[impackt]

I’m having a hard time letting this go. What bothers me most is the lack of justice. I generally regard sports officials as being impartial arbiters of their sport’s rules. Of course they are human and make mistakes, but overall I hold them in high regard, and I believe they truly see themselves as unbiased bastions of fairness. But what we saw on Saturday was a miscarriage of justice any way you slice it. One team, though universally considered the weaker of the two, had fought to a one-point lead. That team then executes a perfect breakaway to apparently seal the game. The other team’s player, in desperation, commits an infraction by (intentionally) fouling in an attempt to keep TJ from scoring. His foul fails to prevent the score; he’s been bested. Of all the choices the official has in this situation, there is really only one that will lead to an unfair result, and that is of course the one he went with. If he’d swallowed the whistle, would there have been even one word of complaint from Syracuse? (Wait, wait, we fouled him! On purpose! Give him 2 shots and the ball!) Nope. They would have brought the ball down and tried to set up for a tying 3-pointer at the buzzer. No call, and-one, intentional— any of these would have led to a just result (not necessarily a State win, but a just result). Instead, a team that deserved an upset win, and did exactly what they needed to do to seal that win, was put in the position of having to do it again. Even if the foul did occur a split second before the act of shooting began (which I’m not convinced of), justice demanded a call other than the one made. I don’t know the nuances of the rules well enough to say which call would have been technically correct, but I know injustice when I see it. [As an aside, this is where hockey’s delayed penalty and soccer’s advantage rule are vastly superior in preserving justice. Teams should NEVER be rewarded for committing fouls to thwart clear scoring chances. I’ve never understood why this has been allowed to go on in basketball.]

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