This interview originally aired on In the Moment on SDPB Radio.
Aberdeen Christian defeated White River in a thrilling game to claim third place in the South Dakota Class B Boys State Basketball Tournament. But the game was marred by a scoring error that some say changed the result of the game.
In the third quarter, the game's scorekeeper awarded Aberdeen Christian a point for a free throw that should not have counted. The game ended in regulation tied, leading to an overtime period where Aberdeen Christian pulled away.
Executive Director of the South Dakota High School Activities Association Dan Swartos joined In the Moment to talk about what happened.
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Lori Walsh:
Well, last Saturday, the Aberdeen Christian Knights won the third-place game of the Class B Boys State Basketball Tournament, over the White River Tigers. The score in overtime was 70 to 65, but it turns out there was a scoring discrepancy during the third quarter that went uncorrected, and that has fans from both teams expressing their outrage.
Here to discuss what happened and what remedies may or may not exist is Dr. Dan Swartos. He is executive director of the South Dakota High School Activities Association. He's with me on the phone. Dan, welcome back to In the Moment.
Dan Swartos:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Lori Walsh:
All right, before we get started, a note to listeners. SDPB contracts with the South Dakota High School Activities Association for coverage of events. Dan, let's go over the first scoring error in the third quarter. Tell us what happened.
Dan Swartos:
Well, I wasn't there, so I'm going off of the broadcast here and off of reports from the game. But from my understanding, at 7:37 in the third, there was a shooting foul called. The foul is called; the kids line up. The wrong number was reported for the foul, and then another wrong number was reported for the foul, and while they were trying to sort that out, the other two officials administered the first free throw. While the third official is working through who the foul call was on, and both coaches are trying to figure out what's going on and working with the score, things just got away from them.
And after the first free throw, the other two officials stepped away, and they figured out the foul portion. And during that time, the scoreboard, the officials in the stats program, and our alternate official all erroneously noted that the first free throw attempt went in. They went back to the free throw for the second free throw. The Aberdeen Christian player made the free throw. Another point was added, and the game continued on. From that point forward, Aberdeen Christian had had an extra point that they shouldn't have.
Lori Walsh:
Okay, so for listeners who are a little confused, basically, the Knight player takes a free throw. He misses, and it accidentally gets added to the point total, so they have the wrong score on the board. When would that have normally been identified and corrected in the game?
Dan Swartos:
Well, by rule, you can correct it. There's two different rules here. It's a correctable error, and if it's an official's error, it needs to be corrected by the next dead ball, which was at 7:05 of the third. But there's another rule that says a bookkeeping error can be corrected up until the end of the game. This is sort of in-between here, because you had an official's error and a bookkeeper's error. And we're still trying to figure out the intent of that, because you don't want a team sitting on a scoring error and keeping that in their back pocket for the end of the game and then reporting a scoring error as soon as the game is over, when the other team didn't know that they had one point less.
So we're trying to work through the intent of what these rules are supposed to be and make sure we have a full understanding of it. But the short answer is an official's error has to be corrected by the first dead ball. A bookkeeping error can be corrected up until the end of the game.
Lori Walsh:
Why wasn't it corrected? What do we know?
Dan Swartos:
Well, the White River coach's wife was in the stands, doing stats. She came down from the stands to the scorekeeper to tell the scorekeeper about the error. Of course, the people at the head table don't know who the people in the stands are, and anybody who comes out from the stands to the head table is going to get asked to go back into the stands.
And then the White River scorekeeper, at some point - I still don't understand everything that went on there, between then and the media timeout, which was at 3:48. I think it was at 3:48 in the third. The White River scorekeeper walked down and asked about the score, and the official scorekeeper said, "Well, what I have matches the board." The alternate official's book matched what was on the board.
And what should have happened there, if the head coach requests a review of it, they stop the game. They bring all the official book and both teams' books together, and they try to reconcile it. If they can't reconcile it, then you have to take the official book. If they can reconcile it, then you can change it there.
So that never happened, and that's what needed to happen, was the head coach requested review. The officials stop the game to bring the books together to try to correct the error. Well, there was a lot of things that went wrong, but that's what should have happened and didn't happen.
Lori Walsh:
Right, so I wasn't there. You weren't there. We've both done research into this, but our research is going to be limited. And I'm sure there are many people who are listening right now, who are saying, "I just want to acknowledge this." So send me an email at [email protected]. Who are saying, "No, wait, Coach Marshall knew this. He called."
Send me that information if you would like to, but right now, I think the big takeaway for today is that a whole lot of things went wrong, and this isn't the only thing that went wrong during this game. But the big question people want to know is: What is the remedy? People are calling for a replay. They're calling for a no-contest. You can't say the Aberdeen team won, at this point. And your association has apologized and said, "We cannot make any changes at this point." Explain your position there.
Dan Swartos:
Well, by rule, a game is over once the referee approves the official scorebook and they leave the court. The game is official, and from that point forward, the entire game is different. Both teams, especially going down the line, would have played differently, had one team had one fewer point. I think Christian would have played differently. White River would have played differently. They use their timeouts differently. They foul differently. They substitute differently. They use different offensive and defensive strategies differently. So it's really easy to say, "Well, they should have had one last point, and we were tied at the end of the game; therefore, we should have won."
It's not as simple as that, because once that mistake is made, everything is different from that point forward, if that makes sense. So it's not as easy as saying, "They should have had one fewer point. We would have won." Because if they had one fewer point, they would have taken different shot selections. You would have taken different shot selections. Everything's different from that point forward.
So from a game perspective, the game is official. In terms of declaring co-third-place winners or anything like that, that's something our board can weigh in on. If White River desires us to do that, that's something our board can look at. But from our perspective, the game is official once that official scorebook is approved and the officials leave the court.
Lori Walsh:
I was just going to say that sounds like the door is open for a conversation in the days ahead.
Dan Swartos:
Well, we've been conversing with White River since Tuesday. I found out about this Monday afternoon, and we've been discussing this with White River since Tuesday and going back and forth, and it's been a really good conversation. By rule, any school can appeal the decision of the executive director, and my initial decision was, "This was a mistake. It didn't get corrected appropriately. The game is official there. We can't retroactively change the outcome of a contest."
So they can appeal that to our board of directors, if they want to, and our board of directors can make a decision based on that. I don't know if that will happen or not. We're still looking through it, and whatever comes of that, we're okay with here, but we're just trying to follow our processes that we have in place.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, I want to, in the interest of time, just acknowledge a couple things, as well, and one is the agony of the players and the families who work so hard to get to this tournament. The Aberdeen Christian Knights played wonderfully. The Tigers from White River played wonderfully. These athletes left it all on the court, and some of them are seniors; this is their last chance. It's a really, really difficult situation for so many people.
Acknowledging that, some of the behavior online, and I'm sure some of the emails and phone calls you've gotten, have been less than civil. So how do you want to leave with people should behave, as all this is unpacked and sorted through? Acknowledging how emotional it is, but really, we're still neighbors here, and we need to talk to each other and treat each other accordingly. What do you want to leave us with, regarding that?
Dan Swartos:
Yeah, that's exactly right, and we're embarrassed by this. It should have never happened, and we fully acknowledge that. We also acknowledge that everybody's human, and nobody's perfect, and there were a bunch of mistakes made here. None of those mistakes were intentional; I don't believe that at all. People are human. People make mistakes. This is a game. It's not life and death. This doesn't determine the future of anybody. It's a mistake, and unfortunately, mistakes happen, and we try our best to make everything we do perfect.
It wasn't perfect here. There were mistakes. We're embarrassed about it. We're going to do everything we can to make sure it doesn't happen. We feel terrible for the kids at White River, the team at White River, the kids at Aberdeen Central, the team at Aberdeen Central. That was an incredible game, and now it's marred because of mistakes that happened off the court, and that's really unfortunate. I'm sick about that. We're all sick about that. Nobody wanted this to happen.
It's really unfortunate, and we're going to do our best to work through this, and we appreciate the conversations we've had with White River. They've been really good, positive, productive conversations, and we're going to do our best to make sure that this never happens.
Lori Walsh:
Dan Swartos is the Executive Director of the South Dakota High School Activities Association. We appreciate you coming here and giving us so much of your time. Look forward to talking to you in the days ahead, as this continues to be a topic of conversation. Thank you very much.
Dan Swartos:
Okay, thank you.
