The gallant young men of Rutgers will never get those 1.7 seconds back. They won’t soon forget the day their hearts were ripped by injustice, by a trio of good referees who showed up at the worst possible time as Three Blind Mice and cheated them of a chance to slay St. John’s. Some of them will never play for Rutgers again, and will take this Robbery on 34th Street to their grave.
Maybe Rutgers would not have tied the game and forced overtime, or even won it with a buzzer-beating 3. We’ll never know. They’ll never know. And it’s a damn shame.
Those Scarlet Knights deserved those last 1.7 seconds. They deserved to be put back on that court for one last chance to shock the world, to advance to the Big East quarterfinals today against Syracuse. They had the mighty giants from Jamaica reeling, shaken, out on their feet, ready to go. They had given us the essence of the old college try.
But instead of getting those 1.7 seconds, all gallant young men of Rutgers could do was beg for some kind of explanation from officials who raced from the chaos and away from the anguished screams of first-year Rutgers head coach Mike Rice.
Justin Brownlee wound up with the ball in the frantic final seconds and as he began his premature celebration, he traveled, and zebras Jim Burr and Tim Higgins and Carl Walton missed it.
Brownlee stepped out of bounds just over midcourt, with St. John’s coach Steve Lavin standing right in front of him, and Burr and Higgins and Walton missed that, too.
Brownlee heaved the ball into the stands before the horn had sounded, and Burr and Higgins and Walton didn’t bother calling a technical.
And as the Scarlet Knights trudged off the court distraught 65-63 losers, several of the gallant young men of Rutgers began yelling the equivalent of “We got screwed.”
“Why?” others cried.
And once inside their locker room, those who weren’t beset with anger openly wept.
“Jerseys over your head … some people crying,” senior guard James Beatty said.
Garden of Dreams for St. John’s.
Garden of Screams for Rutgers.
Big East Commissioner John Marinatto would release a statement saying that “two separate officiating errors” had occurred at the end.
“Both missed violations should have caused the game clock to stop and a change of possession to occur prior to the end of the game,” he stated.
The gallant young men of Rutgers already were on their way to the bus that would take them out of this season and back to Piscataway.
John Adams, in charge of selecting and managing the 98 officials for the NCAA tournament, told ESPN.com: “Not officiating to the end of a game is unacceptable.”
Rice, who is a terrific and classy young coach, took the high road.
“A mistake was made, and we have to kinda control how we respond,” he said. “And we’re not whining, we’re not pouting. It is what it is.”
Rice, leaning against a wall outside the Rutgers locker room, was holding the Big East statement in his left hand. But he refused to lay all the blame on the officials.
“It doesn’t make me feel better or worse … again, you guys will watch it on YouTube — it is a mistake,” he said. “Would I love it to not happen? Of course. But I made so many mistakes in that game, it’s unbelievable.”
Before meeting the media, Rice walked into his locker room and told his players: “Make sure we take the high road on everything. They just showed it — 1.2 seconds, he walked out of bounds.”
That was easier said than done for the gallant young men of Rutgers.
Brownlee wound up with the ball after a Robert Lumpkins inbounds pass with 4.7 seconds left for Gilvydas Biruta, sandwiched by two St. John’s players just past halfcourt and seemingly fouled, bounced out of the scrum.
“Brownlee caught it and ran out of bounds,” senior forward Jonathan Mitchell said. “And threw it into the crowd. And the clock was still running. And then the horn went off.”
Did he travel before he even threw? “Yeah,” Mitchell said, and chuckled a chuckle of incredulousness.
Why didn’t they call either violation?
“You tell me,” Mitchell said. “I have no idea.”
Home cooking?
“Maybe.”
“It was point-eight seconds left, he threw the ball in the crowd, which I thought is a tech. You can’t do that till it says zero-zero,” sophomore swingman Dane Miller said. “So … definitely got cheated.”
Only seconds earlier, the gallant young men of Rutgers felt that the refs had missed a foul on a driving Mike Coburn with the score 64-63. They called a foul on Coburn instead.
“At the end of the day,” Beatty said, “you want to play to the last second. You want to play it out till the clock says zero-zero.”
Zero hour instead for the gallant young men of Rutgers.