Tennessee basketball: Questionable late foul calls defined Vols season

Tennessee basketball lost to the Purdue Boilermakers in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. But the Volunteers’ bad breaks preceded March Madness.

There’s no sugar-coating it. Tennessee basketball beats the Purdue Boilermakers if the refs make one of two correct calls on Purdue’s final possession in regulation when down by two points. And they have a chance if there’s not a third missed call to end regulation. Instead, they missed all of them.

The first was an obvious missed five seconds. Purdue was inbounding the ball with two and a half second left, and it took them seven seconds to get it in. Sure, if you’re a ref, you don’t want to end the game on a close five-second call. But when it’s that clear, you have to make it. This video proves that it’s 7 seconds, and the ref wasn’t even counting.

Egregiously, though, after the inbound, Lamonte Turner got called for fouling Carson Edwards when he was shooting a three. Sure, there was contact. But the contact came after the shot, and Edwards kicked out his leg. Amidst all that, he still had a chance to land on his feet. You can see that here.

So Edwards hit two of three free throws. Now, maybe, if the refs want to be ticky-tack, they make that foul call anyway. But if you’re going to be ticky-tack, then do it on the inbounds play as well with seven seconds on the clock.

Less scandalously, they gave the Vols 0.1 seconds on the clock to get off a play because that’s when they recognized the timeout, even though it was called with over 0.5 seconds left. So Tennessee basketball had no chance at a game-winning shot.

That missed call, though, was likely not going to affect the outcome. The big scandal was the inconsistency between the five-second violation and the foul call. And as the Vols, a team that was No. 1 for four weeks, miss out on the Elite 8, late foul calls have defined this season.

Such a questionable foul call cost them a shot at their second Elite 8 in school history and most wins in school history. Last week, it nearly cost them a loss in the Round of 32. Turner again got a clean block on a three-point shot in regulation that the refs ruled a foul, which is why the Vols needed overtime to beat the Iowa Hawkeyes.

And while the most recent late foul cost them an Elite 8 bid, another foul cost them a shot at the SEC regular season championship. We’re obviously referring to the LSU Tigers in the regular season. In a scramble for a loose ball with the game tied in overtime and two seconds left, a once self-admitted LSU fan called a foul on the Vols that gave the Tigers two game-winning free throws.

If that call doesn’t happen, you’re likely talking about a second overtime in LSU. So if you’re keeping score at home, a questionable late foul cost Tennessee basketball the regular season SEC championship, a blatantly wrong late foul call nearly cost them their Sweet 16 berth, and a wrong ticky-tack foul call cost them the Elite 8.

Now, before I go any further, let me be clear. There are 1,000 other reasons Rick Barnes’s fourth team, which finished the year 31-7, didn’t go further. They didn’t have to shoot 50 percent from the free throw line. Also, they didn’t have to fall behind by 18, even if their comeback was a valiant effort.

Against Iowa, they didn’t have to turn it over so much in the second half. In overtime against LSU, they didn’t have to make so many mental mistakes and rush late shots. It’s also worth noting the Tigers didn’t have one of their starters in that game, so that foul was clearly not an excuse.

It wasn’t just questionable late foul calls that hurt the Vols this year either, though. They won a game against the Ole Miss Rebels because Admiral Schofield got away with taking a charge at the top of the key, which should not be allowed. If you’re guarding a guy in transition and you can just stop to take a charge, it’s cheap and represents everything wrong with college basketball.

So there were four late-game questionable fouls that very few refs make in a season affecting Tennessee basketball games, and it was just a bit of bad luck that three went against the Vols. What happened Thursday was the most egregious when you take it in context with the blatantly missed five-second violation.

It should also be noted that this is the second straight Sweet 16 game in which a late foul cost the Vols. Remember this bogus charging call on Jarnell Stokes when Cuonzo Martin led Tennessee basketball to that round in 2014? That was with UT down by one having a chance to win. This time, though, there were numerous failures. And it’s a horrible look for college basketball.