It's no surprise that the Texas Longhorn fans are screaming bloody murder over the final seconds of Sunday's game. As we all now know, Arizona won in large part thanks to a five-second violation called on a Texas in-bounds play with about 14 seconds remaining in the game.
↵The official calls the violation, the ball goes back to Arizona, Derrick Williams hits a crazy shot and the free throw, game (essentially) over.
↵Texas fans can, and will, quibble of the lack of a foul called on their final drive and rebound, but the main focus appears to be the five-second violation. They've produced this video (below) with time-coded millisecond precision to prove that the Texas player called for a timeout before five full ticks had run off.
↵They are pissed.
↵"That's as blatantly, objectively horrible a call as I've ever seen," Longhorns blog Burnt Orange Nation exclaims.
↵Really? The fact that an official using only the tools God gave him, couldn't count exactly, precisely and to the nano-second is your best argument? 4.75 seconds on the digital clock is about as close as humanly possible a person (even an official person) can get. Grab a buddy and stopwatch and try it; we'll wait.
↵There's no doubt that it was a lucky break for Arizona, as acknowledged by Wildcats blog AZ Desert Swarm, "The five-second count ... could've gone either way."
↵But had it gone the other way and the digital replay showed 5.25 seconds before the timeout call was made, would the Wildcat fans be complaining? Probably, but they would be equally wrong.
↵The Longhorns were down for most of this game and it would have been a great comeback if they won, but in this case, the basketball Gods shined on the team from Tucson. It happens to everyone.
↵Complaining that a human being wasn't able to keep time as well as a digital device is just being a sore loser.
↵