I have bit my lip long enough. The men’s basketball officiating in Pacific-10 Conference sucks.
There is a greater chance of poor officiating in a Pac-10 game than catching an STD while visiting Arizona State University.
I have never been a fan of officials, and I often refer to them as people with single-digit IQs (thanks for the phrase Greg). However, I do believe that officials could not be so bad as to cost any team a victory. Especially since they have two more buddies on the court that can only take so much of a verbal beating from the crowd before giving a make-up call.
I believe that the bottom line is that officials should call a game with the same level of “awareness” on both ends of the floor, from tipoff to the final buzzer. As long as there is consistency, who can really complain about the officiating, right?
So far that hasn’t been the case. Officials have often started the game whistling everything but a glare as a foul; however, that quickly changes several minutes into the game.
Players such as Oregon’s 6-foot-8, 255 pound Ivan Johnson, are whistled for ridiculous fouls. Johnson, who takes more charges (and more flops) than the average big man, often gets called for two fouls in his first five minutes of play because of his aggressive reputation.
On the flip side, a team with a sizable lead in the second half should be prepared to get beaten up. In the closing minutes, when one team is fighting to overcome a deficit, that “computer-edge” kicks in. It is like when you are up by two touchdowns with two minutes to play in “NCAA Football 2006” and all of a sudden the computer team gets away with everything. They break tackles that O.J. couldn’t escape and force turnovers that even Oregon State wouldn’t commit.
That edge in basketball leads to free shoves in the back (See Arizona vs. Oregon last Thursday – twice). It also allows hacking and sometimes tripping, but only the latter on days with a full moon.
It isn’t just at the beginning and end of games that irks me about the officials. It is a given fact that a road team will likely have to overcome an extra call or two at any venue, but a large differential of fouls can literally end a team’s chances to win.
UCLA and Washington played a great college basketball game Saturday, but for it to truly be fair, the Huskies should not have gotten away with the fouls they committed and the officials should have swallowed their whistles when the Bruins were on defense. UCLA, which definitely hurt itself with key turnovers and mistakes, had to fight through several fouls that would make even Stevie Wonder blink twice.
I have seen both good and bad calls this season, but in an era that favors fairness and equality, maybe the Pac-10 officials should worry about consistency – the word is in the dictionary under “C” for those officials trying to up their single-digit IQs.
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