We discussed at length the Ted Valentine situation at the Final Four. You should click here.
Yesterday, ESPN’s Pat Forde used the insane Tim Duncan vs Joey Crawford situation to spark a great column on basketball officials. The entire column can be read here (along with video).
Some selected passages from the piece are included below:
2. The Final Four travesty in Atlanta.
Three refs seemed to be racing each other to saddle the stars of one national semifinal — Ohio State’s Greg Oden and Georgetown’s Roy Hibbert — with fouls, ruining one of the most-anticipated matchups in the past 25 years. It was almost as if they had made a bet: First guy to force the big men to the bench drinks free after the game. Result: Oden played 20 minutes and Hibbert 24. But at least we got to see a lot of very dramatic posturing by the guys who are supposed to blend into the hardwood.
So most of the time, they get my respect for doing a truly thankless job. But these recent examples of what I’d call control-freak officiating are troublesome for the sport.
Sometimes, you watch these guys — it’s not just Crawford or that diva of the college game, Ted Valentine — and wonder whether there is a persecution complex/power trip associated with putting that whistle in the mouth. Instead of serving as levelheaded stewards of the game vested with the authority to enforce fair play, they occasionally come across as bouncers in a bad mood while juicing on Dianabol.
Spoiling for a fight with the first guy who mouths off, that is.
The Final Four debacle was less egregious but indicative of the same problem: officials who seemed overly eager to show who’s boss, at the expense of the matchup every fan in America wanted to see.
If ever there were a game to let the big men play, this was it. It never happened, thanks to the hypervigilance of Dick Cartmell, Mike Kitts and (of course) Valentine.
Houston coach Tom Penders sagely said on ESPN Radio before the Georgetown-Ohio State game that he’d know how the game was going to play out when he saw which officials walked on the floor. I wonder whether Penders took one look at the crew and left the Georgia Dome before tip-off.
But this was only the culmination of a whistle-stop NCAA Tournament. As my friend Eric Crawford of the Louisville Courier-Journal reported last month, second-round NCAA Tournament games averaged nearly 38 personal fouls and fans were treated to 1,981 free throws in the first two rounds.
Nothing is quite as thrilling as watching almost 2,000 foul shots in four days.
That’s partly caused by poor play and poor coaching, which resulted in the abandonment of offensive flow late in the shot clock and the inevitable headfirst drive and ensuing block-charge call. (There are no jump-stop jump shots in college ball anymore.) But it’s also partly caused by compulsive whistle blowing, often in anticipation of a foul that never happens.
Mostly, the March Madness foulfest gave fans a chance to boo and coaches a chance to posture on national TV. (One of my favorite moments every March is when some outraged coach wheels around at the scorer’s table and shouts something at the attending member of the NCAA men’s basketball committee about the officiating. As if the committee member might stop the game right then and there to address the obvious wrong inflicted upon the persecuted coach’s team.) It also mucked up the games.
