Did Maryland’s Derik Queen travel before his buzzer-beater? Rules expert says no.

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Derik Queen received the ball at the top of the key with just under four seconds left in the game. He went to his left, taking a couple of long strides to create enough separation to fire up his game-winning shot to send Colorado State home from the NCAA Tournament.

The Terps celebrated wildly as they punched their ticket to the Sweet 16. Meanwhile, some started questioning if the shot should’ve counted. Fans online started saying that Queen traveled on the game-winning shot and it should’ve been called off before it happened.

CBS Sports’ rules analyst Gene Steratore, who refereed college basketball games for more than two decades, strongly disagreed. Steratore explained on the TBS postgame show that once Queen fully gained possession, he took two steps. That’s permitted within the rules, as a third step without a dribble would be traveling.

“Derik Queen makes the turn around the loop,” Steratore said. “At that point, when he brings it back up, we don’t know if that’s fully possessed. If he bobbles that at that point, he could continue to bobble that basketball on the way to the hoop without a travel, so you’ve got to wait until you can define firm possession.

“Now the dribble has ended, as I said most times … it’s when both hands come together. You can see when Derik Queen has both hands together. One foot hits, next foot, great shot, great ending. To me, it just really doesn’t jump off the screen as anything big, I’ve got to be honest with you.”

Analyst Charles Barkley agreed.

“That wasn’t even close,” Barkley said. “I’m like, who’s traveling? What are y’all even talking about?”

Clark Kellogg, another analyst with CBS, had the same reaction.

“None of us thought anything of it,” he said.

Regardless of some people’s reaction to the shot, Queen’s shot counts and will live in Maryland basketball lore. As far as Steratore is concerned, it shouldn’t be viewed with any asterisk either.

Colorado State coach Niko Medved said after the game that he hadn’t had a chance to watch a replay of the play but that “it’s going to be hard for me to watch.”

“I’m sure I will at some point. I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe it was [a travel], maybe it wasn’t. But it doesn’t matter, they didn’t call one,” he said. “So whether it was or wasn’t, they didn’t call one and they never go back and change the call. But again, he made a really difficult shot, guys. I mean, he made a really, really difficult shot and they just made one more play than we did.”

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