Breaking news: the ACC has issued a statement to let the world know that Duke freshman Kyle Filipowski, driving to the basket, score tied at 58 with Virginia, the final tenths of a second ticking down, should have gotten two free throws after having his shot blocked at the rim by Reece Beekman.
He didn’t, and the eighth-ranked Cavaliers went on to win 69-62 in OT.
In other news: karma, with a nod to a 1997 UVA-Duke game that went the other way, in favor of Duke, is a b-tch.
“The Atlantic Coast Conference, upon review of the final play of regulation during the Duke at Virginia men’s basketball game, has announced an incorrect adjudication of the playing rules,” the statement from the conference issued late, late Saturday, began.
“A foul was called on Virginia’s Ryan Dunn during a shot attempt by Duke’s Kyle Filipowski as time expired. Upon the officials’ review of the play, it was determined that the foul committed occurred after the clock reached 0.0. However, the play should have resulted in two free throws for Duke.”
The statement then spelled out the rules that were incorrectly applied by the game officials – Lee Cassell, Jeffrey Anderson and Tim Clougherty – to overturn the original call.
“The ACC had addressed this situation with both institutions as well as the officiating crew. The conference considers this matter closed and will have no further comment.”
Update: Duke still lost.
You can feel Coach K glowering at me through your phone or desktop, wherever you’re reading this, can’t you?
I sure can.
But as with the cascade of errors by game officials in the final seconds of the 62-61 Duke win at University Hall in 1997, we’re all already well aware that sh-t happens.
And oddly, though not surprisingly, the statement from the ACC doesn’t address the missed five-second violation on Duke inbounder Tyrese Proctor on the pass to Filipowski, which would have rendered any foul call that would have happened thereafter moot.
Kinda reminds you of how Auburn fans like to talk about Ty Jerome’s double-dribble, but don’t talk about the rake on the arm that knocked the ball away and wasn’t called.
I feel bad here for the officials who are going to get the book thrown at them, because it seems to me that what they did was use the instant replay to get the call right, and they did get it right, but just didn’t go about it the right way.
One, it would have been obvious upon looking at the replay, as it should have been obvious with the naked eye, that there was no foul on the play.
A few hours after the Duke vs. Virginia game ended, and a Virginia win had been recorded, the ACC released an official statement saying the officiating crew ultimately got this call wrong.
Per the statement, the foul was committed by No. 13 Ryan Dunn. https://t.co/kW80G9bXun pic.twitter.com/RCbRSzmCQZ
— Jamie Shaw (@JamieShaw5) February 12, 2023
Reece Beekman met Filipowski at the rim and blocked his dunk attempt clean.
The idea that there was a foul on Dunn, who was trailing the play, is ludicrous.
The shot had already been blocked; whatever contact there was thereafter that might have involved Dunn wouldn’t have constituted an advantage gained, and it’s patently obvious from the replay angle above that Filipowski just lost his balance after having his shot blocked at the rim by Beekman, and that Dunn didn’t even touch him.
Giving Filipowski two free throws after having his weak sh-t swatted away, and then falling to the floor, would have been a miscarriage of basketball justice.
And that’s not even counting what the officials would have seen after rewinding the play to the beginning, which would have revealed to them the missed five-second violation on the inbounds pass.
That Duke, of all programs, the beneficiary of 40-plus years of favorable calls (and no-calls), is crying, well, foul, after this one, is, OK, again, karma is a b-tch.
“I’m pissed for our guys, like, I’m pissed that we were right there, and we weren’t able to come away with a win,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said, hours before the statement from the ACC, so you can only imagine, now that he’s back in Durham, how pissed he is.
“We’ll figure out how to move on and to learn from this and to use it as motivation to keep going,” Scheyer said.
Yeah, no doubt, this one will go down for Scheyer like the 109-66 Duke loss to Virginia in the 1983 ACC Tournament that Mike Krzyzewski still swears to this day had Terry Holland keeping Ralph Sampson out on the court for the entire game.
Yeah, Sampson played 14 minutes in that one, but the story is so much better the way Coach K tells it.
Scheyer insisted in his postgame presser that Filipowski – who finished with a goose egg: zero points, 0-of-6 from the field, 0-of-2 from the line – would have made the free throws, and who knows, maybe he would have, maybe he makes one, maybe he misses both.
Whatever, the point is moot.
Tony Bennett, for his part, just call him Paul, because as far as he’s concerned, as far as Duke and the ACC are concerned, this is between y’all.
“I kept trying to say, hey, you know, because, you know, we have the advantage of seeing the replay, and boy, Reece got it, looked to me like a good block on it,” Bennett told reporters after the game. “I would assume that the time ran out, or the, you know, the foul was after, so I didn’t see it, you know. I didn’t get an official, you know, once they said no basket, and our staff was saying, no, the clock went out, they thought, they weren’t too worried, but until I saw the call, that’s what I wanted to see.
“What do you think? It’s close, right?” he said, smiling sheepishly.
“Bang, bang, we’ll take it.”
Back to that 1997 game – hey, if Coach K can hold onto a beatdown for 40 years, we can hold on to a bad call that cost us a win for 25 – the ACC apologized after that one, too.
Remember Norman Nolan, shaking hands with Krzyzewski in the handshake line, telling Coach K, famously, “That’s bullshit, coach.”
As with tonight’s game, Gene Corrigan, then the ACC commissioner, issued a statement afterward acknowledging ”that a serious officiating mechanics mistake was made by not allowing the Virginia substitute into the game.”
”This is as fundamental as it gets; basic game management procedures for our officials,” said Corrigan, adding that the crew responsible for the error would lose a league assignment and be subject to other internal action.
That’s all they can do.
Final update: Virginia 69, Duke 62, OT.
We’re finally square from 1997.
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Chris Graham
