Here’s the setup, Xavier was up by 1, Butler had the ball. The ball gets knocked away but play resumes. However, the clocked paused briefly. Butler ended up scoring to go up by 1. The officials congregated by the scorer’s table and talked it over. Their detemrination? The clock would have run out as the basket was scored. Game over, Butler wins.
That is bogus for so many reasons. The most obvious reason is, are they going to go back over the entire game, or at least the entire second half, to make sure the lock started and stopped properly on EVERY occasion? If they’re going to take that last 1.2 seconds off the clock, they should go back over the entire second half, at least, to make sure the timing was right and that he got the shot off in time.
Xavier has every right to be upset about this. Nothing will ever come of it except maybe a written apology. A lot of good those do. This could have been a huge win for Xavier over #18 Butler for tournament time.
Something needs to be done whether it’s going over every start and stop of the clock for the second half and overturning the outcome of the game if it’s determined the shot wasn’t released in time (never happen in a million years), a public apology acknowledging they likely caused Xvier to lose the game, suspensions for the timekeeper and officials, or any combination of these.