To no one in particular, nor in a well thought out order:
In the first place, if it's easy to be a good basketball official, why aren't they all doing it? The guys you see on TV are generally the best available and most experienced. It's easily the most difficult thing I've done in sports. So when I say, "Come on out and do it," I mean it from a positive perspective rather than negative.
Announcers say a lot of stupid things. You can tell most of them have never seen the inside of a rule book. Especially Chris Webber, who may be the dumbest announcer I've ever heard.
"The hand is quicker than the eye." Believe it. Most people, even long time fans, have no idea how fast things move out on the floor. It's one thing to appreciate it as a fan. It's something else altogether to be responsible for seeing it and getting it right all through the game.
Officiating in the NCAA tournament always has been and always will be a crap shoot. Most often you get three officials who don't regularly work together. They're evaluated at the end of each game to determine who moves to the next round. Thus a lot of them are trying to impress the evaluators with all the small stuff they can catch. So, if you're a "let 'em play" style official, you will usually get left back.
The "moving screen" is a call/no-call that's been perverted by the NBA whose brass don't want it called because it adds nothing to their "star maker machinery." The influence of that has crept into the college game.
The old axiom is that there are about 400 call/no-call decisions to be made during the course of a game. So there will always be some calls that get missed or the refs just aren't going to make that call. Referees pretty much earn their way based on what they
won't call, which is good because no one wants a whistlefest (think of last year's final, especially the first half which was God-awful). I learned that if you're going to err, do it on the side of fewer whistles. So since they can't be perfect, what they
can be is consistent. Which means if they're calling something, stop doing it. And if they're not calling something, you have to adjust your game to accommodate that.
Also remember the TV cameras give you a different look than what the refs see. It's easy at floor level to get screened off or "straight-lined" and miss a call. So you try to anticipate that and move to keep good sight lines.
Finally, on a lot of replays this weekend I saw them getting the call right a whole lot more often than they got it wrong.
We're still dancing! LGO!
