Tennessee and Purdue’s Sweet 16 matchup was perhaps the game of the NCAA tournament so far, an OT thriller with a fourth quarter that reminded me of a heavyweight boxing match, but, like, a Rocky IV style heavyweight boxing match where everyone is just trading haymakers.
At the end of the fourth quarter, after an extremely controversial foul call, Tennessee had the ball under its own basket with 1.7 seconds remaining and the game tied at 82. Everyone geared up for an amazing final play, possibly a Laettner-style full court heave, and instead we got …
A designed halfcourt play with two passes to call timeout.
The play worked, I suppose, in that Tennessee did advance the ball past halfcourt with two passes and called a timeout. It’s just that it took them 1.6 seconds to do so. So they got the ball out of bounds with 0.1 seconds left on the clock, which is not enough time to do much of anything on a basketball court.
On the ensuing inbound they couldn’t get a shot off in time, obviously enough, and ended up losing to Purdue in overtime. Which had a lot of casual and Tennessee fans alike asking: What, exactly, was Rick Barnes thinking?
The initial response to the play was one of either confusion, hostility, or laughter at Barnes’ decision.
There was then some tepid backlash from people arguing that the play has worked before, they ran the clock too fast, etc. Mostly people were arguing about the foul call before that, and we were heading to overtime, and yeah he didn’t get a play off but 1.7 seconds to go full court is nearly impossible anyway, so who cares?
We should not let this rest though. This was a preposterous decision from Barnes. A laughable, ridiculous decision. I don’t care how friendly the timekeeper is. You can’t add an extra pass in a play designed to call timeout in 1.7 seconds.
