No honorific replays for helping hands

AT LEAST twice during this NCAA Tournament, a player has reached down to help an opponent to his feet. Both times, a TV voice mentioned, as if pleasantly surprised, that we just witnessed “good sportsmanship.”

Yet, neither of these scenes made the cut in slow-motion replays en route to commercial or within brief taped “highlights.”

On the other hand, Gonzaga forward Drew Timme has regularly acted like an immodest, all-about-me fool. And because TV habitually and thoughtlessly rewards such conduct, Timme’s selfish, unsportsmanlike conduct was given the “We love it!” slo-mo replay treatment.

In a team game, what’s the message? What’s the upside? You tell me.

➤ Watching some of these bigticket college coaches’ crunchtime decisions is like watching MLB managers pull effective pitchers in search of one to blow the game.

Perhaps the most famous play in NCAA Tournament history — Christian Laettner’s overtime buzzer-beater to top Rick Pitino’s Kentucky team in 1992 — became a highly instructive play as Pitino chose not to guard Duke’s Grant Hill as he threw a near length-of-the court inbounds pass to Laettner.

Such a pass would have been nearly impossible had Pitino defended it with a jumping, arms-waving tall defender. Instead, he gave Duke unimpeded, unobstructed sight lines.

The rest is history, as yet unrevised. Surely it would never happen again. Except it did. Saturday night on TBS, when Arkansas coach Eric Musselman — with 3.1 seconds left, up two and given two consecutive timeouts to get it straight — left the in-bounder unguarded. A long pass was caught on the run by Oral Roberts’ Max Abmas, who quickly dribbled to a reasonable distance.

Abmas’s shot hit the rim, but it was only by a matter of an inch that Musselman escaped repeat infamy. Again, such an accurate inbounds pass would have been close to impossible against a jumping, arms-waving defender.

On TBS, “Hollerin’” Kevin Harlan — no surprise — and the usually sharp Dan Bonner — surprise — missed both Musselman’s decision and its historical significance. Stunning.