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Message: [QUOTE="cuseincincy, post: 2519650, member: 331"] The refs were awful. Bad calls or non-calls both ways but in my biased opinion they were worse against SU. They were wrapping their arms around our guys, no call. Almost every time they set a screen the screener's leg or knee jabbed our defender as he tried to get around the screen. Also several calls that I think were made only because the shot didn't go in. I know some people dispute the effect refs can have but I can attest to the huge degree they do. In the youth league I coach (17/18 years seniors) most of our refs are high school refs. But every year come tournament time we end up with one of the league organizers doing a game because he thinks he is a ref because he has the uniform. The league president was working the scoreboard and I I told him before the game that this would not be pretty. Sure enough after games all season that maybe averaged 1 player on either team falling out once every 3 games or so...5 players fouled out (2 of mine. 3 of the other). My best player picked up his 4th foul about 2 minutes into the 2nd half (thanks for the lesson JB!). As he came off the floor he told me to leave him in and he promised he wouldn't pick up #5. My response was "do you have a whistle in your pocket I don't know about?" The other coach, a friend of mine, and I told the league president that it really wasn't fair to the kids to change the game so drastically every year by letting this bozo ref games. I reminded him that a couple years ago my older son went to the hospital after getting elbowed in the face while getting called for a foul by this ref for basically getting elbowed in the face. The only response we got was "I promise he won't do any more games this tournament." We ended up winning by 2 points mainly because after losing 3 players the other team played the last 1:30 with only 4 players. Nobody really felt great about anything after our game. I felt much better 2 days later when we played the same team for the championship (double elim tourney) and we again won by 2 points and nobody on either team had more than 2 fouls. Just my long example showing that yes, refs can definitely change a game completely. [/QUOTE]

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