King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Pro-Duke conspiracy alert: Timing error helps the Blue Devils. Why can't anybody get the clock right? Plus: A decade in the books.

Read more: Sports, Basketball, College Basketball, King Kaufman, Sports Daily

Jan. 26, 2007 | Long before any controversy involving the lacrosse team, Duke was one of the great Rorschach tests in sports. Few subjects seem to call up stronger feelings than the fortunes of the Duke men's basketball team. Blue Devils haters believe Duke has never won a game without help from the referees.

Duke fans, obviously, disagree. They distinguish themselves by being the most sensitive fans in fandom and see anti-Duke bias everywhere, though I think even Duke fans have to admit that Dick Vitale is pretty fond of Coach K and Co. Still, I haven't even finished typing the second paragraph of this item and I've already received 12 e-mails from Duke alums about it, and they don't even know what I'm going to say.

I'm going to say Duke won a game Thursday night with help from the referees.

[Ducks.]

[And I don't mean Oregon, which had its own problems Thursday.]

Over the years I've defended the Dukies, despite never once having failed to root against them, against this charge of pro-Duke officiating bias. "Foul calls are as random, inexplicable and nonsensical in Duke's games as in anybody else's," I wrote three years ago, for example.

But dang, did you see the end of that Clemson game Thursday night? Duke won at home on a layup at the buzzer by role-player David McClure, with an assist by freshman Jon Scheyer. And another by the refs.

Clemson had tied the game with -- well, how many seconds left is the issue -- on a 3-pointer by Vernon Hamilton. Hamilton had just scored on a layup to pull Clemson within three with 5.0 seconds left. And we're not even going to talk about how Duke's Josh McRoberts had fouled Hamilton on that layup. We're just not.

McRoberts threw the inbounds pass right to Hamilton, standing just beyond the arc straight away. The clock should have started as soon as Hamilton touched the ball, but it failed to move as Hamilton caught the ball, sized up the shot and let it go.

The clock started as the ball went through the net, stopping again with 1.8 seconds left.

So OK, let's stop and be clear here. Duke was leading by three, so it wasn't a slick move by the home timekeeper not to start the clock. That was against Duke's interests. It was just a mistake. And since the clock started running when it should have stopped, and went past where it should have gone, the whole thing would have hurt Duke if the officials hadn't fixed it.

Poor choice of words. Corrected it.

So the officials met and haggled and bargained and kibitzed, and reset the clock to 4.4 seconds.

Next page: Space-time continuum overruled. Why's it so hard to keep the time? Plus: Happy anniversary to me