Foul or leg kick? Controversial call ends South Dakota State's March Madness upset bid

South Dakota State was 3 shot-clock seconds away from March Madness opportunity.

Not from an upset, necessarily, or even a lead, but with less than a minute to play in an NCAA men's tournament opener in Buffalo on Thursday, the 13th-seeded Jackrabbits were down three and one stop away from a chance to take No. 4 seed Providence to overtime.

Then, with the shot clock waning, Jackrabbits star Douglas Wilson flew out to contest a 3-point shot. Providence's Jared Bynum missed it, but Wilson clattered into him. Officials called a foul.

"And that," South Dakota State coach Eric Henderson said, "was a backbreaker."

Was it the correct call?

"Ah, you know — no," Wilson said postgame, when asked whether he thought he fouled Bynum. "Not at the moment. I thought he kicked his leg there. And I ran into him."

Replays were inconclusive. Bynum's right leg kicked forward, though seemingly not sideways or outside the frame of his body. Wilson appeared to leap into Bynum, not to the side of him, and might have made contact with the Providence junior regardless of where his right leg was.

The leg kick, for years, was a tactic shooters used to draw fouls. Last decade, refs were instructed to either penalize it or ignore any contact it induced.

Bynum's kick was far less egregious than most. His landing position was at least somewhat natural. When asked about the play, generally, he didn't mention any kick. "As I was shooting, I got hit," he said.

Henderson, when asked for his thoughts on the call, refused to take the bait.

“We can look at that as a big play in the game, and obviously it was," he said. "But I don’t really wanna focus on that, to be honest with you."

It was a late first-half stretch, he said, when Providence extended a one-point lead to eight, that doomed this trendy upset pick.

But nothing that happened Thursday would define these Jackrabbits. None of it undid their 30 wins. And no one foul will define Wilson, who came to South Dakota State after two years at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa. He grew into a standout forward, and, more important, Henderson said, a standout human.

"If you need an example for what an incredible teammate is, you don't have to look very far," Henderson tells his players. "As special as [Wilson] is on the floor ... the type of person he is, the way he treats his teammates, is so much more important to me than anything else, and that's what makes Doug special."

One foul won't override the story of his career, and didn't alone determine the outcome of Thursday's game. But it did rob the Jackrabbits, the best 3-point shooting team in Division I men's basketball, of one last 3-point attempt to save their season.

"Obviously it was a tough call," Henderson said. "It is what it is. Just like one game is not gonna define our season, one call's not gonna determine the outcome of the game."

Hhe admitted, "I would've liked it to be different." And then he laughed.