We Just Witnessed The Biggest Botch Job In Lacrosse History With This No-Call In Overtime Of Duke vs Penn State Semifinals
Congratulations to the Duke Blue Devils on advancing to play in the 2023 NCAA men's lacrosse National Championship game on Monday. The only issue is...well...they shouldn't have won that game. At least not like this.
And that, boys and girls, is what we call a botch job. There's this little rule in lacrosse that says you can't have your foot in the crease before a shot is taken. Now I'm not the biggest rules guy in the world. But this is a society we live in, and we at least need to abide by some of the big ones. Be nice to your neighbor, don't murder anybody, and don't fucking step in the crease before the ball leaves your stick.
Looks to me like Garrett Leadmon broke one of the big ones here.
There are 4 refs out there and not a single one of them saw this? I mean we just went through the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament where literally every single crease dive got waved off for a goal mouth violation. And now we have all 4 refs looking at some nonsensical goal mouth (a crease inside of the crease) that none of them are looking to see if a player's foot is clearly on the line before a shot is taken.
Don't get me wrong, it's a tough call to make in real time. Especially when you have Dyson Williams taking away the eyes of the ref who would be responsible to make the call.
But this is overtime of the semifinals. It was literally the most important shot taken of the season so far. You'd think that a moment like this would be reviewable. You'd think that Penn State could see the refs clearly botched this non-call and took matters in their own hands to review the call. Hell, every goal in overtime should be reviewed. But instead, the call on the field stood and the refs sprinted out of the building as fast as humanly possible. Penn State had to watch the replay on the jumbotron as they saw their season was robbed from them by a bunch of incompetent dudes wearing stripes. Brutal, brutal way to go out. And brutal, brutal look for college lacrosse.
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Unreal game between Duke and Penn State. Back and forth action all afternoon long. You had a feeling this one could go to overtime the whole day. And for THAT to be the way it ends? Gross.