NCAA Official Explains Missed Call at End of Duke-Wisconsin Game

Plenty of college basketball fans are still talking about the missed call at the end of Monday’s National Championship Game between Duke and Wisconsin. The ball went out of bounds during the game’s waning moments and it was ruled that Wisconsin touched it last. During the review of the play, CBS showed pretty clearly that the ball went off of Duke’s Justise Winslow. But it was still ruled Blue Devils’ ball because the referees did not have clear evidence to overturn the original call. Of course, Duke ended up upending Wisconsin, 68-63.

Today, NCAA head of officiating John Adams appeared on Sirius XM radio to explain how the officials could have blown that call. Basically, Adams claimed that they didn’t have the same view as the at-home audience.

From The Dagger:

To explain how the blown call transpired, NCAA head of officiating John Adams appeared on Sirius XM radio and made a pretty surprising admission that they never saw the definitive replay that viewers saw at home.

 

“All four of our officials were involved in the review. We never saw, on our monitor, what everybody saw at home, if you can believe that,” Adams said.

 

However, after the officials left the monitor and made their ruling, Adams said he saw the zoomed-in view of the ball clearly touching Winslow’s finger.

 

At that point he had the opportunity to quickly make a decision.

 

I saw it after they had left the monitor, and actually thought about, is it in my prerogative to get up, run over to 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. I’ve never done it before. Why would I do it tonight and perhaps change the balance of the game?”