Originally posted by TwinsRRUs:
Heck, maybe one of the referees has an agenda and pushes his fellow refs to ref a certain way. I am sure it can be like many other jobs where some coworkers are bullies and you get pushed around by them and do things their way.
For those of you who have been a ref, have you ever been intimidated by another ref that you have refereed with?
This has never happened to me, nor have I ever heard of it happening to anyone.
We have discussed in length some of the challenges involved with being a college basketball official, so I'm not going to rehash them. Bottom line - the NBA model that puts employment, training/philosophy, leadership, and transparency (they've recently begun an initiative to improve this) into a streamlined hierarchy that ultimately rolls up to the commissioner is much more effective at producing more consistently called, uninfluenced plays and games. The NCAA does not have this model, and the quality of officiating is a result of the fragmented way things operate in the world of college sports. This isn't all the NCAA's fault. They don't control the conferences. The conferences call the shots, and within the conferences, the coaches call the shots, albeit indirectly, but quite persuasively.
I'm not sure I feel that it's corrupt or that I'm corrupt for choosing to pursue this career. But it does make for some very challenging waters to navigate when you're trying to keep assignors happy and out of hot water with league commissioners and influential coaches. I don't think I've ever actually made a call or ignored a call purposely bc I was concerned about losing my job. But I have been coached to evaluate contact and happenings on the court with the perspective of whether or not I need to make that call at such and such point in the game. Call the obvious, get the elephants, no matter where they occur on the court. If you think you see an ant, let the primary official make the call. If he passes on it, trust that he did so for a reason, unless you know he didn't see something that you saw. Then go get it. When you start calling out of your primary, correct call percentage decreases considerably.
Regarding the replay at the end of the game last night - I have no problem with the officials deciding they weren't able to see with 100% confidence the tip off the finger brush the ball before going out of bounds. Given the 20-24" monitor they have to see it on, and the lack of viewing angles that they're able to use, they very well may not have had the angle or the pixels to make the decision. It's the way it goes.
I can tell you that there will likely be changes to the replay rules coming to the college game. This isn't a result of things that happened in the tournament or anything like that.
Fans assume that officials, who are at player level on the court and see all the action at full speed, while watching their own primary and secondary areas as well as trying to reach into action areas when they don't have competitive match-ups, see plays as clearly as they look on TV. Sometimes, the fans at home have a better angle than any of the officials. That's the point of replay, but the current replay rule restricts its use, and all of the angles available to the TV viewer are not available to the alternate official sitting court-side.
Sometimes, there is only one official with the angle that shows a defender in legal guarding position at the time an offensive player left the floor before charging into the defender, and he also may be the official furthest from the play and, as the official with tertiary responsibility for that play or area of the court, he may not see the whole play. That's why angles and floor positioning are two of the most important fundamentals to perfect. You have to put yourself in position to see multiple, quickly occurring things happen at once. Sometimes officials are out of position. Sometimes they're in a great position and their vision gets straight-lined by the body of a player not involved in the play.
One other thing - I didn't take Coach K's comment to mean they officials were missing calls in the first half. Maybe he did mean it that way, but I didn't see it as such. He is well aware Wisconsin plays extremely good defense and rarely fouls. I think he meant what he said, they were driving and they weren't doing enough to cause Wisconsin to foul them. And that was the truth. Wisconsin wasn't fouling on Duke's drives to the hoop in the first half.
Anyway - this isn't meant to cover for or make excuses for anything that may have been missed last night. I have a lot of respect for the 3 that worked the game. They called it how they saw it. That's the best anyone can ask.