March Madness: Who covered MEAC Game?

Monday’s Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference tournament game between Maryland-Eastern Shore and North Carolina A & T didn’t attract the attention of many basketball fans. It didn’t even attract the attention of many bettors, at least until the game was over. That’s when the real fun began.

The final score was 75-65 in favor of Maryland-Eastern Shore. At least that’s what people who saw the game believed. Somehow, the official scorer of the game made a few errors. A free throw was not credited to a Maryland-Eastern Shore player. He also credited a basket to North Carolina A & T’s Raymond Pratt that never happened.

None of this would have made much difference, but the line on the game was Maryland-Eastern Shore -7.5.  You can imagine the surprise for some bettors when they heard a 74-67 final score. The incorrect score was reported by many media outlets. Many still have the incorrect score listed. Even North Carolina A &T’s website has the wrong score listed after associate athletics director Brian Holloway told ESPN he thought the play-by-play data was off when he was writing the game recap for the school’s website. Holloway also admitted to receiving a number of emails Tuesday morning from people wanting to know the final score of the game.

Some Las Vegas sportsbooks paid out on the favorite, while others paid out to the underdog based on the 74-67 score.

While these types of errors were more frequent 25 or 30 years ago, it’s hard to believe such a thing could happen now with all of the televised games and people following along on the Internet.

Line service Don Best had its CEO, Craig Murdock, re-watch the entire game and keep score. He found that the correct final score was 75-65.

March is just getting started and bizarre things are already taking place. Imagine what the next few weeks will bring.