I have to write this quickly because I had an epic fail of my own - I managed to record a blue screen instead of the game, so I can't go back and review anything.
It's ironic that I spent half of Saturday trying to warn St. John's and/or Rutgers fans about the stupidity of Seth's old teams, because the last 15 seconds of tonight's 58-57 loss to N.C. State will go right into the hall of shame along with some of the dumbest things they ever did. And they did some extremely dumb things... I think the worst was the time Seth tried to pull his Harry High School "let's run off to the locker room to pretend like we have momentum when we make a basket right at halftime" routine when there were still 45 seconds left in the half. It was the shot clock buzzer, not the regular buzzer. He obviously was hit with a T. But I digress.
First of all, the ball is allowed to go into the backcourt on an inbounds pass, even from the baseline. When the shot clock is low, you do not all have to go chasing after the ball and leave your man underneath the basket. As long as you don't do that they will probably end up with a bad shot. Instead, everyone runs out of the paint, so when Horner(?) tracked down the ball, he had his choice of three wide-open players under the basket to throw to. THAT WAS DUMB. (In the spirit of epic fail, the Sun Dome clock operator forgot to start the clock until the ball was pretty much in the basket and the officials had to go figure out how much time was left.)
So after all that, DoJo is coming up the floor with five seconds left. He has gone coast to coast and scored on numerous occasions. He just did it three weeks ago against Providence to win that game. So now, we're going to have him give up the ball when no one else on the team has proven they can score consistently in this game. And not only that, but he's going to give the ball up by passing it just across halfcourt, without even getting close to the rim, before the defense collapses on him. THAT WAS DUMB. Howard had nowhere to go, he barely got it to Gus, who had his shot blocked at the buzzer. Game over, thanks for playing.
Sure, USF had a good season overall, but that ending is going to leave a really sour taste in my mouth.