This was a familiar scene during the first week of the NCAA tournament: Officials huddled around the scorer’s table, looking over replays to determine just how much time should be on the clock.

So unnecessary.

The NCAA — unlike the NBA, the Olympics, all major conferences and even some high schools — doesn’t use an automatic timing system for its signature event.

It’s an odd situation that caught plenty of prominent coaches off guard when told this week that game clocks in the men’s and women’s tournaments are not linked to a well-known device known as Precision Time Systems, which was invented nearly two decades ago by former NBA and college referee Michael Costabile.

“To be honest with you, I didn’t even realize that they weren’t using it during the tournament,” said North Carolina’s Roy Williams, whose Tar Heels were involved in the most prominent of several timing issues during the first week of March Madness.

Thad Matta, coach of overall top seed Ohio State, was even more confused.

“We use it in the Big Ten, so I’m good with it,” he said Tuesday. “Matter of fact, when we talked about it in the Big Ten meetings, we said, ‘Let’s do what they do in the NCAA tournament.’ “

Actually, the automatic system is widely used during the preseason, regular season and conference tournaments, but ignored by the NCAA for the biggest games of the year.

In a sense, it’s like using a modern timing system to determine how fast Usain Bolt runs or Michael Phelps swims until they get to the Olympics, then breaking out the stopwatches to figure out who gets the gold medal.

“This is 2011,” said Nelson Keller, who runs the clock merely as a backup for women’s games at North Carolina and the ACC tournament. “It’s crazy not to use the technology that’s available.”

That was never more apparent than last week when several games went down to the wire with the clock being kept by a timekeeper sitting courtside instead of being linked to Costabile’s system, which shuts it down automatically when an official blows the whistle.

The most disputed game was North Carolina’s 86-83 victory over Washington. The ball went out of bounds off a Tar Heels player with a half-second showing on the clock. Replays showed the ball went out of bounds with at least 1.1 seconds to go.

The officials looked at the video and did some frontier justice, determining the time on the board was right when factoring in the lag time between an official blowing his whistle and the timekeeper stopping the clock.

If Precision Time had been used, it wouldn’t have been an issue.

“Any time you are talking about time on the clock, I think it’s important that you get it right,” Washington Coach Lorenzo Romar said.

Tournament spokesman David Worlock did not respond to an email seeking comment. Neither did John Adams, the NCAA’s coordinator for men’s basketball officiating. Erik Christianson, the NCAA’s director of public and media relations, issued a brief statement:

“The committee is satisfied with current game management processes and has chosen not to adopt it for the championship. From time to time it has been reviewed by the committee.”

Costabile’s system ranges in price from $3,185 to $3,750 each, which sounds like pocket change compared to the tournament’s $10.8 billion television deal.

He proposed an even cheaper deal a few years ago, offering to provide free systems for the tournament if the NCAA would pay $1,500 at each site to have a company representative on hand to respond to any questions or problems that might arise. He said the money would have merely covered the cost of travel, hotel rooms and meals.

“I never heard back from them,” he said.

Costabile’s system uses wireless technology to sync the whistles to a computer base station that is tied in to the clock. Whenever an official blows his whistle, the clock stops. If more than one official blows his whistle, the clock stops on whichever signal it receives first.

To start the clock, officials wear a pager-looking device on their waistband that they use to flip a switch when play resumes. Whoever flips it first, that’s what the computer goes with.

At the college level, a timekeeper is only needed to stop the clock in the closing minute after a basket is made and before the inbound pass.