Don't know if anyone is watching the Syracuse/Georgetown game, but a guy on Syracuse just got ejected for elbowing a GT player. Per the replay he was clearly trying to use a swim move to get around him and just grazed his head. I understand refs are trying to protect kids and keep the game clean, but this was clearly accidental and you should not punish a kid by kicking him out of the game. Anyone reading the papers tomorrow will see the kid got kicked out and think the worse when really it was an accident. I didn't see the Manny elbow, just heard about it on here and thought the worse. Upon seeing the replay it was clearly accidental. I am just really annoyed with the refs kicking kids out of games for playing hard, maybe a little too rough. And it really angers me that a Duke player does the same thing and just gets a technical and can continue playing. Sorry, just had to vent...
rundown of Michigan's riser
I agree, this whole flagrant foul thing has been bugging me since the Manny incident. It's just total crap to eject someone from the game for these borderline offenses.
I can't remember the link, but the NCAA director of officiating backed up the referee in the Manny, saying (in paraphrase) that it was the right call, not a judgement call on the part of the ref, and thus an automatic ejection. He went on to say that whether it was accidental or not had nothing to do with it being flagrant, stating that intent had no bearing on making it a flagrant foul.
Fine, I get all of this. However, he continued by saying something like, "How could we possibly judge the intent of the player, we don't know what's going on inside his head?" Brilliant logic! Uh, I don't know, genius, maybe because you already have a fucking rule called an INTENTional foul. Gaaa, that pissed me off so much.
Anyway, the easy solution would be to institute an NBA-style two-tiered flagrant foul rule. Problem solved, and we're not having this conversation.