Dayton trainer Mike Mulcahey ran onto the court and pulled Montgomery back toward the bench. At the other end of the court, Saint Louis coaches started pleading with the officials to call a technical foul on Montgomery.
The officials did stop the game at that point but to review the clock. They determined 0.6 seconds remained, not 0.3.
After a timeout by Dayton, Saint Louis threw a long pass to Quentin Jones, who missed a desperate heave from beyond half court, and No. 4 seed Dayton celebrated a 70-69 victory against No. 1 Saint Louis.
At the postgame press conference, Saint Louis coach Josh Schertz talked about the Montgomery incident.
“Well, we were doing out-of-bounds, and Amari (McCottry) takes it out-of-bounds, and they have a player and (trainer) on the floor, then, yeah, it’s a technical foul,” Schertz said. “Now, maybe I don’t know the rule, if you have to throw the ball inbounds?
“But we were taking the ball out and looking up the floor, and the referees blew it dead with the player out and the coach out hugging. And then went to review it to give us 0.6 seconds instead of 0.3.
“Again, I don’t know if you have to throw the ball inbounds, but they kind of blew it dead. We had the ball out-of-bounds to throw in, looking up the court, and obviously, we couldn’t do that because they had a sixth player plus (a trainer) on the floor. Again, I don’t know if you have to throw it in and that does it, but they blew it dead before we could anyway.”
Credit: David Jablonski
Credit: David Jablonski
Dayton advanced to a 1 p.m. championship game against No. 2 seed Virginia Commonwealth, which coasted to a 77-64 victory against No. 3 Saint Joseph’s in the second semifinal Saturday.
According to the official basketball rule book, a technical foul may be issued for “delaying the game by preventing the ball from being promptly made live or by preventing continuous play, such as bench personnel entering the playing court before player activity has been terminated. In such a case, when the delay does not interfere with play, it shall be ignored.”
Saint Louis did not try to immediately in-bound the ball. McCottry held the ball for two to three seconds before Montgomery ran onto the court. McCottry then began to inbound the ball. Just as he did that, an official ran onto the court to stop play.
The decision to not call a technical foul created much debate on social media.
Meanwhile on CBS, analyst Wally Szczerbiak said “By the letter of the law, this is a technical foul,” while his colleague Clark Kellogg said, “The spirit of the law was exercised with a no-call. The emotion of the moment. The officials did a good job not blowing the whistle.”
Officiating decisions played a big part in the game. Saint Louis committed 23 fouls. Dayton had 17.
Dayton made 24 of 29 free throws. Saint Louis made 15 of 17.
Getting to the line is a Dayton strength. It ranks first in the country in free-throw rate, which measures free-throw attempts relative to field-goal attempts.
Dayton scores 25.8% of its points at the line, according to KenPom.com. It ranks third in the country in that stat.
Dayton guard Jordan Derkack, who scored 28 points against Saint Louis, is the biggest reason the team ranks so high in free-throw numbers. He has made 22 of 27 free throws in two A-10 tournament games.
Schertz said the fouls hurt Saint Louis’ pace on offense.
“Our compete level was good,” Schertz said. “Our fight was right. I thought we did a good job defensively. We fouled way too much, and we turned the ball over way too much. First half, our offense was their best offense. Got them out in transition a ton with our turnovers. Second half, you can’t win big-time games if you’re going to foul like that. We committed, I think, three or four fouls 90 feet from the basket and then turned the ball over 18 times. Just not mature enough as a team yet or disciplined enough, I guess, in a game like that, to be able to cross the finish line.”
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