A buzzer malfunction caused a very loud delay of about 10 minutes in the first half of the men’s March Madness showdown between Iowa and Illinois on Saturday night.
When the buzzer sounded out of a media timeout with 7:43 left in the first half, it kept blaring uninterrupted for about seven minutes around Toyota Center in Houston.
Players stood on the court ready to play for a couple of minutes before both teams started to warm up as the horn continued to sound.
‘Surely there’s a way to unplug this – surely there’s a horn expert somewhere in this building,’ legendary play-by-play commentator Kevin Harlan said.
‘That’s right. Cover your ears! Hide your eyes! The horn will not shut off!’
It was finally silenced, to cheers from the crowd, but then the main scoreboard and video screen that hangs over the middle of the court went dark.
A buzzer malfunction caused a very loud delay in the game between Iowa and Illinois
After it was silenced, the main scoreboard and video screen inside the arena went dark
Illinois players shoot during a timeout to fix the broken horn inside Toyota Center in Houston
Illinois ended Iowa’s underdog run by beating the Hawkeyes 71-59 to reach the Final Four
The game ultimately resumed with the big scoreboard still off. Two smaller scoreboards at each end of the arena were working.
The NCAA later announced in a statement that the stuck horn was caused by a scoreboard malfunction, which forced them to shut off the jumbotron to stop the buzzer. They said an attempt to reset the jumbotron at halftime was ‘unsuccessful’.
A scoreboard operator using a manual air horn to stop and start the action replaced the now-standard horn for the rest of the game.
Freshman Keaton Wagler scored 25 points as Illinois ended Iowa’s underdog March Madness run by beating the Hawkeyes 71-59 to end a Final Four drought that dated to 2005.
‘Nothing I can control. Just move on, move forward,’ Iowa coach Ben McCollum said of the buzzer issue. ‘It didn’t probably impact the fact that we gave up 16 boards.’
This will be the sixth trip to the Final Four for Illinois, which has never won a national title. The Illini will face either Duke or UConn next weekend in Indianapolis.
