Just clocking in for the day....

I love CSI ... I will miss Gil Grissom, but I really think that Laurence Fishburne adds something to the cast, and I like where it is going. You all should know be no I'm a LOST-aholic, and I get depressed on every road trip when I have to go to practice on Wednesday night and miss it, having to catch it on ABC.com on Thursday morning. What I love are the mysteries...I never really have mysteries in real life. Or do I?

Poor Kellis is going to get a ribbing here, and I kid because I care, but this was posted on Kellis' blog yesterday...

"I went back and looked at Amorrow Morgan’s buzzer-beating shot from half court just before halftime against Eastern Washington, and there is no way in the solar system it took only nine-tenths of a second to shoot. I timed it several different times on replay and found that it took roughly 1.34 seconds to shoot.

He did catch the ball, take three steps, dribble and shoot, after all.

The officials made the right call with what they could see, but the game clock was started almost half a second late."

Ah.....a mystery! After the one-game Weber State shenanigan's with guys fouling out that got to play, the ISU table crew, excellent pros one and all, are being called to the carpet again potentially here. Let's break the mystery down like Dr. Jack Ramsay would (thank you Bill Simmons).

"I went back and looked at Amorrow Morgan’s buzzer-beating shot from half court just before halftime against Eastern Washington, and there is no way in the solar system it took only nine-tenths of a second to shoot. I timed it several different times on replay and found that it took roughly 1.34 seconds to shoot."

Technically we are going to give this to Kellis, because I times it 25 times in the office with Katie Zigars as a witness, and never got it at 0.9 seconds. However, the longest it ever took was 1.21 seconds (and I know I started the clock too fast and dragged on shutting it), and the fastest was 0.94 seconds. The most common time was 1.06 to 1.11, which occured 13 times, so let's look at those times, as we can throw out the other seven highs and lows as abberations.

The clock read 0:01.0 ... now that actually could be 1.09 seconds, because on the slo-motion replay, the game clock is at 0:00.1 when it leaves his hand, and in the next frame the clock is 0:00.0, and as my TV production college background reminds me, each frame is 1/24 of a second.

Based on that alone, Morgan could have gotten the shot off without any clock shenanigans. Of course, I'm watched the play knowing exactly when to start the clock, something the timekeep doesn't have the benefit of, which means he probably has a reaction lag time of 0.14 seconds (this is a standard addition in track and field as the accepted reaction time to starting or stopping a stop watch), meaning it is absolutely within reason to think that he got the shot off fairly and cleanly. For the life of me, clocking that thing at 1.34 seconds seems like an eternity, and I don't know how that happens, but in this case, the science trumps all

Dr. Jack's Decision -- basket good, no clock shenangians

"He did catch the ball, take three steps, dribble and shoot, after all."

Actually, looking at the recording, he takes four steps, but all are legal. Morgan is in the air running that curl route when he catches the ball and has all his momentum turned up court, and he lands one foot two foot .. so far so good. As he catches the ball in the air, he is releasing the ball for his one dribble almost instantly, and that's his third step, the fourth in when he sort of shot puts the ball out...remember, he doesn't take a jump shot...he really pushed the ball out from his body very quickly. He takes four steps, but with the mid-air catch and dribble, there isn't anything wrong or illegal there either.

Dr. Jack's Decision -- basket good, no travel

The officials made the right call with what they could see, but the game clock was started almost half a second late."

Wow...0.5 seconds late? In the span of three paragraphs, we went from .34 seconds late to .50 seconds late. Previous science showed he got the shot off cleanly.

Dr. Jack's Decision -- basket good, Idaho State Journal needs better stopwatch

See, when Dr. Jack breaks it down like that, everything feels better, doesn't it? Anyways, we love Kellis in the home office here, and like to kid him a bit, but honestly, Morgan got the shot off....there's no real argument.

See, this is what you get to do when you have to leave on a bus in a few hours and you are waiting for the bank to open!