With the game tied and 12 seconds left, Oakland came out of a timeout looking to go to Trey Townsend. NC State had been trying all night — with mixed results — to not give Oakland sharpshooter Jack Gohlke an inch. Townsend carried the offense for much of the night, and according to Gohlke and Oakland coach Greg Kampe, the play drawn up in the timeout was set to involve Gohlke running through screens and serving as kind of a decoy for Townsend to catch it around the elbow.
But the play was slow to develop, and Oakland forward Chris Conway ended up throwing it out of bounds — and out of Townsend’s reach — with 1.3 seconds left.
“The call was going to Townsend facing the basket on the left elbow, and he was supposed to rip and drive,” Kampe said. “And he was either going to be the hero or he was going to go to the free throw line, or they weren’t going to call it. One of those three things was going to happen. He was going to rip and score. The kid guarding him had four fouls, but I’m sure the kid — they weren’t going to let him get a good look. They’d rather have him try and make a free throw.”
“We took too long to get in. They came and denied the entry pass, and our guard with the ball dribble-entried instead, and by then — it’s my fault because we had 17 seconds left (when Townsend rebounded a miss at the other end) and we didn’t want to go until 10 or 12 (seconds left). If we would have gone at 17, we could have handled that. And that was the mistake. That’s the mistake that our coach made, and it’s a big one.”