The official Ref vent thread
The dudes are really really shitty officials. What would you want to hear them say? I mean, they can't see obvious goaltending. They can't see obvious kicked balls. They can't see obvious blocks. They call fouls on the wrong players. They make calls so bad that they could be the national spokespeople for LensCrafters (this being their "before" performance). What could they possibly say in a press conference that would be interesting other than "I am so f'ing bad at officiating that I am immediately retiring"?
Louisville was fouling nearly every fucking play. It was like playing MSU at MSU. Proud of the guys for how they hung in there and had a small shot despite the anything goes reffing and constant over the back.
I wish we would have received the memo that blantant and aggressive hand checking would be allowed this game...
One that I haven't seen mentioned yet is late in the game when Spike was trying to push the ball upcourt to beat the press. He had already spun toward the sideline and gotten by his man and was about to turn the jets upcourt... but there was a ref standing on the court squarely in his path. He had to pull it back and try to beat the press again.
I got several texts tonight from a couple buddies of mine who HATE Michigan, and even they texted me saying that Michigan got robbed by the officials, which is saying a lot coming from a couple of people who hate Michigan and look for any excuse to talk trash to me about Michigan.
Instead of the normal GIF post (or perhaps in addition), I would like to see all the calls (bad) posted and including any that might have went against Louisville (Although can't recall any, but I will assume that is my bias).
However, the thing that really struck me (watching from Europe in the wee hours of the morning alone) is that I have become numb to this kind of bad officiating against the Wolverines. I have come to expect it, which is sad.
I don't see anyone mentioning or maybe I missed it, the block in the back on McGary. He got crushed in the lower back, no-call.
http://forum.officiating.com/basketball/94738-louisville-michigan-natl-championship.html
Seems that they picked up on most of the blown calls.
Obsession with officiating is ruining sports for a lot of fans, and this game is no exception. Officiating hasn't deteriorated, we just talk about it more. It can be questionable and certainly calls are blown. But this constant whine about my team losing because of the refs is beyond old. That goes for fans at all levels. We got hosed on a few, but I saw Louisville players getting hammered under the offensive glass with no foul.
Believe me, it's better to just apprecaite a great season and accept you lost to an outstanding team. Blaming the refs for loses is disingenuous and really takes away from what these kids put out on the floor.
Watch the game at least before you comment.
these kids put on the floor, is having what otherwise was a great game somewhat sullied by officiating that doesn't come close to matching the level of play by both teams. The calls that were missed in this game were not acceptable, plain and simple. They were obvious calls, I can give officials slack when it comes to difficult calls or bang-bang plays, but not plays that are obvious even at full speed. The problem was many of the obvious blown calls happened to be significant and more of those worked against UM than Louisville.
Whether or not you think it cost Michigan the game or not (personally I think it played a role, though the defensive and rebounding issues in the second half, were the bigger problem) the bottom line is the officiating was embarrassing for a national championship game. You say it is getting old for fans to blame officials, while it is also getting pretty old that no matter how shitty the officials are there are always people that give them a free pass. These guys are paid to do a job just like anybody else, they should be held accountable, in this case this crew shouldn't be allowed near a Final Four game again.
if it were 1 call or a bad call late thats 1 thing but the whole game was borderline comical.it looked like the outcome was predetermined and no matter how good michigan played they would find a way to screw em. this isnt spilled milk,rather butthurt.
You think the outcome was predetermined, but I'm the idiot?
What do you think happened? The NCAA thought Pitino and the HOF would go nicely with a national title, so they contacted the officials and told them to throw it to Lousiville?
Seriously, paint me the scenario you're talking about. How might it go down, and who would be involved?
1. Goaltending right off the bat...kinda set the tone for how things were going to play out.
2. The blatant "kicked ball" possession- the refs miss this call and don't stop play. Leads to a scramble on the baseline where Caris ties up the Louisville player who is laying on the baseline. Somehow Louisville is granted a timeout, and then Hancock immediately hits a 3 to start his run late in the 1st half.
3. Trey's block. All ball, obviously. This was a pre-judged call. That ref was going to call a foul no matter what happened because he figured Trey wasn't going to give an easy layup. Easily the most egregious error of the night.
4. Hancock's "4th". They call a foul on a guy who's not even in the play, which bails Hancock out. He then proceeds to pick up the 4th foul on McGary moments later. Then, hits a 3 late in the game after picking up what would have been his 5th foul.
5. A hodge-podge: McGary blatantly undercut, leads to a jumpball possession. Back to back possessions early in the 2nd half we hit jumpers (GR3 and Burke) where there was contact on the arms of the shooters- no calls. (both of which Steve Kerr said should have been fouls). The Burke non-shooting foul on Stauskas' outlet pass from his back.
Proud of our boys nonetheless. The more the game progressed, the more I felt Pitino's influence of "Creaning" the refs was gonna pay out for them.
this wasn't some cold night in January. This was for the national championship. Epic fail by the NCAA for fielding these refs. The most obvious goatending call is when it comes off the back board. When they missed that, I knew we were in for a long night
I was watching the yahoo sports thread to keep track of stats and they had Hancock getting the foul before it was changed to the other guy. This time it isn't a lot of pissed Michigan fans feeling like we got jobbed. the officiating was terrible on both sides. It just seemed our calls were more inopportune than L'ville's.
The players deserved better.
after just watching the game a second time, i came up with 16 points the refs gave Louisville with shit calls,missed goaltending,bs fouls or non fouls. i knew it was going to be difficult going in but the rick pitino/kevin ware lovefest was out of hand.he should have been t'd up a couple times. looked like a f gus macker tourney.maybe thats where pitino is getting these streetballers.
For some reason I have this John L. Smith voice in my head, "the player's are playing their hearts out, but the refs are screwing it up!" and it won't go away.
Someone tell me, in all honesty, you would be this outraged with the officiating if we had won. You can't.
There's a difference between saying the officiating was poor and saying the officiating was poor in a manner that only impacted us. The amount of contact we put on Louisville players going up with the ball under their basket, without a foul, was jaw dropping at times. And it looked to me like we were getting calls going to the basket for far less contact, at least in some stretches.
I just really think the whole officiating obcession is ruining sports at all levels, to some extent. The more we repeat the meme of awful officiating to one another, the more we believe it, and the more we come away with the empty feeling that the games aren't played on a platform of fair and reasonable (though imperfect) oversight.
So many fans believe officiating is simultaneously deteriorating at multiple sports on multiple levels. College football, college basketball, the NBA, the NFL, MLB, all just seem to suffer from it. But no one has a rational explanation as to why all would deteriorate at once. That's because it's basically a myth, a myth that is tearing away at the very fabric of our sports, at least for the fans.
How about, just shut up. Spare us your self-righteous b.s. Or maybe make your points at a more relevant time, like perhaps if UM fans were bitching about the refs in any of the 7 games we lost this season. This didn't happen.
Some of us are capable of looking at things objectively. I almost always find myself saying, "I didn't have a problem with the refs" when we lose. What pleasure do people like you derive from coming around here and telling other fans they're delusional? Do you think it somehow makes you better than us? Above us?
Check the comments sections of all of the articles from the major websites following this game. They're littered with neutral fans taking issue with the officiating. And the consensus is that UM got the short end of the stick. That's how you get a pulse on whether the officiating was so bad that it deserves to be called out.
Why call it out? I don't know. Maybe because it's therapeutic. Or maybe the feedback will eventually reach the crew who called that game and give them pause to think about how they just denied Trey Burke, the University of Michigan, and college basketball fans everywhere, what should have been one of the greatest blocks in college basketball history.
Michigan teams are rarely the benefactors of huge blown calls -- in very important games -- and for some of us with a good memory, it just plain sucks. For me it started as a fan when a #1 ranked UM team saw Desmond Howard tripped in the end zone of the MSU game. There was also Spartan Bob the clock keeper who gave Sparty more time than it deserved to throw a last-minute TD. (We were ranked #6 in the country going into that game). The horribly lopsided refereeing Red has had to put up with in the NCAA tourney over the years can't be overstated (examples too numerous to list but John Gravelese's disallowed OT goal against MIA for a right to play in a Frozen Four in Detroit in 2010 is indicative).
It's not to say we've never had a huge call go our way in a very important game. It's arguable that Rumeal Robinson wasn't fouled at the end of regulation in the 1989 Seton Hall NC game. Doesn't mean he wouldn't have made a layup instead of free throws, but that is the only game I can remember where I felt like LOU fans must have felt on multiple occasions last night. And don't tell me about Morgan's block that was a called a charge against Syracuse. In real-time, and even after replays, that still looks like a charge to me.
Compare these to the breaks our rivals got in winning their NC's. MSU was the benefactor of the worst officiated game I ever saw against Larry Eustachy's Iowa St. team the year they won in 2000. And OSU had lost to MIA in the Fiesta Bowl, until a ref named Porter called a phantom PI penalty in the end zone giving them new life.
All I'm saying is just shut up. Don't lecture fans about being bad fans because they possess critical thinking skills. Your broad generalizations about fans and officiating and the deterioration of sports in general because of the collective mindset of complainers like myself is sickening. Just shut up and stop "obcessing" about how people like us are ruining sports.
I'm curious as to when refs in basketball are supposed to review plays? I understand that there are blown calls - we're human. Isn't that what video review is for?
Honestly, does anyone here know when or how a ref determines that something needs to be reviewed? In college basketball, it's seems completely arbitrary to me, and it seems like easy low-hanging fruit that officials can address to prevent this from happening again (i.e. coaches challenges).
I am apparently late to this thread, but I just want to say THHAANNKK YYOOUU.
Seriously, fuck these refs.
They missed/screwed up so many calls the whole game. In the first half, it seemed like it was directed at both teams, but in the end we got the shit end of it all.
Losing a good game is one thing, but losing a complete officiating debacle is another thing entirely. Unfortunately, we made our mistakes too.
The Jist:
(Reuters) - Hundreds of soccer matches have been fixed in a global betting scam run from Singapore, police said on Monday, in a blow to the image of the world's most popular sport and a multi-billion dollar industry.
About 680 suspicious matches including qualifying games for the World Cup and European Championships, and the Champions League for top European club sides, have been identified in an inquiry by European police forces, the European anti-crime agency Europol, and national prosecutors.
Why would this only be isolated to soccer?
April 10th, 2013 at 12:03 AM ^
I'm thinking the calls they missed were too blatant for this. If I were fixing a game, I wouldn't blow an obvious goal tend at the beginning of the game. Or a foul on the wrong guy that I couldn't know would later help change the game. To fix a game, you shade your calls the other way, maybe get their important players in foul trouble, things like that. Which yes, those happened. But if they do all that plus blow horribly obvious calls, that just makes them bad refs. (Plus, they missed some ridiculous things both ways, like the kick ball. [How do you miss a kick ball at knee-height from a 6'10" guy?]) I'm not saying you're crazy and it couldn't happen. It's just a bad way to fix a game; it's too obvious. It's like the refs' version of The Man Who Knew Too Little.
The kick ball would have also helped Michigan, as it would have forced Louisville into a riskier inbouding the ball situation with less time on the shot clock.
Instead, play just continued.
April 12th, 2013 at 10:38 PM ^
But at the time of the call, they wouldn't have known that. A ref trying to call things for Louisville would have called that kick ball on UM. A ref looking at the cheerleaders or whatever they were watching instead of the game misses that call.
My take away: Louisville has a better rugby team than Michigan. Michigan has a better basketball team than Louisville. Fortunately for Louisville, and unfortunately for Michigan, someone seemed to forget to tell the refs that this was being billed as a "Basketball Game." No need to be a rocket scientist to know before tipoff that if the game is played like rugby and only 1/3 of the fouls are called on either team, Louisville will win this game. A game called even reasonably physically but not out of control and you have a "real" basketball game that either team might win. The winner was chosen by the style of play (rugby), not by the talent on the court. But it did make for some good NCAA photo ops with Ware and Pitino, and of course better not let a team with a lot of underclassmen that might go pro win the tournament two years in a row. No calls decided this game as much or more so than the many bad calls. The "style" of play allowed was perfectly suited to Louisville, and no so Michigan. Just sayin.
Yet the only Big Ten team to survive to the end.