The failure of Jim Burr, Tim Higgins and Earl Walton to officiate until the final buzzer of the St. John's-Rutgers Big East second-round game Wednesday at Madison Square Garden was "unacceptable," the head of the NCAA's officiating told ESPN.com. John Adams, who is in charge of selecting and managing the 98 officials for the NCAA tournament, said whether those three advance to the quarterfinals of the Big East tournament "is not my business." St. John's beat Rutgers 65-63 Wednesday. But Rutgers should have had one more shot attempt to tie or win because the Red Storm's Justin Brownlee stole a pass from Rutgers' Gilvydas Biruta but then traveled while celebrating and then stepped out of bounds with 1.7 seconds remaining on the clock, according to the ESPN broadcast. Brownlee then hurled the ball in the stands as his coach, Steve Lavin, was walking down the sideline to shake Rutgers coach Mike Rice's hands. Source ESPN
This is unacceptable at the highest meaning of the word. All 3 of these guys need to be fired tonight. The St.John's player who threw the ball into the crowd should have been give a technical foul, but there wasn't a ref to call it. They left the court before the game was over, period.
Rutgers got completely robbed. It's just mind boggling how they could do that. I don't think the SJU player should've been given a tech. It's just that time should not have been allowed to expire. RU should've been awarded the ball with 1.6 or 1.7 seconds on the clock.
The officials who blew the game "voluntarily" removed themselves from reffing further Big East Tournament games this year.
Doris Burke and her partner were busy defending the officials during the UConn/Pitt game. Talking about how great they are, how many final four games they've refereed. The guy says "possible travel, possible out of bounds..." Yeah, so according to him, it was a debatable call and they shouldn't get so much heat. GTFO.
