Florida State Screwed in Loss to Virginia Tech (Video)

We’ve been through this issue several times before and we’ll continue to hammer the point until people recognizes the sense it makes. Florida State got screwed over when a shot by Derwin Kitchen at the buzzer was overturned by the referees, giving the ACC tournament game to Virginia Tech. Check out the video:

Erick Green had just hit the go-ahead jumper for Virginia Tech giving them a 52-51 lead, so Virginia Tech went from elation to heart break and then back to elation in the span of two minutes. What concerns me is that a shot that clearly was taken at the buzzer and went in was waved off. Why is that the case? Look how close things were. In the pic below, the ball was out of Kitchen’s hand when time expired:

And in this zoomed-in angle, the ball was out as well:

If Kitchen didn’t get his shot off in time, it was by a millisecond. And you know what? The bottom line is that to the naked eye he got the shot off in time and that’s what should count. Since when did sports become about millisecond breakdowns on video replay and not about the actual game?

And here’s the other point that I’ve stressed so many times before. The clock operators for games do such a poor job managing starts and stops, all it takes is for them to start it a millisecond too early on a possession and it would result in Kitchen’s shot being after the buzzer. I will continue to repeat the point: when it comes to last-second shots, if it passes the eyeball test it should count. Science is imperfect, sports are fun — don’t spoil the moment with a microsecond reading that can already be flawed.