Saturday, March 24, 2007

These Refs Suck

I figured I would put it in simple terms. Is anyone else getting tired of the officials dictating the games? Enough already. Today in the first regional final, Ohio State was given the game on a silver platter when the officials decided to suddenly call two different games - one for each end of the floor. The worst part is that once again, the egregious officiating will go overlooked by the mainstream media, because it came in the middle of the second half rather than right at the end of the game. Sportswriters are pretty obvious creatures, so unless a ref blows the final call of the game, they won't pick up on it. But go back and watch this thing on your TiVo's. This was a back-and-forth game until about nine minutes left in the contest. It was at this point that the refs suddenly started calling every little touch foul on Memphis (including a truly terrible call on Joey Dorsey on a rebound) while swallowing their whistles at the other end as Memphis players were being knocked down and hacked with nary a call. All you can ever really ask for is consistency from the refs (if your expectations are higher than that, you are in for many disappointments), but in this game they didn't even come close. It was literally as if they had two different crews at each end of the court. I don't blame Coach Cal for looking forlorn late in the game - they were going 5-on-8 out there.

And as always, the imprint made on the game by the refs takes away from the players. Conley was amazing, Oden showed a real spark, and both Butler and Lewis hit ridiculous threes. But it is hard to appreciate that when one team is allowed to foul as a means of playing defense and the other is not. I am so sick of this.

(By the way, how was Chris Douglas-Roberts foul on Oden today an intentional, while Oden's foul against Xavier was not? That was the play that took Ohio State from a 60-59 deficit to a 62-60 lead and turned the game around. Pretty ironic, no?)

1 comment:

nickofthewoods said...

Claiming that the game turned on an intentional foul when the final margin was sixteen points is silly. And the difference in free throws was due to the last ten minutes, when the Buckeyes drove to the basket, got fouled, and hit every single one of their free throws. Even if you allow that CDR's foul was not intentional, he still did commit the foul, his 4th, and was consigned to the bench.
Memphis lost for the same reason that most lower seeds have lost: their bench isn't as deep, they got tired, and their defense suffered as a result. And if Dorsey had played even an average game, the score would have been closer.