sensory inputs) and target fixation (flying into the ground because you became fixated on the target to the exclusion of everything else). This was a key moment in the game (aren't they all?) as UConn had come back from a 12 point deficit so perhaps the officials were concentrating more on the court than coaches off it.

The problem becomes worse, in my mind, because a coach expects to be granted a timeout the first/any time they request it (that's not realistic, in my mind). As they continue to request it the frustration/tension mounts to the point where they're ready to bite your head off because you don't hear/recognize them (I look for coaches to call timeouts in certain situations, like after a several breakaway baskets by the opposition, but in others I'll admit to concentrating more on the play like in closely guarded situations - yet another development area). I try to tell players in pre-game that they know their coach's voice a lot better than we do and to request time if we're not hearing their coach for some reason.

To further Jurassic, if the timeout is to be granted upon the whistle and the clock stopped, I'm not sure why they added time back onto the clock. The answer is, I think, that when they granted the timeout the ball was in UConn's possession. They probably backed it up to the last time the ball was in Syracuse's control, but I'm not certain of NCAA rules regarding that kind of fix.