Clock runs out on Bulls in NIT loss, 58-57

A lot happened in the final 11.6 seconds of USF's season. But not anything Bulls coach Stan Heath or his players will want to remember from their 58-57 loss to North Carolina State on Tuesday night.

With USF leading 57-56, N.C. State inbounded the ball from underneath its basket. The inbound pass was long, but N.C. State's Scott Wood eventually gained control and found a wide-open Richard Howell at the basket for an easy score.

However, by the time Howell dropped what turned out to be the winning shot, Heath was already at midcourt yelling to the refs that the clock started late. Only 1.3 seconds went off the clock.

After the referees huddled to watch a replay, they ruled the basket counted and that there were 8 seconds left in the game.

"I felt they should have stopped the game and took it out again, and the clock never started," Heath said. "I really can't figure that out. The problem was they didn't know what happened soon enough.

"It took everybody a long time to figure out the clock hadn't started. At the same time, we shouldn't have had two guys running for the ball. It was just a breakdown - a breakdown that happened at a bad time."

Still, with the crowd of 3,502 at the Sun Dome on its feet, USF had ample time to come away with a victory in its first postseason game in eight years.

The player the Bulls wanted to have the ball, All-Big East junior guard Dominique Jones, dribbled the ball across midcourt.

However, he passed to Chris Howard with about four seconds left, anticipating a double-team.

"I thought he was going to throw it back," Jones said.

Instead, Howard passed to Augustus Gilchrist, whose shot at the buzzer was blocked by Howell, ending USF's season.

"It's tough," Howard said of the loss, one that ended his career. "You don't want to lose like that. I'm proud of the season we had."

In what could be his final game, Jones scored a team-high 24 points. He simply answered "no comment" when asked if he would be back next season.

Jones' decision to pass - his basket with 40.6 seconds left had given the Bulls a 57-56 lead - is one that will be second-guessed by USF fans for a while.

"We wanted to try and keep it out of Jones' hands," N.C. State coach Sidney Lowe said. "As a basketball player, he made the right pass."

N.C. State advanced to play UAB in the second round thanks to a career-high 25 points from Dennis Horner, who hit 10 of 16 shots.

USF will try to forget the final seconds of a breakthrough season that included 20 wins for only the third time in the program's 39-year history, and a .500 record in the Big East Conference for the first time.

"It's a real hard way to lose, but we don't have anybody to blame but ourselves," Heath said. "The last, probably 30 seconds, was not exactly the way I thought things would go.

"We had the game in hand. This was a game we should have had, there is no question."