Errors Cast a Cloud Over A.C.C. Referees

By BARRY JACOBS
New York Times

The fierce competition in Atlantic Coast Conference basketball has been compromised by a pair of officiating gaffes that have given Duke an edge in the battle for first place and top seeding in next month's conference tournament.

The most recent error occurred on Sunday at Wake Forest, when Referee Mike Wood ruled that a shot by North Carolina State's C. C. Harrison was a 3-pointer, giving the last-place Wolfpack a 60-59 overtime victory. Replays clearly showed that Harrison's foot was on the 3-point line when he launched his leaning jump shot, which banked in at the buzzer.

''What can you do?'' Wake Forest Coach Dave Odom asked. ''What do you say? I'm not happy about it. You have a tendency when it happens to somebody else to say it's too bad. When it happens to you, it's really too bad.''

The loss dropped the Demon Deacons, who were then ranked second nationally, to 20-3 over all, 9-3 in the A.C.C., and out of first place in the conference for the first time this season. Surprising Duke, 21-5 and 10-3, can solidify its lead Tuesday night when it plays host to third-place Clemson (20-5, 8-4).

''If I allow my team to hang on that or hide behind that, then they have no chance to get better,'' Odom said, referring to the 3-point ruling.

But that does not lessen the impact of a mistake that was so obvious on replays, said Fred Barakat, the A.C.C.'s associate commissioner and for 16 years its supervisor of men's basketball officials.

''It's a judgment call,'' Barakat said. ''It happens a lot during the course of every game. It's unfortunate and I feel terrible for the Wake Forest fans because I know they feel it was unjust. It was unjust, in retrospect.''

The missed call came on the heels of another incident, at Virginia last Tuesday, in which Duke was also the beneficiary and which led to an unprecedented public censure of an A.C.C. officiating crew.

Barakat, who holds monthly telephone conferences with his top referees, had one scheduled right after the Wake Forest-North Carolina State game. He devoted the entire 45-minute session to reassurance.

''I put aside all my notes on traveling, palming, verticality, hand-checking and post play, and I just strictly talked about life, adversity and teamwork, and coming together when everybody's going to be out there criticizing and pointing fingers and knocking us,'' Barakat said. ''Now is the time for us to not bow our heads because we have a season to finish.''

The incidents have cast a cloud over the conference's referees, who earn from $550 to $650 per game plus expenses and whose full-time occupations range from school official to salesman to psychologist. Most of them apprenticed in smaller leagues before landing jobs with the A.C.C. This season, no fewer than three questionable last-second calls have affected outcomes of A.C.C. games.

Two cost Wake Forest dearly, the first a game-winning 3-pointer actually launched one-thirtieth of a second after the final buzzer in a 54-51 Maryland victory. ''That last shot in the Maryland game, God may have had trouble calling it,'' said Barakat, who analyzed videotape to determine that the shot came late. ''I think the danger here is to put everything into the same pot.''

The most disturbing error took place a week ago when Duke was playing at Charlottesville, Va. This time, no judgment call was involved as the referees failed to allow a simple but crucial substitution.

With the score 60-60, forward Norman Nolan went to the foul line for Virginia with five seconds left. Before Nolan released his shot, Virginia Coach Jeff Jones sent Willie Dersch to the scorer's table to check in. Dersch, a 6-foot-5-inch freshman from Floral Park, L.I., was being sent in to replace Nolan after the second free throw, a substitution the officials signaled among themselves.

Nolan missed the first free throw. His second almost popped out, then settled into the basket. But Referee Rick Hartzell, the athletic director at Bucknell University and a 14-year A.C.C. official, forgot about the substitution and raced upcourt in anticipation of a rush by Duke.

The scorekeeper, expecting the substitution, kept sounding the horn as the Blue Devils inbounded the ball to guard Steve Wojciechowski, who hurried toward the offensive end. But it was not until Wojciechowski had nearly reached the 3-point line that the game clock resumed ticking.

Meanwhile, several Virginia players had paused in confusion, letting Wojciechowski penetrate almost to the basket, where Nolan fouled him.

The foul call stood. After consulting a television monitor, the three officials, Hartzell, Tim Higgins and Zelton Steed, decided to put seven-tenths of a second on the game clock. Wojciechowski sank both free throws to give Duke a 62-61 victory.

Henry Nichols, the National Collegiate Athletic Association's national coordinator for men's basketball officiating, said he had ''never, ever'' seen anything like it.

Two days later Gene Corrigan, the A.C.C. commissioner, released a statement acknowledging ''that a serious officiating mechanics mistake was made by not allowing the Virginia substitute into the game.'' Corrigan announced that the crew would lose a league assignment and be subject to other internal action.

''This is as fundamental as it gets; basic game management procedures for our officials,'' Corrigan said.

Conferences have not wanted to use replays to rectify officiating errors because of the delays involved, uneven TV coverage and difficulty in defining the circumstances meriting such consultation.

As for the notion that the game is too fast for three officials to keep track of, Nichols said: ''That's a no-brainer. The game is too fast to be officiated by Moses, so we do the best we can.''