That screaming you heard around 3:40 p.m. Thursday was from local Marquette University basketball fans who missed seeing the last 40 seconds of the telecast of their team's game against Villanova in the quarterfinals of the Big East Conference tournament at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The telecast was on ESPN.

With 40 seconds left, Marquette was clinging to a 75-74 lead and passed the ball inbounds when the test began. By the time the test was over, Villanova had won, 76-75.

Viewers missed MU's last possession and Villanova's winning shot.

Before the test, the last image was Marquette guard Jerel McNeal walking the ball up from the backcourt. After the test, viewers saw jubilant Wildcats players writhing on the Garden floor.

"This was a federally required and randomly executed weekly test that ran on 80 analog channels," said Stacy Zaja, a spokeswoman for Time Warner Cable of Wisconsin.

Bev Greenberg, a vice president for Time Warner of Wisconsin, said the cable system did not select the times the tests run.

"They have to be random," Greenberg said. "It's required by law."

For viewers of the basketball game, the timing could not have been worse.

"As someone around here said, it was an unfortunate perfect storm," Greenberg said.

Greenberg said about two-thirds of the Time Warner subscribers in the state of Wisconsin were affected by the test. Time Warner has said it has 600,000 subscribers in Wisconsin.

Viewers in Racine and Kenosha, as well as portions of northern Wisconsin, were not affected by the test. Viewers watching the game on ESPN HD also were not affected.