Or maybe this post should be why all the calls that are drawing attention from Sunday’s game were the correct calls. The truth is if the call went against your team, you won’t agree with this post no matter what I say. But the Lunatic thinks in the circumstance, the refs made the right calls.
We will switch back and forth between the games because I am going to knock off the easiest one first. At the end of the San Diego State vs Creighton game, Baylor Scheierman threw a baseball pass down the court, and Aztec’s Aguek Arop and Bluejay’s Arthur Kaluma tip the ball up in the air and it falls out of bounds.
One of the announcers mentioned Scheierman stepping on the line, but that didn’t matter – as long as his foot didn’t cross the line, he was still out of bounds and legally throwing the ball in.
You could ask who the ball went off – it looks to me that Arop touched the ball first, but depending on the angle, it looks like Kaluma actually touches the ball last. But regardless of that, it doesn’t matter.
I did the same thing the refs did and used a stopwatch to time from when it was touched to when it hit the floor multiple times, and each time I got somewhere between 1.2 and 1.3 seconds (and maybe most importantly, never less than 1.2). If the clock starts exactly when the ball is touched, the entire clock ran out – based on my timing reflexes, the officials got it right. And to be fair, even if my reflexes are slightly off, there would not be time to catch and shoot (and based on the middle point, it would have been San Diego State’s ball).
Lets move on to the Texas game with the loose ball foul on Texas’ Brock Cunningham. The Lunatic was wrong on Sunday’s post – there is a rule involving boxing out called displacement – basically, the rebounder has the right to their position and can use their body to stop the other rebounder from going through them to get the ball. But the rebounder can not move the other player.
When the shot goes up, you can see that Cunningham gets great position on Norchad Omier when he began to box out. But that position matters. When he started to box out, he was completely is the restricted zone and Omier was close to the baseline behind him. Omier started to move away from the basket and Cunningham held his position. But then Cunningham started backing Omier up. By the time Omier went in the air, both of them looked like they were in the middle of the lane – so a good 3-6 feet away from where they started. According to the rules, that is displacement – Cunningham moved Omier away from the basket (a significant amount).
This is my example of how much respect that officials should get. When I saw it live, because my eyes followed the shot, I thought it was a foul on Omier – Cunningham had position. But by the time my eye had moved to them, they were both in the middle of the lane – I had missed how far Cunningham had moved Omier. I needed to watch the replay on the March Madness app and force myself to watch them to see what really happened. During the game, one of the refs watched the rebounders the full time, saw what happened, managed to get the other officials to discuss it, and in a pressure-packed situation, agreed on what they felt was the right call. As a huge college basketball fan, I will complain from time to time about the officials – because that is what fans do. But I will always have tons of respect for what they do – it is a thankless job that quite frankly, they get right more often than they get credit for.
Now for the final call – and that is the foul on Darrion Trammell. With 3 seconds in the game, San Diego State’s guard desperately dribble towards the basket, and tried to put up a jumper before the buzzer. As the clock struck zero, the ball missed short on the rim and Trammell fell to the ground, but most importantly, a whistle blew for a foul on Bluejay’s Ryan Nembhard.
This to me is easy but to be fair, it isn’t where the debate is. Nembhard was beat, he chased Trammell from behind, pushed his left arm into Trammell as the Aztec guard shot the ball, and used that arm to push and try to block the shot. That push sent Trammell to the ground.
I heard an argument that the push didn’t impact the shot – that is ridiculous. Anyone who has shot a basketball knows it is a lot harder to hit the shot as you are being pushed from the side.
There are two other arguments – one is that the game was called so physical that you can’t make that call when you didn’t all game. The other is that you can’t make that call at the end of the game – you have to let the athletes win the game on their own.
But in both cases, there is a problem. Nembhard fouled Trammell from behind. Position matters. I might be willing to be swayed by this argument if Nembhard was playing great defensive position, jumped straight up to block the shot, and there was contact. But that is not what happened. Nembhard got beat, tried to block the shot from behind, and knocked Trammell over.
The let the athletes play is part of the issue. The refs allowed both teams to play very physical. I remember a few moments in the game where Creighton brought the ball up court, San Diego State got right in the player’s grill, and the Creighton player would use his arm to push the defender away. I don’t enjoy that type of basketball but that is what happens when you let the athletes play. But there is a point where you let them play and a point where you have to call something. If that same situation had happened, and instead of the defender being in front of him in his way, he came running from behind and tripped the ball handler, it would be called.
I also don’t like the argument at the end of the game. So you are basically saying that if there is 5 seconds left, I can make as much contact as I want to stop you from scoring. That just does not make sense. You can’t say it is a touch foul – Nembhard knocked Trammell to the ground. You can’t say it was physical defense because the player came from behind – he was out of position. At the end of the day, it is simply a foul, and it had to be called. Players sometimes get a physical play at the end of a game when they are in defensive position. But that was not the case here.
At the end of the day, I think the refs got all three of these plays right. I am sure Texas and Creighton fans will disagree. But I don’t think there should be any real controversy here.
