When North Carolina’s Brady Manek elbowed Baylor’s Jeremy Sochan in the face with 10:08 left on Sunday’s second-round game of the NCAA Tournament, it sent the refereeing team working on the game to the replay monitor with a big decision. Exclude a key player from the elimination game or give a lesser penalty and play on?
In the end, the team of Donnie Eppley, Kipp Kissinger and Brent Hampton made the right choice: it was an outrageous 2 fouls and Manek had to leave. The strangest thing is everything that happened after that.
The game turned into a street fight and Baylor applied extremely physical pressure all over the court that cut a 25-point deficit to a manageable number in shockingly fast time. Instead of curbing contact, the judges became bystanders. The Bears bumped and jostled and slapped, and the whistles didn’t sound—well, at least not against the aggressor, who was desperately trying to get back into the game. The whistles were blown many times against North Carolina.
Other than the double foul charged on both teams, all of the next seven calls were fouls on the Tar Heels. This is not to mention the fact that Karolina did not answer calls when she was detained. Most Egregious: Guard Caleb Love was body-locked in center court, resulting in a ball loss and Baylor’s dunk. Also at the end of the game, an out-of-bounds call was visibly missed, which was ruled a Baylor ball and should have been canceled on review.
The defending national champion Bears took the game into overtime, a staggering 10-minute comeback, but they were helped. North Carolina regrouped and won the OT, sparing the officials even more criticism than what was being thrown at them via social media as the hackfest unfolded.
AP Photo/Brynn Anderson
“No sane person would have guessed that the game was named correctly,” said ESPN analyst Jay Bilas, a member of the NCAA men’s basketball committee and a ruthless live-action critic of the current state of college refereeing.
Now here’s the kicker: Two of the three officials involved in this fiasco will reportedly work for Sweet Sixteen. According to Stadium’s Jeff Goodman, Hampton is one of nine assigned to work with the eastern region this week, while Kissinger will work with the south. Somehow they got high enough scores to move forward.
Bad refereeing was rewarded. And not just in that game. After two rounds of nationwide protests over the judging of the tournament, the NCAA says everything is fine and does not acknowledge any extraordinary issues.
“The officials have done a good job in the tournament,” National Officials Coordinator J.D. Collins told Sports Illustrated this week. “Over the past three seasons, we have averaged 96% accuracy when we blow the whistle and (about) 90% when we add plays where we should have blown the whistle. This year the officials meet that standard again.”
Bilas’ response to a 96% score: “JD Collins is a nice guy, but who are we trying to fool here? Whoever created this class, I want to take their class. It’s a simple five.”
As noted above, there were issues outside of North Carolina-Baylor that did not upstage the few officials involved. While Brian O’Connell rightfully didn’t move forward to work in the Sweet 16 after calling a mysterious technical foul on R. J. Melendez of Illinois for hanging on the ring, others in the controversy moved forward.
In Notre Dame’s narrow loss to Texas Tech, Red Raiders forward Kevin McCuller pulled off a breakaway dunk. For some reason, he reached out and grabbed the hoop with his other hand before dropping the ball – a clear basket interference that was never made. Replays showed veteran spokesman John Higgins looking straight at the game and still not calling. This game also became extremely physical in the final minutes, which benefited the Red Raiders.
“John Higgins, he should be inducted into the Big Twelve Hall of Fame this summer, right?” One prominent college coach who watched the Notre Dame-Texas Tech game said, noting that Higgins has long called Big 12 games and the Red Raiders are members of that conference. “Why was he allowed to announce this game?”
According to Goodman, Higgins moved to work in the East Region. Paul Selk, who also had a Notre Dame-Texas Tech game, will be running the South region this week.
In the final game of the second round, TCU tried to shock Arizona in first place in the last possession. Defender Mike Miles got into trouble near the middle of the court in the last seconds and ended up in a trap, hitting and flipping the ball. There was no announcement of an obvious foul, but there was also no report of Miles stepping on the halfway line just before he was blocked.
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The officials, at least one of whom was clearly out of position, did not announce anything. Crew members Keith Kimble and Doug Shaw will be working in the Midwest and Western regions this week, Goodman said.
“Challenged in the Arizona-TCU game, they missed one,” Bilas said. “The problem is that no in-game calls were made. But veteran officials know that someone has to move forward. They need someone who will call the games.”
Indeed, the pool of referees is small enough that established referees are virtually guaranteed to advance in the tournament regardless of how they actually perform. Ken Pomeroy’s website tracks all Division I umpire assignments and ranks umpires according to the level of regular season games assigned to them according to his performance. His reasoning is correct: the most respected officials at conferences get the biggest games.
This year, 17 of Pomeroy’s top 18 referees are still in the tournament. Among them are Kimble (No. 1), Higgins (No. 5), Kissinger (No. 7), Shaw (No. 8), and Silk (No. 13), despite being involved in controversial games. Did they get there by past reputation or current results? “It’s kind of an old boys network,” said one coach.
Tournament team administrators, members of the Division I men’s basketball committee, and umpires provide input to the umpires after each tournament game. They are given three options for evaluating an official: “strongly recommend” for promotion; “recommend” to advance; and “do not recommend” to move forward. Some wonder how much their feedback counts.
“Why even ask our opinion when they are just going to promote whoever they want?” Asked one administrator who voted “do not recommend” over the weekend to an official who moved forward.
Collins said he has only heard complaints from one coach in 52 tournament games so far. But around the world, people talk as much about judging as they do about St. Peter’s Cinderella and Mike Krzyzewski’s quest to come out on top.
“For the first time in a long time, refereeing has become a whole story,” said one well-known sports director. “It’s disappointing.”
Three disappointments:
- Refereeing is difficult and has become a thankless task. It is difficult to raise the next generation of judges when the current generation is mired in criticism.
- The brilliance of this tournament is undermined by underdog conspiracy theorists, who would rather claim their team was deceived by the referee than honestly beaten. This reflects the current political climate, with losers readily calling elections stolen rather than losers.
- Public questioning of officials is problematic for the NCAA to confront and publicly acknowledge during a March Madness demonstration. This undoubtedly fuels the NCAA’s “It’s OK” rhetoric.
“I understand why people in power do not want to undermine the credibility of officials,” Bilas said. “We don’t need to do this. But we don’t need to justify and justify either. We must be responsible.”
The main problem, as Bilas sees it – and I agree with it – is that the attempt made a few years ago to restore freedom of movement has not only stalled, but has gone backwards. The college game reverted to hammer and pincer defense rather than passing and cutting offense. Artistry loses to brute force.
“The way these games are played and called and how collegiate basketball has evolved into this… in many ways it’s quite similar to rugby,” Gonzaga’s Mark Few said Wednesday.
This can be exacerbated in a tournament when officials are even more reticent to foul star players or make a challenge that decides the game at the end of the season for the losing team. A smarter approach for a referee trying to advance is probably not to call against a controversial call. Letting the players decide it on the court is nice, but not fixing fouls can decide the outcome of the game.
The defining statistic on the subject: 16.65 fouls committed per team per game is the lowest in Division I history, or at least dates back to 1948, the first year for which the NCAA has national statistics. If this continues for the remainder of the tournament, it will be the third consecutive year of record low foul rates.
Relevant figures: Performance dropped to 71.06 points per game, the lowest since 2015. The field goal percentage is 44.08%, lower than last year and the second lowest in six years.
“They don’t call outright fouls,” Bilas said. “It’s pretty simple. There was really a lot of progress and we saw it all disappear this year.”
Rarely has this been clearer than in Sunday’s derby between North Carolina and Baylor. But in a sport that lacks high-profile officials, even leading this debacle is not enough to send the entire team home for the rest of the tournament.
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