Tobacco Road Report

By Michael

TRR has had enough with the advantage Duke receives a home. It's hard enough to execute a game plan five on six in Cameron Indoor with the Crazies performing with their usual high energy. We have no problem there...home court advantage is home court advantage. Visitors have to rise above that challenge on their own. Kudos to the Crazies. But to try and win five against nine is nearly impossible.

I've dumped the remainder of my write-up in favor of this simple premise: Clemson earned the right to have the game decided in overtime. After fighting to get within three points after a Hamilton layup with five seconds left, Clemson received a gift. Josh McRoberts looked to inbound the ball to Greg Paulus, but Paulus zigged while McRoberts zagged and the entry pass sailed out to the three point line into the hands of Hamilton who drained a three. With 1.8 seconds showing on the clock, the game looked destined for overtime.

Unfortunately, the refs decided to play clock management after feeling excessive time ran off the clock after Hamilton's made basket. Probably true, and your's truely noted it to the Official Wife of TRR when it happened. However, I also noticed that the clock started well after Hamilton received the errant inbounds pass. So if the referees were going to put time back on the clock for running too long after the made basket, they should have offset this by the amount of time not run off the clock on the inbounds pass.

On net, the clock should have read about 3.5-3.8 seconds left, meaning McClure's layup would not have been taken in time. By putting the clock back to 4.4 seconds, the refs were saying Hamilton caught, set, launched, and sank a three pointer in 0.6 seconds. Absolute hogwash (this is still a family site)...and we expected nothing less from referees in Cameron Indoor.