Carolina-Duke: Missed Calls and The Rivers Shot

ESPN is running the Rivers shot over and over again, and it's really getting irritating.

I mean, Rivers is inherently irritating--a paradigm dookie of Laettnerian proportions...

But the reason it's most irritating is that none of the unutterably terrible calls that kept Duke in the game and made that shot possible are ever mentioned when the shot is played.

Here's a collection of them. With less than 2:30 left, the refs missed (1) Seth Curry taking 4 steps just before hitting a 3, (2) Ryan Kelly airballing the ball out of bounds (which was called a Henson tip), and (3) the very worst one, with 18 seconds left, a Plumlee shoving Zeller out from under the goal as he went up for the ball, resulting in an own-goal rather than a rebound.

Duke did not, as we might say, actually win that game--it was handed to them by absolutely unconscionably bad officiating. It's bad enough that they came away with a 'W'...bad enough that they weren't in Carolina's league that year...bad enough that they basically weren't playing basketball for those last 2:30, but, rather, some sport that lets you walk around with the ball, shove people out of the way, and have a do-over if you airball out of bounds...  Really damn angrifying...but the kind of thing that happens in sports, and you just have to move on...

But to have to watch that clip of that little twit Rivers over and over again on top of it, as if he had legitimately won the game with skill and grit, and the three terrible calls had never happened...

Damn, that's really galling.

(Oh, and this isn't even to mention dudes from the Duke bench screaming "Duke motherfuckers!" at the fans on their way to the locker room...that was class out that ass, alright...)

Ah well.

Just venting.