A controversial call in the NCAA Tournament involving a pair of shorts shows that replay has gone too far

• Alabama lost an extra possession on Sunday due to a close replay call.
• Just before the ball bounced out, it grazed Alabama's John Petty's shorts, giving UCLA the ball.
• Is this really what we want replay to be?

Alabama lost a tightly contested game in the Sweet 16 on Sunday night, thanks in part to the loose shorts of John Petty.

With the Crimson Tide leading 61-60 with just over two minutes remaining, Petty had the ball dribble off a UCLA defender's foot. The ball went through Petty's legs and out of bounds, but replays of the moment showed that the ball had just barely grazed Petty's shorts before leaving the court.

By a fraction of a thread, it was UCLA ball.

-Patrick Greenfield (@PCGreenfield) March 29, 2021

The play again raises the question: is this really what we want out of replay in sports?

Fans have long called for officials to "get it right." Obviously, on the biggest calls, replays must allow officials to correct potentially game-changing mistakes. However, is having a referee duck into a review booth and repeat "COMPUTER: ENHANCE" over and over again until we can see in grainy detail that the ball did brush up against a bit of fabric "getting it right?"

Through the first 18 minutes of action, the ball would have been given to Bama, and it wouldn't have caused a second thought for any fan in the arena or watching at home. UCLA might have insisted that the ball was actually off of Petty, but the team that last touched the ball does that on every out-of-bounds play. That's gamesmanship, not a direct aversion to law and order.

But in the final two minutes of action, replay is allowed to be used in the interest of "getting it right," and this is where we land.

Thanks to a strict adherence to the letter of the law, the spirit of the law has been entirely shattered.

There's no one-size-fits-all answer to the problem of replay. If I had one, I would offer it. It's tough to have replay available but then argue that it shouldn't apply to this specific play because that's ticky-tack.

But watching Alabama lose possession like that was depressing, even if the call was technically correct.

Giving UCLA possession at that moment was big. The Bruins would go on to build a 65-62 lead heading into the final seconds of the game, only for Alabama's Alex Reese to hit a stunner just before the buzzer to force overtime.

In the extra period, UCLA would run away with the game, ultimately winning by a score of 88-78.

Thankfully, overtime was free of any similarly controversial replays.