King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Tennessee and a clock over Rutgers, Georgetown and a phantom foul over Villanova: In a post-Donaghy world, endings like Monday's can't happen.

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Feb. 12, 2008 | Nice night of college basketball we had there Monday night.

Georgetown beat Villanova 55-53 at home thanks to a ticky-tack foul called 80 feet away from the basket with 0.1 seconds remaining. It was the kind of foul that just doesn't get called at any point in a game, never mind at :00.1, a minor brush by defender Corey Stokes on Jonathan Wallace as he dribbled upcourt hoping to get close enough for a desperation shot that he wasn't going to have time to take.

Wallace had come up with a loose ball that resulted from 'Nova's Scottie Reynolds getting mugged underneath the basket on a baseline drive. No call there. That's a foul about half the time, depending on how the big wheel in the officials' dressing room lands in the pregame spin.

But a little bump in the backcourt with a 10th of a second left, that's a foul. Usually in cases like this the guy who benefits from the call makes a good show afterward, says, "Sure, yeah, he fouled me." Wallace must have known he couldn't pull that off with a straight face.

"At first I thought I stepped out of bounds," Wallace said. He went on to admit that he did feel a "kind of nudge."

The "foul" -- the 48th of the game -- gave Wallace, an 80 percent free-throw shooter, two shots to make one for the win. He made both. The game could have been wrapped in a bow and handed to the Hoyas, but that would have been more work for them than this was. They would have had to untie the bow.

And that was the game that looked like it was on the up and up compared with the Tennessee-Rutgers women's game.

The top-ranked Lady Vols won that one 59-58 thanks to a terrific play by the clock, which simply stopped with 0.2 seconds to go and Tennessee trying to score. That really helped the Vols extend the final play long enough for Nicky Anosike to get fouled. She hit both free throws for the one-point win.

"We found a way to win," Tennessee coach Pat Summitt said. Well, yeah.

Anosike, rebounding a Candace Parker miss, jumped and caught the ball with 0.2 seconds left. That's when the clock stopped. She landed, gathered herself to jump to shoot and was fouled from behind by Kia Vaughn. The clock restarted and zipped down to 0, all before any official blew a whistle.

Next page: It's human error, nothing to see here, move along