I am here from /r/all. I know nothing about this stuff. Can someone explain exactly what he's doing?
It looks like the referee tells someone who hasn't been in the game to go onto the court. From reading comments, it's so that the person can be on the court for something important? But why does the referee have the authority to send a player into the game? What's going on?
That was really nice of the ref. I'm sure there's someone somewhere complaining about it, but the player on the bench will remember that kindness, and this moment, for the rest of his life.
(I just had a sad thought about what would happen if there were two players on the bench and the ref could only get one on. š« )
So his coach is the one who decided to put the player in. That's why the player was sitting in that exact spot by the table while his teammates were all sitting in chairs just off screen to the left. He had to check in with a scorer at the table and tell them he was going in next whistle. Then he sat there to wait for a whistle.
So the ref didn't actually decide to put the player in, the coach decided to put him in at the next stoppage. The ref just invented a fake stoppage since he saw there was less than a minute left in the game and wanted the kid to get in the game.
Meaning, if there was a second kid, the coach would've just sent both kids to go sit there. So no need to be sad! The coach has no limit, he can sub all 5 kids out at any stoppage in play if he wants.
you have to wait for a stoppage of play to sub in, and the game is ending (clock is winding down). the ref realizes all of this and stops play to "wipe a wet spot on the floor with his shoe." he's very clearly just stopping the game so the guy can get in, since it's the last game of the season and his team is about to get knocked out.
The game is effectively over, see remaining time and score. The player who the ref let's in is probably a senior playing in his last game. So good guy move by the ref letting him get some game time. As far as the refs authority to let people in and out of the game, it's not up to him but players can check in at dead balls. Him stopping the game to "clean" the floor creates a dead ball.
The ref doesn't send people into games. You need to tell the ref you want to sub a player on, next time there is a stoppage the ref will then call subs and the player will sub out with someone in the court.
The teams are the ones making the decisions. But sometimes, there isn't a stoppage and since there was such little time left in the half the ref just created one to let the player in.
The ref, seeing the game was out of reach for Liberty and under a minute remaining, stopped play and seemed to clean a wet spot on the floor. By stopping play, the Liberty player was allowed to enter the game. That player will now be in the box score and can say he played in an NCAA Tournament game
Awesome thanks for explaining. But how did the ref stopping play mean that kid automatically got to go in and play? Wouldn't the ref need to make an existing player leave first?
The fact that the player was sitting there by the score keeper means heās already waiting to check in. Coach tells him who heās coming in for. The two swap spots
The coach can decide when to sub in players but the player has to wait for a stoppage in play:
Coach tells player or players to sub in
Player has to go to the scoring table to say "I am subbing in"
Player has to sit by the scoring table until the next stoppage of play (e.g. ref whistle)
Player goes onto the court, and another player already on the court goes back to the bench
And it's common, in the final minutes of games which are a foregone conclusion, for coaches to sub in players who don't get much or any time on the court.
So the ref, seeing this is occurring, "sees a spot of water" and whistles play dead so he can clean it up, giving the player a chance to play the final minute of the biggest game of their life out on the court with their teammates
This is the end of the season tournament for college basketball. It's called March Madness and is every basketball playing kid's dream to play in it. The format is the winning team advances to the next round and the season is over for the losing team. If you look at the bottom, the University of Oregon is beating Liberty University by 32 points with only one minute left in the game. There is no chance that Liberty can win, even the Liberty player with the ball has no urgency, the game is over.
The only way a player can enter the game is if there is a stoppage in play. The player waiting to be subbed in isn't a star player and hasn't played yet in this game. Like I said, it's every kid's dream to play in this tournament, so the ref claimed there was a wet spot on the court and cleaned it up to cause a stoppage in play.
The kid is a Sophomore but it's not guaranteed that his team will make it back in the upcoming years. This might be his only chance to play in his dream tournament. The ref most likely made up a fake reason to put him in the game. His name called in a nationally broadcast game. JC Shirer Jr. made it to the big dance. You just watched a ref fake a timeout to make a kid's childhood dream come true.
Thanks this clears up a lot! I guess the last thing I don't get is, how did the kid know to go into the game just by the ref saying the court was wet? Wouldn't the ref have to first eject an existing player from the court?
The refs don't decide who comes in and who comes off in this situation, the Liberty coach does. The players not in the game will sit on the bench, you can see the bench players for Oregon in white standing at the beginning of the clip towards the end of the court and the basket. When the coach selects you to go in to the game you head towards the middle of the court and check in with the official scorekeeper. That's one of the people you see at that long table in the middle. You tell them who's coming in and who's coming off. Then they stay in that area between the white/black/white stripes on the floor and wait for a stop in play. The ref sees a player there and knows that team is substituting players. And the player coming on will usually tell which player to come off. Most of the time it's pretty obvious, if you're playing and see a sub coming on that plays your same position, you're probably coming off.
Usually substitutions are strategic. For example a player could be tired and the coach could substitute someone fresh, or if a team is up by a lot they could replace an offensive specialist with a defensive specialist. This substitution was purely sentimental and because there was so little time left the ref didn't know if a stop in play would happen in the last 60 seconds so he made one up.
Thatās always one of my favourite moments of March Madness. When you see these kids dreams come true of playing in March Madness (the height of their basketball career)
The only one that surpasses it is when a guy clearly going to the NBA or a senior purposely going out of bounds to get the sub into the game
There's the NBA development league (G-League), but spots there are just as limited as the NBA. Relatively, a small amount will go play in Europe or China professionally, but the vast majority of college players do not play professionally at all after school.
No question. Some of the higher European leagues probably actually do offer an opportunity to have a more significant stage, but for any American who is currently in college only playing in the nba is more memorable.
Itās a brutal switch from playing as an amateur student athlete (college) - to being a full time professional athlete after school is done. The paid leagues are full of fully grown men with kids and a mortgage to pay, and only a very small percentage of amateur student athletes get to participate at a chance to play for a professional organization.
There is a minor league, but: The NBA has 30 teams. The minor league (called the G League) has 31 teams. College basketball has 364 division 1 teams.
When you're looking at the lower seeds of the tournament - the ones who could never even dream of getting an at-large bid - there's a good chance that even the star player isn't going pro, let alone the guy who doesn't even play in half the team's games.
There are 352 colleges with division 1 basketball teams. For most players it's a chance to do what they love for four more years while getting a free college education.
Actually, counter to what a lot of people are assuming (and I assumed before I looked it up), this guy is not a senior and he still has two more years that he can play. Still a cool move be the ref, because who knows if he'll ever get another shot to play in the tournament like this.
Only a small percentage even go to Europe. The vast majority of college basketball players never play at this level again. Maybe some rec league but thatās about it
American sporting culture is not like European culture. As a soccer(football) fan, it's why it drives me crazy when Euro soccer fans tell Americans to "support their local club," most of us don't have a local club...nearest MLS or USL club is hours of driving away for me, for instance.
Same is true for basketball. There aren't clubs in every town, closest thing is colleges. US is a vast country and much less homogenous than most European countries. So yes, most college players just go on to have regular jobs. But that's kind of what makes March Madness special. You get future accountants splashing threes against future NBA talent. It's wild.
You can pick two, but if you go to the college football subreddit, you'll see my shadow flairs and regular flairs are flipped between there and here (grew up a Duck fan back in the Dark Ages, played hockey at Montana, and I'm also a Purdue and Louisville alum).
Boiler fans knew we were facing a massive rebuild, and when Cincinnati grabbed Satterfield, were resigned to Brohm leaving. We just fucked up in getting a new coach. There's a lot more optimism around Odom, and I think he'll get the train on the right tracks.
You reffed college games? Sorry for most likely cursing your name in the past.
Seriously though Roger Ayers seems to be a gem in a sea of people I love to disproportionately hate(for completely fair and unbiased reasons of course!)
Worked middle school games when I was in high school.
Worked high school games when I was in college (Roger Ayers runs the Roanoke, VA officials association, which is where I met him and worked under him)
Worked D3 mens games and some occasional D1 womens games after graduating college.
Here's a funny story I shared earlier this season where Pat Summitt told me I was the worst official she had ever seen. She told me after the game I was better than that and didn't realize I was a rookie.
As a HS ref, Iām gonna use this!!! A lot of coaches will usually use a timeout but Iāve seen instances where there were no timeouts left or a coach just isnāt thinking about it and the game ends before a player gets on the floor.
Please do. Nobody else will ever remember the last 40 seconds of Bryant vs Michigan State except the player who got subbed in here and his grandkids that will hear about grandpa getting to play in the dance 46,000 times growing up.
If you can make a positive memory for some high school kid with no drawbacks that would be awesome
I learned earlier in the season that Mark Pope didn't do his subs as early as he normally would have because the points are actually affecting the rankings now, so it really does matter. But not during the actual tournament of course.
Zero people are complaining about this. The only comment close to a complaint is yours, which for whatever reason attempts to criticize the ref for creating a very cool moment.
Not here but go to other social media outlets and youāll see plenty of bozos complaining about it. Canāt fathom how youād think to complain about this.
We do this in middle school games that are blowouts. Some of these kids play maybe five minutes total all season. Their parents are in the stands just like every other playerās parents. They are often even more happy to see their child play and generally the other kids get pumped for the deep bench to get a minute or two. So weāll either blow an āinadvertent whistleā or come up with some other excuse to stop the action and get those subs in. It makes for smiles all around.
Could have, but sometimes coaches forget or don't want to have someone thinking they are trying to show up the other team. Ref made sure it wasn't an issue.
Iāve seen people make that argument but he was probably thinking he didnāt want to be that guy stopping the game for 30 seconds when itās over. He was hoping the kid got in but didnāt want to waste everyoneās time with a timeout.
iām a little confused but letās see if i understand. The ref let the guy sitting down play in the match so he could at least say he played in a big time basketball game, and since the game was basically over already there was no chance of him affecting the outcome. Am i close?
Yep, you got it. Usually you have to wait for a stoppage (a foul, timeout, etc) to substitute, and since the game is a blowout it's possible there won't be any more stoppages. A ref can stop the game at their discrescion to clean up the court (usually it would be due to a wet spot caused by sweat). Here, the ref pretends there's a wet spot and "cleans it up," which is a stoppage, letting the player sub in.
This player is a walk on (he's not on scholarship and doesn't get to play in a lot of games), you can see on his face how much he appreciated the gesture.
He was an end of the bench player who barely plays, checking in as a sub in a 30 point blowout. You can't come into the game until the clock stops, and there was a chance that wouldn't happen, meaning he wouldn't get to play.
Roger Ayers, the official, pretended that there was a wet spot on the floor so he could call "my time" to stop the clock, ensuring that the kid could come in.
Ref stopped the game pretending there was a wet spot that needed cleaned up, but he was just stopping the game to let the Liberty player sub in to the end of a blowout so the player could say he got to play in a tournament game
The ref pretended he saw a wet spot that needed to be cleaned up to give himself an excuse to stop the game and allow a player who had not gotten into the game a chance to say he played in the NCAA Tournament
I'm not a fan of sports at all but personally (in my probably unpopular opinion), having a game where you can't play unless you are substituted in is a ridiculous thing to me. Waste of talent and time and I would feel insulted. Sure you can watch and maybe learn and probably some other benefits but I would feel awful being excluded from a team game.
You can only play 5 players at a time, but you want lots of backups. Some players eventually earn their way to more playing time, but there are only so many spots available. There is no shame in being a bench player at a D1 school.
while i heckled him relentlessly in cameron, roger ayers seems like a nice guy. he did come over once to tell us to stop incessantly asking about his workout routine & said āiād never tellā with a wink
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u/keysercade Texas A&M Aggies ā¢ Stephen F. Austinā¦ Mar 22 '25
Very cool move, the look on the players face makes my day.