Officials ruined what should have been the best game of the first three rounds of the NCAA tournament with an awful, game-changing foul call that continued an alarming trend of horrible refereeing during March Madness and played a major role in Duke’s 63-57 win over Utah.

This egregious whistle came with 4:57 left in the first half, when Utes star Delon Wright was called for his third foul after wrestling on the court with a Duke player for a loose ball. Ordinarily, the worst refs might do in that situation would be preemptively calling a jump ball or awarding a timeout to a player who didn’t have full possession of the ball. Rarely do you see a foul called, especially a third foul on the team’s leading scorer late in the first half. But when Duke is on the floor, strange things happen.

Here’s the “foul” in question. What’s missing is the instant before the clip starts, in which the ball is loose in front of Duke’s Justise Winslow and both players make an equal effort to grab it.

https://vine.co/v/O39BUiVwPHe

The CBS booth of Jim Nantz, Bill Raftery and Duke grad Grant Hill expressed their bafflement with the call during the game. At halftime, the studio crew ripped the call even worse, with Charles Barkley having the most to say, as usual.

The score was 19-17 when Wright was whistled for the non-existent foul. Less than two minutes later, it was 27-17, Duke. The Utes seemed shell-shocked after the call and Wright’s subsequent benching for the rest of the half. Utah did manage to go on a 5-0 run to end the half, cutting Duke’s lead to 27-22 and giving the Utes ample opportunity to win the game in the second half.

But the third foul seemed to hang over everything. Wright played tentative defense in the second half, as you’d expect, and Duke smartly drove on him whenever it had the opportunity, knowing Wright wouldn’t step in and risk his fourth foul. Wright also seemed reluctant to drive to the hoop himself. A good example came with 14 minutes left in the game when Wright looked like he had had space to get to the basket. Instead, he dished the rock instead and Utah came away with no points. Heck, with the way the refs were going, Wrght was lucky to avoid getting a foul for just being in the vicinity of a Duke player. He was eventually called for a legit fourth foul, but stayed in the game because Utah was in the danger zone at that point.

None of this is to suggest that Utah couldn’t have overcome the foul to win the game or that Duke wouldn’t have gotten the W without the call. All it means is that the chance of a Utah win was hindered by the call and the probability of a Duke win increased because of it. (The most ironic part of the game came at the end, when Duke was assured of victory but Utah tried to foul anyway and the refs swallowed their whistles for the first five instances of contact, then finally called one with 0.7 left. When Utah actually wanted a foul, it couldn’t get one.)

Though Duke was the beneficiary of the night’s biggest call (obviously, because Duke, much like Dean Smith’s old North Carolina teams, are officiated with a double standard), the refs also made some absurd calls on the Blue Devils, including a moving screen — which happens on nearly every Duke play — and a three-second call on Jahlil Okafor that was about two seconds short of that threshold. The main difference: Those calls came with Duke up by eight points or more and had little effect on the game. When there was a big play, such as whistles when Duke drove to the hoop, guess whether the refs called blocking on Utah or a charge on Duke? Just take a wild guess!

But none of that mattered in the second half, not after the horrendous third foul on Delon Wight that practically ensured Duke’s win and its third Elite Eight appearance in the past decade.

(Thanks to @bubbaprog, a must-follow on Twitter by the way, for the screenshot.)

