The Point After: Ref got it wrong for Athens

It was an unreal ending. Without ever giving the ball back to its opponent, the Green Hope girls basketball team went from down five to up one as the game clock moved from 30.8 to 2.3 seconds left.

It was also the wrong ending.

What allowed the Lady Falcons to win a game they were seemingly losing grip of what was a controversial — and that's a nice way to put it — technical foul called on the Athens Drive bench.

Green Hope's Kristen Gaffney was fouled on a shot attempt — on this some Athens supporters will disagree and say Markeisha Gatling blocked her ninth shot of the game, but I digress — and an Athens assistant coach got upset.

What he said, no one knows. Not even head coach Chris Danehower knew what happened as he had walked to the end of the bench as coaches tend to do when they see a call they don't like but don't want to risk getting a tech. Oh, the irony.

The assistant was "T'ed up."

Just like that, Green Hope had Kristen Gaffney at the line for four shots — two on the foul, two more for the technical — and the ball.

Credit Green Hope. Gaffney hit three of her four attempts, then got an offensive rebound and found Alyssa Paul for the game-winning 3-pointer. But this game should not have had been affected by a mouthy assistant coach and the officials.

Some of you will jump down my throat with the standard "if it's a technical in the first quarter, it's a technical in the fourth too, no matter how much time is left." I completely disagree with that idea that you can't call a game differently in the game's final minute, but that's besides the point.

It shouldn't have been a technical at any point of the game.

I was sitting right between the two benches behind the scorer's table, able to hear coaches, referees and almost everything else when the fans weren't at a fever pitch. There was no warning ever issued to the Athens bench that I can recall, and barring obscenity, shouldn't you at least warn a coaching staff it's about to get a technical first?  Especially in the game's final half-minute?

Green Hope was running out of chances. A referee's decision to "T-up" an assistant without warning gave them more than enough chances to win a game it had nearly let slip away.

Credit Athens coach Chris Danehower. I've heard coaches lose games on far less awful controversial calls go on tirades. Danehower instead expressed his opinion of the call, said his team would show its character in the next couple of days when it responds to the loss, and that was it.

But he shouldn't have had to talk to a team in tears that night. Maybe the ref who made the call should've gone instead, to explain why he intervened with a game that had been otherwise great.