Depending on who you believe, NCAA officials may or may not have seen all angles of the controversial replay in Monday’s national championship game.
NCAA vice president Dan Gavitt told ESPN’s "Outside the Lines" that officials did see all available angles of the play in which the ball went out of bounds with just under two minutes remaining. Officials initially gave Duke possession and decided not to overturn that call. Gavitt's remarks came a day after John Adams, the NCAA's supervisor of officials, said officials never saw the angle TV viewers were given that appeared to show the ball going off the fingers of Duke’s Justise Winslow.
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"Unfortunately, John misspoke yesterday," Gavitt told ESPN.com after his OTL appearance. "The officials did indeed have the camera angle that was shown on the CBS broadcast. It was the last angle they did see. They likely did not stay long enough with a review to see that angle magnified.
"They made their determination based on the two-minute review and the camera angle that was shown on CBS and with that determined that there wasn't indisputable evidence to overturn the call," Gavitt added. "You need to have indisputable evidence by rule to change the call. The facts are they did have the angle the viewers had."
Adams said he’d seen a better angle after officials had left, but he didn’t call them back.
"I saw it after they had left the monitor, and actually thought about: Is it in my prerogative to get up, run over the table, buzz the buzzer and tell them to come back and look?" Adams said. "That's how critical I thought the play was, and concluded that this is a job for the guys on the floor and I've never done this before, why would I do it tonight and perhaps change the balance of the game?"
The referees also missed Winslow stepping out of bounds before passing to Jahlil Okafor for a basket that put Duke up by three points with three minutes remaining. Duke won 68-63 to claim the title.