Refs use stopwatch to overturn Boise State's game-winner

Les get this out of the way. The call was wrong in Colorado State's win over Boise State, plain and simple. The Broncos had the ball with .8 seconds left in regulation and James Webb III appeared to hit the game-winner on an amazing falling away shot that was banked in.

James Webb III with the banked-in game-winner #mwbb pic.twitter.com/q0g4RqAYsC

— Sean Star (@seanvstar) February 11, 2016

Well, the person managing the clock was slow to start the time so the officials went to the monitors to review to see if Webb's shot would count or not. In the end it did not; the real gaffe is that the way to determine this was via a handheld stopwatch and somehow the officials kept getting just over one second for each time.

The problem is that using a stopwatch means others can test themselves, and a lot of people were getting .7 seconds or less in multiple attempts.

Here is another look at the called-off shot.

Slow-motion video of James Webb III's 3-pointer to beat Colorado State that was later called off. pic.twitter.com/2RPiWizl14

— Matt L. Stephens (@MattStephens) February 11, 2016

This comes just four days after the Mountain West admitted an error which took the ball away from New Mexico with 12.9 seconds under their hoop against San Diego State. The Aztecs ended up besting the Lobos in overtime.

Here is the Mountain West's response to the called off shot between Boise State and Colorado State:

"The protocol on any last-second shot, after the shot is made, you go to the monitor to review whether the shot was taken in time or not. We followed the protocol, we went to the monitor and we reviewed whether the shot was taken in the 0.8 seconds that was on the game clock when the ball was inbounded. We did that and we noticed that the game clock was not started upon touch.

We then used a stopwatch overlay from the monitor review system to determine when he touched it and then figure out how many tenths of a second it took from the time he touched the ball until the time he released the ball and whether he was able to get that shot off in that 0.8 seconds. After reviewing that several times we determined that the shot was late. It was not taken in that 0.8-second time frame, but actually closer to 1.2 or 1.3 time frame. As a result, the basket does not count."

As Deadspin points out, why not use frame-by-frame which in this case was 17 frames or .57 seconds and well within the .8 that was left on the clock. There was no need for handheld stopwatches to determine the outcome of this game.