Was Auburn Robbed?

It’s 5.4 seconds left in the game. Auburn is up 62-60. UVA’s Clark inbounds to Jerome. Jerome is dribbling the ball, Auburn’s Brown is playing tough physical defense, Jerome loses the ball, picks its up and then is fouled by Brown. But let’s relook at that possession again. How did Jerome lose the ball? As he was dribbling, the ball dribbles off his foot. Jerome picks it up with both hands, and starts dribbling again. Clear double dribble, cue up the Auburn band to play ‘War Eagle’, and watch Bruce Pearl and the tigers celebrate as they go on to their schools first Men’s basketball national championship game.

That’s how it should of ended right?

Nope!
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Again let’s relook at the possession. Jerome is dribbling up the court, Brown is playing hard physical defense on Jerome, and he reaches in. Jerome loses the ball. Now when you look at this play from the non-TV angle you see that Brown grabs Jerome’s jersey before he loses the ball, clear foul. No foul, no double dribble. Two missed calls! Did the foul cause the double dribble? Probably not, but it did happen prior to the double dribble.

At this point no the refs did not steal the game from Auburn, but there’s one more controversial play left.

Did Doughty foul Guy?
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With 1.5 seconds left in the game, Jerome inbounds to Guy. Guy goes for the game winning three, which comes up short. Again game over Tigers win, cue the band to play ‘War Eagle’, but in the words of Lee Corso “Not so fast my friend.” Doughty bumps into Guy.
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Foul, 3 shots!

A foul is a foul no matter how much time is left on the clock. If that’s a foul at the 18min mark in the 1st half, then it’s a foul with six tenths of a second remaining in the 2nd half. UVA won this game fair! Now let’s get ready to watch Texas Tech vs UVA Monday night!!!



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*I do not claim to own rights to any photographs posted in this article*