Larry Brown Sports

Michigan was on the verge of blowing a lead against Syracuse in the Final Four Saturday, but they benefited from controversial calls by the officials and held on to win 61-56.

The controversial call that stood out was a charging foul called on Brandon Triche with 19.2 seconds left in the game. Syracuse was down 58-56 at the time and Triche drove to the hole looking to tie the game. Just as Triche was elevating for a layup, Jordan Morgan appeared to shuffle into defensive position in front of him.

The referees called a charging foul on Triche, giving the ball to Michigan. Based on the NCAA’s charging vs. blocking rule, a blocking foul should have been called on Morgan.

Here is the applicable guideline from the NCAA Rules Committee:

Before the offensive player (with the ball) becomes airborne, the defender must have two feet on the floor, be facing the opponent and be stationary to draw a charge. Otherwise, it should be a blocking foul.

That wasn’t the only call to go in favor of Michigan in the final two minutes.

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Syracuse had to do some damage control after a tweet sent from the university’s official Twitter account suggested that basketball coach Jim Boeheim would be retiring.

Here’s the tweet sent following Syracuse’s 78-57 home win over DePaul on Wednesday that caused the confusion:

The tweet links to a post on a Syracuse blog that was written by a Florida community college student, who says the longtime coach was asked by the school to retire.

The tweet was later deleted, and the school moved quickly to clarify:

#OrangeNation: Earlier tonight a tweet was mistakenly sent. Nothing in the tweet was true or accurate and we apologize for the confusion.

— Syracuse University (@SyracuseU) March 7, 2013

Boeheim has been the school’s basketball coach since the 1976-77 season. He has won one national championship, reached three Final Fours, and he is second on the Division I career wins list with 913. Syracuse’s last regular season game is Saturday at Georgetown.

H/T Deadspin

Very few teams in the 2012 NCAA Tournament had a better shot at cutting down the nets in April than Syracuse. In the course of a single day, the Orange have become a long shot to advance even to the Sweet 16. Syracuse announced on Tuesday that sophomore center Fab Melo will not participate in the tournament due to an “eligibility issue.” As far as setbacks go, that’s about as big as it gets for Jim Boeheim and company.

According to ESPN.com, Melo’s ineligibility is a result of an academic issue related to the one he had earlier this season. Melo was cleared to play after missing three games in January, but the NCAA has since revisited the issue and once again deemed him ineligible.

One of Syracuse’s two losses this season came against Notre Dame, with Melo watching from the bench. That was hardly a coincidence, as he is the anchor of a zone defense that has carried the Orange to a No. 1 seed in the tournament and made them a championship contender. After a lackluster freshman season, Melo was arguably the nation’s most-improved player as a sophomore this year, when he averaged 7.8 points, 5.8 rebounds, and nearly three blocks per game.

Syracuse’s biggest concern heading into The Dance is rebounding, an area in which they rank 125th in the nation. Losing their 7-foot center could result in teams dominating the Orange on the glass — even 16th-seeded UNC-Asheville. Could this be the first time in tournament history a No. 16 seed knocks off a No. 1 seed? Probably not, but the stars are certainly aligned perfectly for it to happen.

Yahoo! Sports is on the case again, this time nabbing Syracuse for reportedly violating its internal drug policy. The report says the school’s basketball program overlooked positive drug tests by some of its players and either miscounted positive tests, or just continued to play players who should have been suspended based on the athletic department’s drug policy.

The most serious examples of Syracuse ignoring positive drug tests are the charges from Yahoo! that “at least one player continued to play after failing four tests and another player played after failing three.”

The report states at least 10 players since 2001 tested positive for a recreational drug, which most people are assuming is weed.

There is no NCAA drug policy for its member schools, but each school’s athletic department has its own policy. Last November, CBS showed the inconsistencies in drug policies when it came to NCAA football programs. We can imagine that there is similar variance when it comes to basketball programs.

I have two thoughts on this — one about Syracuse, and one about Yahoo! Sports. With Syracuse, though a player smoking some weed is not a huge deal, the school intentionally breaking its rules is a bad precedent. By overlooking positive drug tests, you’re placing the importance of winning basketball games above following rules. You’re also doing the athletes a big disservice because you’re sending two messages: one, being a basketball player gives you preferential treatment; two, you’re allowing them to get away with smoking weed, which isn’t good preparation for the NBA when players would get in trouble for positive tests.

Lastly, Yahoo! Sports has once again perfectly timed a program-shaking report. They published this report on the Monday of the Big East conference tournament, a week ahead of the NCAA tournament. If anyone knows how to rattle a successful program and maximize attention to their reports, it’s them.

Syracuse beat West Virginia 63-61 Saturday after getting a break on a missed call by the referees. West Virginia’s Truck Bryant bombed a three and missed in the final seconds, but Deniz Kilicli got the rebound and went up for the putback. His ball bounced off the backboard and was blocked by center Baye Moussa Keita. The referees did not call a goaltend like they should have, preserving Syracuse’s 63-61 lead. Mountaineers coach Bob Huggins is convinced they missed the call.

“Do I think it was? No. I know it was. I saw the replay,” Huggins said. “It’s hard. You’ve got 30 seconds and you’re trying to get them refocused and they’re all thinking about other things.”

Syracuse won 63-61 to improve to 22-1, but they probably should have gone to overtime for the game. They certainly are much weaker without Fab Melo in the lineup and caught a break Saturday.

Syracuse was 18-0 and a top-five team in college basketball, but the Orangemen have lost four in a row since starting the year strongly. They were wiped out at home last week 90-68 by Seton Hall, leaving many fans with questions. Apparently those questions have resulted in rumors, such as one posted on a gambling site saying Cuse players Scoop Jardine, Dion Waiters, and James Southerland have been shaving points.

Jardine hasn’t played his best in the four losses and was particularly awful against Villanova, but that in no way implies he was shaving points. Waiters and Southerland are both reserves and neither played in the loss to Marquette, but both have seen plenty of minutes in each of the team’s conference games. The DNPs were Waiters’ first of the year and fourth for Southerland, and the DNP seemed to be punishment for Waiters. Clearly Waiters’ status with coach Jim Boeheim is in question, but that is most likely due to his attitude.

Two speculative reports came out Tuesday suggesting the players were shaving points and that led to fans questioning the players on twitter. Rather than ignoring the bombardment, Scoop Jardine made what KC radio host Nick Wright described as an awful move. Here’s what Scoop wrote on twitter, as Wright alerted me:

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Thursday night’s contest between UConn and Syracuse in the Big East tournament was one of the best conference tourney games of all-time — I have no doubt. I remember a great Baylor game (against Texas A&M?) that went three overtimes. This one went six. I was thinking to myself when they reviewed the play of Eric Devendorf hitting what would have been the game-winning three pointer at the buzzer in regulation that the fraction of a second his release was late shouldn’t have been significant enough to disallow it. Almost like the argument that if you saw it with the naked eye you don’t need replay for it. Well, the play was reviewed, he released the ball a hair late as you can see in this video, and the ball didn’t lie as Syracuse went on to win it.

I think this is one of those games that you remember where you were when you watched it. I’m guessing lots of sports fans have a memory similar to mine in that they remember where they watched part of it, but it wasn’t until much after the fact that they knew what they had been witnessing. For instance, I saw the beginning at work, the end of regulation at home, and the first two overtimes at the gym. After it went to the third overtime, I decided it was time to go from the cardio area where they have TVs at the gym to the weights area, figuring I would just find out the score later. Sure enough I had finished my whole routine only to return to the cardio area and see a big crowd of people huddled around the TV, with a “six” next to the letters, “OT.” I was stunned. Literally shocked. With all of Syracuse’s big men fouled out, I thought for sure UConn would take it. Boy was I wrong. And the clock didn’t lie, giving Syracuse the win they deserved in regulation.