Duke Steals 6-6 Tie from Tigers Sunday

another reason to hate Duke...bitterly posted on Clemson's official website with good reason...
Duke Steals 6-6 Tie from Tigers Sunday
Blue Devils refuse to tarp field, erasing Clemson's go-ahead, two-run homer in 11th.
April 20, 2008 Durham, NC -
Clemson, who scored four runs with two outs in the ninth inning to tie the score, took an 8-6 lead in the 11th inning on Kyle Parker's two-run homer, but a sequence of events made it so Parker's long ball never officially happened.
Literally a few seconds after Parker touched home plate to put Clemson ahead 8-6, a Duke official emerged and called for a delay due to lightning. According to the Duke official, he received a text message from Wichita, KS that said there was lightning "to the west of Chapel Hill." Unlike Clemson, which has a siren sound when lightning is in the area, the only form of warning of lightning used at Duke on Sunday was a text message to a Blue Devil official. The official told the umpires of this "text message warning," and so the umpires were forced to halt play.
Duke coaches and players chose not to tarp the field during the "lightning" delay (even though there were no lightning strikes visible in the area during the delay) with rain oncoming. Over 30 minutes later (an ample amount of time to finish the 11th inning), light rain began to fall.
As the light rain came down and Clemson players standing near home plate, Duke players and coaches sat motionless in their dugout, unwilling to put the tarp on the field against the urging of the Tigers. Evidently, players were not obligated to cover the infield with the tarp since the game was under a "lightning delay," even though there were still no visible lightning strikes in the area. However, a grounds crew is allowed to put the tarp on the field during a "lightning delay." But Duke's ground crew consists of less than three members and all of them left the facility during the middle of the game and were nowhere to be found. Several minutes passed and the rain came down harder, still with no movement from Duke's dugout.
Approximately 100 minutes later with the infield covered in water due to the fact that the tarp was not put on the field, and with the weather clearing, the umpires still decided to call the game because of unplayable infield conditions. Even with over a four-hour bus-ride ahead of them, the Tigers were willing to wait as long as possible on Sunday to finish the game. But Duke's head coach told the umpires that the field could not be made playable.
Therefore, the Tigers, who had just taken an 8-6 lead literally seconds before play was stopped, was forced to settle for a 6-6 tie, remaining only 0.5 games ahead of Duke in the standings instead of the 1.5 games ahead in the standings that would have resulted with a Tiger win.