Officiating

[Cowtown]

This. Very very true. In my old man league we have this one kid who played 4 years at St. Mike's and upon graduation he was begged to try out for the local semi-pro football team. He's 6'5" and jacked like a brick you know what. He gets hit every time he tries to bring the ball inside and I've never seen him get a call. This is the same thing Rak faces I think. Against slightly smaller guys anyway. I also tend to think Rak was known as a foul-machine last year so he never gets the 50-50 calls. I'm sure Cowtown can confirm that players sometimes do have reputations that might bias officials, even slightly.

Yeah, to a certain extent. But you always try to ref the game you see, rather than what you expected to see.

 

[GonzoInMD]

I thought it was interesting that they called a foul on the WF player for doing the exact same thing to Rak as the Nova player did to CM (the "surfing" incident) where the ref called the foul on CM.

 

[CuseFaninVT]

Fair enough. The difficult thing in a matchup like that is to see not just contact, but to see whether the contact creates an advantage or disadvantage. Who initiates the contact is also important. Because as you know, contact does not mean afoul occurred, disadvantage does. A small guy usually has to push pretty hard to disadvantage a guy who's a lot bigger. And on the other hand, you can't penalize a guy for being bigger than the guy guarding him. Or, you shouldn't, at least. Also consider big guys don't need to push too hard on a small guy to create disadvantage. Sometimes I see big players go to the basket and a small guy tries to block the shot and actually just bounces off, while the ball goes cleanly through the basket and the shooter lands balanced and under control. Yeah there was contact, but no real disadvantage, so I've got a no-call on that. It's not easy, especially at more elite levels. And it would be less difficult if players would just play honestly (and yes, you can play hard at the same time) instead of trying to draw calls. Floppers and the "And one!" whiners piss me off. If you get fouled, fine, but you're not entitled to be fouled. You don't need refs to have a foul shooting tournament. Again just sharing thoughts; this is all just conversation, not a shot toward toward anyone.

I yelled at a guy on Monday night for calling out 'and 1'. Told him if he said that and didn't make the shot, the foul call would be waived off and play would continue the other way. Pisses me off so badly.

Back to the matter at hand, I'd love to see the NCAA put something out on this. Whine to the refs and you get a T. That's it. Shut your mouth and play the game.

 

[Ghost]

I really saw only one egregious call (G's block). There were a couple of other shady ones, but most were judgement calls and I couldn't really argue either way.

Rak is going to get and give a lot of calls. He plays exceptionally physical down low (and can handle it). I mostly wish he would stop complaining after every play, though. Let Jimmy B work the refs.

Yeah - it seemed like a lot of complaints. The replay generally showed the push - but only one that I saw looked like a definite miss.

They seemed to let enough go where I can't complain too much. Overall, just seemed like some weird calls - but mostly let them play.