St. John’s defeated Rutgers, as expected. But how they won the game is completely mind blowing, thanks to some egregious refereeing. It may go down in history as “The Rutgers Screw Job.”

The officiating in the final seconds was so pathetic ESPN commentator Doris Burke couldn’t contain herself from mentioning that the referees pretty much “stopped officiating.”

With Rutgers down by two and in-bounding from the other end of the floor, a half court heave to Rutgers’  forward Gilvydas Biruta slipped through his hands and hit the hardwood. St. John’s Justin Brownlee scooped up the loose ball, ran out of bounds and chucked the ball into the stands. All of this with 1.7 seconds still left on the clock. The refs could have easily called traveling on Brownlee. But if they missed that, then they should have noticed that he both stepped out of bounds and launched the ball into the stands with time still left on the clock. Somehow, they missed both and promptly left the arena.

Rutgers coach Mike Rice was livid and the ESPN team took notice to what had taken place. Rutgers’ chance of beating #18 St. Johns went up in smoke because of some piss poor officiating. Which makes us question why refs are always protected from players but players and teams aren’t protected from horrible officiating. Ultimately, something should be done about this. A fine perhaps that says “we know they screwed up.” A statement was released, but that’s not good enough.

The Big East, the officials, the NCAA, somebody needs to be punished for this blatant error. It wasn’t a difficult call to make. It was simply officials mentally checking out of a game that could have changed the landscape of the Big East tournament. Players and coaches are always slapped with fines or punished, the officials should be treated the same way.

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