Capital Christian Boys Coach: 'I Feel We Were Robbed'

On paper, the season ended Monday night for the boys varsity basketball team. But a home video of the final few seconds of the Cougars' second round playoff game against the Summerville High School Bears seems to show a different outcome.

With the Cougars ahead 58-57, Summerville forward Travis Arenas catches a rebound, jumps and lobs the ball upward, scoring the game-winning point for the Tuolumne school. But the video appears to show the game clock expiring before the shot is taken.

"I don’t feel like we were cheated," Cougars head coach Phil Oates said Tuesday. "I feel we were robbed."

He said as soon as the game ended, "probably hundreds" of Summerville fans stormed the floor as the referees hurried off the court.

"I don’t want to come across as sour grapes," Oates said. "We’ve been beat [before] and I’m man enough to admit when we’ve been beat, but we weren’t beat here."

He said he didn't have anything against the Summerville players or fans–except one fan who was ejected from the game–placing the blame instead on the referees who called the game.

Tuesday morning, Oates drove to Lodi to speak to officials with the CIF Sac-Joaquin Section, which oversees the playoffs.

CIF Sac-Joaquin Section spokesman Will DeBoard declined to comment on the specifics of that conversation, but said referee decisions can't be overturned.

"The officials made a judgment call, and they ruled the basket good," DeBoard said in an e-mail. "There's really nothing that can be done once the officials leave the court."

And so the season appears to have ended for the seventh-seeded Cougars, who had a chance at upsetting the second-seeded Bears. Oates said he'll remember the season as a long series of nail-biters.

"We were like the San Francisco Giants," he said. "It was torture."

Oates said he's proud of the team, adding he feels bad for the three seniors who won't have another chance next year.

"This was a very good team that, unfortunately, is never going to get the chance to show people how good they were."