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This is a featured article by SECWB.com’s LeAnne Harrington. We share it with you here to become part of open discussion in relation to the clock debacle on the Tennesse vs. Rutgers game.

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The Clock That Just Keeps On Ticking…by LeAnne Harrington, SECWB.com (Posted: February 19th, 2008 @ 12:13am)

One week later, and folks are STILL talking about the UT vs. Rutgers debacle. For anyone who may just be crawling out from under a rock, here’s a short synopsis of the events that transpired on Monday night Feb.11 at UT’s Thompson-Boling Arena. With Rutgers leading 58-57, UT has possession of the ball and 23 seconds remaining in the game. UT brings the ball into the front court, and choosing to not call a timeout, make several passes in hopes of getting an open shot. With 5.5 seconds remaining, Bobbitt launches a 17-footer from the top of the key which clanks off the iron. Parker grabs the rebound with 3.6 seconds remaining, makes a move and goes back up with a shot at the 1.5 second mark, but her shot also misses. Anosike grabs the rebound with 0.3 seconds remaining and her feet are still in the air. While she is still coming down with the ball, the clock inexplicably stops at the 0.2 second mark. It remains stopped for approximately 1.3 seconds and then restarts. During that interminable pause, Bob Trammell, the baseline official, whistles a foul on Khia Vaughn of Rutgers against Anosike. After a review at the scorers table, the officials determine there was 0.2 seconds on the clock at the time of the foul, and Anosike is sent to the line where she sinks both free throws to win the game.

What makes this such a travesty are several different things. At the actual time all of these events were taking place, both the Rutgers bench and the television broadcasters (along with a vast number of the television audience) were aware that the clock stopped and was restarted. When the officials went to the sidelines to review the play, it seems all they were focused on was the foul. If there was some question about the clock, the events that transpired should have been hand-timed instead of relying on the clock above the goal which was clearly in error. Due to the lingering controversy over the game, Debby Jennings, Tennessee’s associate athletic director for media relations, released a statement from arena manager Tim Reese explaining that Tennessee uses the Precision Timing Device. Reese said the game clock can be stopped only by the official, who blows his whistle, sending a wireless signal to the scorer’s table to automatically stop the clock. Theoretically, that takes the human element out of the process.

But in an interview with ESPN, Precision Time Systems inventor and president Michael Costabile divulges that Reese only got half the story right. In the ESPN article titled “Clock Inventor Points to Possible Human Error in Rutgers-Tennessee Game”, Costabile states that The Precision Time device uses small microphones attached to the referees’ whistles that communicate wirelessly to devices worn on the referees’ belts. The devices start and stop the game clock. When the device picks up sound from the whistle, the clock stops, and the official must hit a button on his belt pack to restart the clock. But — and this is an extremely important point here — at the same time, the official timekeeper manually controls the clock. Whichever signal is picked up first — the sound of the referee’s whistle, the click of the belt-pack button or the pressing of the timekeeper’s button — officially controls the clock. Jennings and Reese may think they have sufficiently answered the question of the clock operation, but they only gave half an answer. More importantly, when Costabile reviewed the game, he said because the clock seemed to pause before reaching zero indicates to him that either an official or the timekeeper may have stopped the clock, anticipating Anosike would be fouled, and then restarted it when that wasn’t immediately the case. “That can take as much as 0.8 seconds to 1.5 seconds,” he said. “That’s telling me people froze up. It’s only as good as someone pushing the button.”The kicker in all this is that the clock’s inventor admitted that human error was most likely involved and that it occurred in anticipation of a foul that did occur — AFTER the game should have rightfully ended. “Anticipation.” That’s a highly suspect word when it comes to a well-fought important game with rankings and eventually seedings on the line. Do humans make mistakes? Absolutely. And because officials are humans, they aren’t infallible. But the travesty is when the proper steps are not taken to correct those mistakes.

Michelle Voepel, contributing writer for the ESPN website, states that when the NCAA selection committee goes to make their decisions on seeding for the Big Dance, not only do they consider overall records and RPIs, but they also take into account situations and outcomes that aren’t neccessarily going to show up in any statistical category. Therefore the “asterisk” that SECWB.com is attaching to this game may well be the prevailing view of some of the selection committee members.

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