A good game all the way through ended with a controversial call
(Alexis Jenkins ’11/THE STAMPEDE)

By Anthony Brown ‘12
Staff Writer

The championship-like rematch between the McNamara Mustangs and DeMatha Stags, held last Tuesday at the Showplace Arena, ended with a controversial call that left McNamara fans and players stunned, upset and wanting answers.

Teacher Mr. Jeffrey Southworth, the announcer for Bishop McNamara basketball, said that during the Seton game the person controlling the clock was having trouble handling the horn (or “buzzer” if you will) and officials had to be called  over countless times when the game clock and shot clock weren’t in sync with one another. To his knowledge, that individual wasn’t affiliated with either team  — Bishop McNamara’s shot clock and game clock handlers were denied access and told to sit in the fan section. Because of the those complications with the shot and game clock, they were seperated and worked on two seperate devices.

A quick recap of what happened:

Coach Martin Keithline stated that the game plan for DeMatha was to spread their team out and use the Mustangs  quickness off the dribble to get to the basket. Also, zone defense and high pressure were going to be key because of DeMatha’s size down low and the quickness  of their guards. The Mustangs certainly did that coming out strong on both sides of the ball, giving them a 3 point lead which increased to 7 by the end of the first quarter which led to a score of 16-9.

In the second quarter, the Mustangs kept their lead with strong play from Ibn Muhammed ‘11, Marcus Thornton ‘11, Callon Dailey ‘11 and Stephan Jiggetts ‘13. The Mustangs ended the first half with a 35-21 score.

The strong play of Dailey and Thornton helped the Mustangs hold on to a 9 point lead in the third quarter and the score at the end of the third was 49-40.

However, the fourth quarter was when problems arose. The Mustangs defense was overpowered by DeMatha’s size and the game got close a few minutes in. It was a back and forth battle down to the final seconds. With 1.9 seconds left to go after a missed shot by Ibn Muhammed ‘11, DeMatha called a timeout. During the Inbound play, the ball was thrown all the away across court and then Dematha got a shot off but it missed and the game was going in to overtime, so the fans, players and coaches thought.

Some how DeMatha called another timeout but what was strange about that was the referee next to DeMatha’s bench couldn’t hear the timeout being called but a referee all the way across the court heard it and 3 seconds were put back on the game clock. The game ended with Dematha getting a rebound tip-in which fell through and the game was over.

The Mustangs have only a few games left on the schedule, but nevertheless they hope to get a chance to build momentum going into the playoffs.

[box]See Matt Nunez’s photo and read more coverage of the game here.[/box]