Mike DeCourcy

Is there anybody in the Atlantic Coast Conference who can tell time?

Anyone?

Twice in the space of a week, we've had game clock malfunctions that impacted the outcome of ACC contests. In one case, the impact was significant. In one case, the impact was minor. In both instances, the result of the glitch favored the home team. That is not good. Particularly when one of the teams involved is Duke, which leads to ridiculous conspiracy theories of the sort that now are jetting around the internet.

The conspiracies are flat wrong.

But the problems are very real.

Duke got a win Thursday night over Clemson that the Blue Devils tried very hard to give away. They were inadvertently saved from having to do the job in overtime by a clock malfunction that gave them nearly two extra seconds to complete a game-winning play -- a mistake that apparently never caught the officials' attention because they were busy fixing a second clock mistake.

Four days earlier, Virginia Tech benefited from three seconds that ceased to exist in its overtime victory over Maryland.

In the case of Duke, it would have taken that blonde from Medium to recognize it eventually would help the Blue Devils for the clock not to start as Clemson's Vernon Hamilton intercepted an inbounds pass launched by Duke center Josh McRoberts. When the pass was released, the Devils had a 3-point lead and were looking to kill off the final five seconds. But the first fractions did not start ticking until Hamilton's shot was nearly 85 percent of the way to the goal. And, instead of stopping when the ball went through the goal at 4.8 seconds, the clock didn't quit running until 1.8.

How the officials did not notice the timing error on the first end is unclear, but it appears they concentrated on the amount of time that lapsed after the ball went through the goal -- none of them recognizing that the whole play had started with 5.0 seconds on the clock, and it would have taken some sort of miracle for Hamilton to catch, raise, launch and land his shot in less than a second.

With the 4.4 seconds restored to the game clock by officials, Duke executed a brilliant, coast-to-coast game-ending play that led to forward David McClure scoring a game-winning layup.

The Virginia Tech deal caught less attention because it did not lead to a spectacular play, and because it didn't involve Duke. But it did create some questions about the way these kinds of situations should be handled.

With 16 seconds left in overtime and Maryland trailing by three, the Terps inbounded the ball. But the clock did not start as they began to work through the backcourt to establish a play. Soon afterward, an official noticed and blew his whistle to stop the players. After checking the game tape to see how much time had lapsed, the officials reset the clock to 13 seconds and had Maryland inbound again.

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Whether or not the officials were within the rules to do what they did, this represented a significant detriment to Maryland's effort to win the game. Because the Terps had just begun their play call, those three seconds simply vanished. They were stopped before their action could lead to anything productive. And when they started again, they had three fewer seconds to run that play or to try an alternative if their initial effort failed.

It seems no one made a fuss about this at the time, but this is an issue the rules committee should consider addressing in the future. Logically, those three seconds should have been restored and Maryland should have been given a do-over -- a chance to inbound from the initial spot and take a fair shot at tying the game.

Every clock operator has the power to make time stop or start, but none should have the power to make it disappear.