So, it’s been a pretty rough year for my Wildcats. No talent, new coach, completely different philosophy, all that.
Let’s pile one more thing onto that list: the quality of refereeing in the Southeastern Conference, particularly Tuesday night’s game against Mississippi State.
I don’t know why I’m surprised that the refs couldn’t correctly identify a foul, seeing as how the head of officials is Gerald “Die, Kentucky, Die in a Fire” Boudreaux, but this was just ridiculous.
Kentucky took NO foul shots in the first half. The Bulldogs’ Varnado recorded 11 rebounds and 10 blocks before committing a foul, which is surprising, since replays showed at least four fouls by my count. If you think I’m kidding, check out www.kentucky.com, which shows Varnado executing a “block” on Patrick Patterson where he appears to have grabbed Pat by the wrist.
Also, players are apparently allowed to stiff-arm defenders while dribbling now, a move I was disabused of back in little league (and one of the prime reasons I am not a professional basketball player now.)
It’s just ridiculous to me that SEC referees can be so consistently bad. I haven’t seen a well-officiated SEC game EVER. It’s not like the rules of basketball are too convoluted to be applied consistently, as evidenced by the ability of referees not employed by Boudreaux or John Clougherty to successfully call games fairly.
Sometimes I wonder if there aren’t a few good ol’ boys passing large envelopes of cash to referees. But that would be crazy, right? Who has ever heard of a referee intentionally throwing basketball games?
Call me when your conference’s bad refs take on the status of legends like Dick Paparo and Lenny Wirtz. We still have the likes of Karl Hess and Duke Edsall stalking our courts as well (the Two Dukies are, of course, the repository of first resort when it comes to mocking the clowns who officiate in the ACC).
I don’t know how the most storied college basketball conference in America consistently ends up with such degenerates, but we do. Of course, I also want to know where you see this alleged “decent” officiating. I always thought the SEC and Big XII games, in general, were called least-offensively of a bad lot (though I haven’t watched a lot of SEC games in recent years since I moved from the South). Big Ten basketball games are clearly covered by their football refs who are looking to make extra money on the side, ACC games are wonderfully inconsistent (refs either call everything or nothing, sometimes within different stretches of the same game, and ACC refs seem to be among the biggest “I will make this game about me” divas around), Pac 10 refs (at least historically–I also haven’t watched as much Pac-10 in the last couple of years) tend to let a lot of shit go around the perimeter, and the Big East refs want to be the Big Ten refs.
Oh, I’m familiar with Karl Hess. (Kentucky’s win percentage in games he’s officiated is .629, which is even lower than Boudreaux and Clougherty.)
And we gave Clougherty to the ACC to be director of officiating. You’re welcome.
I watched part of the Michigan State-Ohio State game just before UK-MSU last night, and the officiating appeared to be better than any I saw in the late game. I’ve also seen, amazingly, better officiating in the OVC than the SEC in recent years, which doesn’t argue well for the caliber of SEC refs.
I don’t watch a lot of ACC games, but the ones I’ve seen have been just as badly officiated as SEC games.
Hess is probably my chief whipping boy. I loathe the sight of him! :mad:
I almost complained about Clougherty, but he replaced an even bigger dimwit, Fred Barakat. I could go on about the litany of ACC officiating horrors at great and tedious length, but I really think that the main problem is the diva tendency (most prevalent, IMO, in Hess, which is why he irks me so). As you well know, college hoops is SRS BZNS in the ACC (well, maybe not to the recently adopted bastard step-children, but seriously, fuck expansion) and, especially when the Big Four are involved, all it takes is one little thing to set off a major powderkeg and ACC fans, coaches, players and refs have elephant-esque memories. One single Duke-Wake Forest game played in 2003 (the sucker went to OT and waves of players fouled out) had repercussions in Duke-Wake games for two or three years after that game was played. Refs would posture, they’d make a big deal out of calling ticky-tack shit in the first few minutes, which would then piss off both coaching staffs. The refs would then theatrically chastise both coaching staffs, continue with the ticky-tack BS and the crowds would start to get a bit hostile because they knew the history and what was going on, and everything just went downhill from there.
I shudder to think about the consequences that Hansbrough-Henderson will have on officiating in Duke-UNC games for the next couple of years. If there is a God, that motherfucker Hess will not be assigned to the game…
PS. I love the fact that you know that win percentage–I totally wish we’d invited you guys into the conference during expansion (OK, I know that doesn’t make any sense for UK to do, but it would have made for such awesome basketball rivalries).
Well, I did cheat and use the Kentucky Basketball Statistics Project to look it up, but still, there are Kentucky fans who TRACK referee win percentages.
I would love to see a reconstituted Southern Conference in some form, actually. If nothing else, I’d like to trade South Carolina to get Georgia Tech back, and I’d love to see a 16-team SEC with UNC, Duke (sucks), Wake or GA Tech and Maryland, even though it would be the most murderous conference schedule EVER. I think Vandy might drop athletics all together if they had to play at Rupp, Chapel Hill AND Cameron Indoor every year. Of course, I’d also love to see that rat-looking bastard Coach K have to go play in Memorial Gym and yell down the floor at his team for half the game.
I’ll let the Duke comments go, as you are a UK fan and well, these things are as they are, but what I would love to see is a preseason tournament that pays homage to the SoCon and the old Big Four tournament. It’s a goddamn crime that Duke isn’t guaranteed home and home against State and Wake (Whatever hatred I have for ACC refs and Fred Barakat and all those dorks is amplified by a million for John Swofford. If the Carolina family has a will, Patriarch Dean needs to do the right thing and write that fucker out of it.) and I would fully support a resurrection of the Big Four Tournament in order to make sure that Duke gets in two games a year against the Wuffies and the Deacs. It would be awesome if the rest of the tournament field did include some former SoCon schools (except Maryland–the rest of us in the ACC have to listen to their fucking whining come ACC Tournament time every year…they should not be invited).
Actually, this was a game that preceded that one by two years. It was played in February of 2003 (Redick/Williams/Dockery/Randolph’s freshman campaign). Here’s the box score. As you can see, Duke just got wiped out in the 2nd OT because of all the fouls. You’ll note there were 64 fouls in this thing, Duke had five players foul out and Wake had three guys foul out. The memory of this game really did leave its mark on the games between the Devils and Deacs for the next couple of years (the Trent Strickland blown dunk in the at the Joel in Duke’s '06 ACC opener seemed to lay the ghost to bed, as it were).
