They're laughing with you, not at you.

This is the actual dialogue of a phone call between Secaur and I at 4:16pm today:

“Hahahahahahaha. Bwahahahahahaha. Muwahahahahahahahaa. Bwahahahahahaha. Hahahahahaha”. This happened for literally 45 seconds before we said an actual word. And it wasn’t funny haha laughing, it was devious, menacing, deep terrorizing laughter – as if we were both super villains who had just taken over the world. It was truly a tremendous moment.

For those of you that did not watch the Butler vs. Xavier game, you missed one of the all time jobbings I’ve witnessed, in all of sports, ever. If that had happened to the Flyers, I’d be in the market for a new 52” television seeing that my fist just went through my old one.

With about 45 seconds to go in the game, Butler made two free throws to bring the game to a one point Bulldog deficit. Xavier inbounded and Butler’s Gordon Hayward was able to get a hand on the ball, allowing the ref to call a jump ball. Possession arrow > Butler. First off, the definition of a jump ball is when two players both have possession of the ball simultaneously. I didn’t see Hayward secure possession of the ball and I think he fouled the X player. That didn’t stop Bob Knight from slurping Hayward for the next 15 minutes though. After the jump ball, Butler down one point, the last “play” of the game took place. It's really indescribable but just know Butler scored with 1.2 seconds left on the clock.

During this long play, the clock stopped for approximately one second around the 14 second mark but play continued on. After Butler’s bucket, clock reading 1.2 seconds, the referees took a break to put it all together.

And that’s where things really went wrong…

For starters, Bobby Knight does not understand how time and clocks work. He repeated several times that the referees were going to be adding time on the clock. Robert, when the time clock stops but the game continues you need to subtract time from the clock to make up for it. He and Musburger could not grasp this concept whatsoever. Secaur put it best by saying that when the broadcasting team’s combined age is around 140, you’re in trouble.

Let’s move from the commentator’s ignorance to the referee’s ignorance...

I mentioned that the clock stopped while play continued; the refs now needed to determine how much time should come off the clock when it was stopped so that they could subtract this time off of the final game clock. This was an impossible task. How does one determine that the clock was stopped for 1.3 seconds rather than .9 seconds? Does the ref count “one Mississippi” and know exactly how much time came off the clock?.

Well, apparently they were able to make a perfectly accurate determination. And they discovered that exactly 1.3 seconds should come off the clock. Conveniently for Butler, that was exactly how much time should have been left on the clock after their final shot, meaning, game over. Butler’s shot was, in reality, a buzzer beater.

Mack went absolutely ballistic, and I don’t blame him one bit. Honestly, I think he should have made even more of a scene than he did. I would have thrown a chair. I would have taken off the suit jacket and gone on an absolute tirade. I would have pulled a Joe Pa and followed the refs all the way into the tunnel. The refs just told you and your team that instead of there being 1.8 or even 1.2 seconds on the clock, the game is now over. Not only that, but Butler’s shot counts and it just so happened to go through the hoop at the exact time the clock expired, even though the clock you’re looking at, Coach Mack, reads 1.2 seconds right now. Thanks for making the trip out, good effort, but you lose and you don’t even get a final shot. Ouch! And to add insult to injury we’re going to let the 1.2 seconds tic off the clock right in front of your face, with play stopped and sound the buzzer. Personally, that was one of my favorite parts.

People like Seth Davis are saying the refs made the right call, but what if Butler had taken the final shot with .5 seconds left on the clock as opposed to 1.3 seconds? Would the refs then determine that Butler’s shot did not count, and Xavier wins the game? Using the same logic they would have had to, right? Well, how would that be fair to Butler? If you think about it, what if a point guard had looked at the clock and specifically taken a shot with .5 seconds to go? Do you then tell that player, “sorry, I know the official game clock you were looking at said .5 seconds when you let the shot go, but really your time keeper screwed up 17 seconds earlier and the clock was at 0 when your shot went off. Sorry about your luck”? There really isn’t a right answer here.

I think the reasonable solution consisted of playing the end of the game with the time that was on the clock when Butler’s shot went through the hoop – 1.2 seconds. It was the Butler time clock operator who screwed up, let X get one more shot at it, with the time on the clock when the Butler shot went through. I can’t imagine being an X fan today, even if the “experts” say the refs got this right, they got absolutely hosed!

If your Butler, why in the world would do you not call a time out during that last sequence? Hindsight is 20/20 but that really surprised me.

Also, how many more times are we going to see Xavier players come off their bench to confront an opposing player or official? Does anyone else have the feeling Mack doesn't have the same clout with his players that Miller did? In addition to these guys throwing tirades, Mack lets Crawford do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. It will be very interesting to watch these guys the rest of the season.

When all is said and done, this couldn’t have happened to a better program. You earned this X, congrats! My dream scenario now is that Xavier becomes the last team left out of the NCAA tourney. Reason? They just needed one more quality road win.

Twitter will be hopping tonight for the game. Follow Rick and Kevin’s tweets via the twitter name “UDFLYERS”.

Finally, with all this talk of Robert Montgomery Knight and his recent resurfacing in the news about his comments on John Calipari, I thought I'd share one of my favorite all time RMK videos. Enjoy his top 10 moments: