NCAA VP: Officials did see all replay angles of disputed out-of-bounds call

ByAndy Katz ESPN logo
Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Dan Gavitt, the NCAA's vice president of the men's basketball championship, said on ESPN's "Outside the Lines" on Wednesday that officials actually did see the same video replay that viewers at home saw on the questionable out-of-bounds call in the national title game, contradicting what John Adams, the NCAA's supervisor of officials, had said Tuesday.

"All four of our officials were involved in the review -- Jeff Clark was our standby," Adams told SiriusXM College Sports on Tuesday. "We never saw on our monitor what everybody saw at home, if you can believe that."

The questionable call came with just under two minutes left in the title game Monday and Duke leading Wisconsin by five. Viewers at home saw a replay showing that the ball went off the fingertips of Duke's Justise Winslow. But the ball was awarded to Duke, not Wisconsin. Officials Joe DeRosa, Michael Stephens and Pat Driscoll conferred for nearly two minutes to review it. Stephens was heard telling the CBS announcing crew that the video was inconclusive.

"Unfortunately, John misspoke yesterday," Gavitt told ESPN.com after his OTL appearance. "The officials did indeed have the camera angle that was shown on the CBS broadcast. It was the last angle they did see. They likely did not stay long enough with a review to see that angle magnified. But they made their determination based on the two-minute review and the camera angle that was shown on CBS and with that determined that there wasn't indisputable evidence to overturn the call. You need to have indisputable evidence by rule to change the call. The facts are they did have the angle the viewers had."

Adams said he saw the broadcast angle only after the referees left the scorer's table, and considered taking an unprecedented step -- calling the officials back over to the monitor -- before deciding against it.

"I saw it after they had left the monitor, and actually thought about: Is it in my prerogative to get up, run over the table, buzz the buzzer and tell them to come back and look?" Adams said. "That's how critical I thought the play was, and concluded that this is a job for the guys on the floor and I've never done this before, why would I do it tonight and perhaps change the balance of the game?

"We had been told time and time again, 'Nobody at home will see anything you didn't see.' And I will tell you that's not what happened last night. That is not an excuse. That is just laying it out for you."

Gavitt said he has spoken with Adams, who is leaving his post. This was Adams' last NCAA tournament working as the coordinator of officials.

Gavitt said the NCAA plans on naming a replacement for Adams within the next two weeks.

Gavitt would also like to see more nationalization of officials during the regular season, not just in the NCAA tournament.

"My hope is that with the change of leadership we will look at a more centralized group of officials," Gavitt said. "There are now fewer numbers of coordinators at the conference level with agreements between conferences. The officials are independent coordinators. But we're hoping that we can come together on this. It would take all the parties to come together."

ESPN.com's Eamonn Brennan contributed to this report.

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