How in the hades does that call not get reviewed?

[soccermom]

We didn't play like ourselves and if your win is dependent on a call, then good luck. Horrible call but we didn't take care of business. Still proud of us.

[smusportspage]

And it was a catch. So, their you have it. Life continues and there will be a champion crowned.

[Mountain Mustang]

I'll come back just briefly to explain...
In that shot, first you need to realize that it is not necessarily stopped at the furtherst spot in...a split second befor or after and maybe it is off the rim...
BUT, even assuming THAT shot, the entire ball does not have to be over the cylinder...all it requires is that ANY part of the ball--even just the edge--be tangential to the rim...
And, beyond that, even if the ball is NOT over the rim, but touched while on its downward arc while above the rim, it's still goaltending...In order to invoke the exception for a shot clearly not capable of going in, it would have to be WAY farther away than this...The presumption is that if the ball is even close in trajectory to hitting the rim if not touched, it is goaltending...Balls hit rims, reverse spin and somehow find their way in...If the rules allowed you to touch the ball in this instance, it would deny those sometimes freakish makes... Players are taught to keep hands off until the ball has clearly deflected away from the rim or until they have fallen below the level of the rim...There are lots of goaltending calls on shots that aren't going in...The trick is to just keep those hands off...The kid made a mistake...It really sucks for him--but I think he knows what he did wrong...

BTW, I used to ref basketball, football and baseball in my younger days...As a ref, you don't get EVERY call right...can't do it...You just try to be consistent...and you have to call things as you see them...I'm pretty sure the ref who called this felt confident that he saw it well--well enough to make the call--ball on downward flight, headed toward the basket, touched by defensive player above the rim...The other two officials--if either had thought they'd seen anything different, would have overruled him...after conferring...But they cannot review it on tape...MOST referee calls are NOT reviewable--it's limited to clock and posession--and for good reason...Most other calls are pretty much judgment calls...Every time they blow the whistle, somebody usually has a beef...Stop it for video review every time would be excruciating...Next time a call like this happens, it might be IN your favor...
But, even if there WAS allowable video review, the rule in out of bounds plays...as well as in reviewable calls in football...is that the video evidence must be clearly to the contrary. No way ANY of the tapes of the game would have anything that would allow it to be overturned even if it were reviewable.

Bruin Steve - Although long winded, I appreciate a lot of your post. However you're flat out wrong in your assertion about the shot being in the cylinder. Here's a pic and there's another on the thread "Don't blame the officiating" that when combined show the shot clearly had no chance to go in. I wouldn't have minded nearly as much had Alford made the shot, or had the play been allowed to continue and we lost due to UCLA getting that rebound and a putback or whatever, but when it's a call like that from that angle, it's awful to lose that way.

Look, I get that there's a human element here and no one is perfect, but the FACT is that the ref directly behind the line of the shot, with a much better view of the ability of the shot to go in DID NOT BLOW HIS WHISTLE and thus didn't think it was goal tending. The ref who made the call was out of position but I can see how from his viewpoint he would make that call. It was up to the ref from behind the shot to say "hey I was on the line of that shot and it had zero chance of going in." This is obviously what he thought because he didn't make the initial call, yet he didn't stand up for it, and that's what ticks me off. Personally, I think you're fooling yourself if you think that the shot had any chance in any way of going in the basket and but it helps your argument and thus your team to think that way. Does this angle make you think the shot's got a chance to go in? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CAfouwbWoAE7MWD.jpg