N.C. State's final shot a close call, but officials got it right

Kyle Ringo

UPDATE: The Vine above came to our attention late last night. It clearly shows Abdul-Malik Abu did not touch the ball on BeeJay Anja's shot. Below is our original post on the play.

North Carolina State big man BeeJay Anja was credited with the winning basket in the Wolfpack's dramatic come-from-behind win over LSU in the NCAA tournament on Thursday, but did officials get it right?

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Video of the play appears to show teammate Abdul-Malik Abu tipping in the ball in the final second and perhaps committing offensive goaltending in the process, thus robbing LSU of a win and a chance to keep playing.

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It's hard to tell from the limited angles available whether Abu actually touched the ball or if it caught enough of the front of the rim to bounce back in by itself. It was the second game of the first day of the tournament in which the final play involved possible goaltending. UCLA was credited with a shot that proved to be the game-winner when an SMU player clearly committed goaltending. The play for N.C. State was much less obvious.

Regardless, this one is going to be argued down in Baton Rouge.

N.C. State coach Mark Gottfried said his team saw the UCLA game and learned from it. He said Abu didn't touch the ball.

"Don't know for sure that this happened or not, but we watched the SMU-UCLA finish today about a hundred times on television," Gottfried said. "Maybe that went through Malik's mind. Don't touch it. It's right there. So but we were lucky because he was right there. Malik was right there, and he never touched the ball, which was great. Then we also benefitted from the fact that the ball stayed up on the rim there for a couple seconds before it went in, and that helped us as well."

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Of course, all the Tigers had to do to avoid this from being a debate at all is not surrender a 16-point lead. Late Thursday night there were still frames and weird sideways videos making their way around the Internet showing the winning moment for the Wolfpack and questioning its legitimacy. We'll let you decide.

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[Kyle Ringo is the assistant editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at kyle.ringo@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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