League to Replay Mono – Hi-Tech Game

(Photo by: Kuk Thew, Hi-Tech Bangkok City)

The ASEAN Basketball League (ABL) announced today that it has granted the protest filed by the Mono Vampire Basketball Club after its 105-104 loss in overtime to the Hi-Tech Bangkok City on January 23, 2016 at the Sripatum University Stadium. The granting of the protest will result in the replay of the final 39 seconds of the game’s overtime period with Hi-Tech leading 105-102. The replay will occur immediately prior to the scheduled game between Mono Vampire and the visiting Singapore Slingers on February 19, 2016, also at the Sripatum University Stadium.
After a Steven Thomas’ free throw that gave Hi-Tech a three-point lead, 105-102, with 40 seconds remaining, the scoreboard changed to 105-103. The coaching staff of Hi-Tech Bangkok City raised this concern with the table officials immediately but the Game Commissioner only took notice and convened with the Referees at the 24 second mark, when Mono Vampire called a timeout. The error occurred because Mono Vampire’s Official Scorer mistakenly credited Mono’s Sekteera with a free throw that he did not make.

When initially asked about the error, the Official Scorer did not admit the mistake, which led to the game being continued. After consulting with the league’s Technical Committee and further proving that a scoring error was made, the table officials admitted that they did mistakenly add one point to Mono Vampire.

At that point, there were only two seconds left and ball possession was with Hi-Tech so Mono Vampire vehemently complained about the timing of the correction because they would have played the game very differently if the error was corrected after the first dead ball situation which was with 39 seconds left in the game.

Under this unprecedented set of circumstances, the league has granted Mono’s protest and has taken steps in order to ensure that this mistake does not happen again.

The assigned Game Commissioner has been removed from the ABL roster for the remaining games of the 2015-2016 season. Mono has also agreed to remove the Official Scorer from their remaining games.