congrats on the michigan win. question for folks at the game. there were some blatant homer calls down the stretch but it looked like the worst was on the scramble in the final seconds. on the replay it definitely looked like a michigan player touched the ball last before it went into the backcourt and another michigan player dived on it - over and back, right. the refs reviewed the play but only seemed to care about giving michigan extra time for another shot. could anyone see clearly if michigan touched it last in the front court?

I don't recall that exact play, but like most of the other " small" schools we are used to watching our teams get the short end of suspect officiating.when playing against a big money teams. I'm not saying that there is some sort of conspiracy with the NCAA, I just think the refs get caught up in the moment and maybe even intimidated by the overpaid coaches at those schools.

Dear pono,
I agree with you. It should have been an over and back call. Even the announcers made no mention of that possibility, only time being put back on the clock. Which brings up another point on that play. To me, the play continues until the referee blows his whistle, not when a coach calls a time out. Because if that is the case, then there should have been only a second and a half left to play, not the added second that was given to Michigan.

College refs as a whole are pretty terrible. It looks like we are back to calling EVERYTHING a charge. I mean, when 6'8 240 Ricky Doyle is flopping on 6'3 190 Ray Lee and 5'11 170 Mike Talley, that should be called a block every time. Yet there were seemingly tons of offensive fouls called on us, even when guys weren't set or when our guy was getting bumped the entire way in.

It is easily the worst part of the college game now. Flopping is commonplace, and it pretty much rewards bad defense. If refs stopped calling offensive fouls so much, less teams would do it.

the first 5 minutes and the last 5 minutes featured quite a few bad calls that favored UM. I was sitting right there for the play you describe, and it seemed like a clear over-and-back. about 15-20 seconds before that Talley was mauled on the sidelines, but instead of calling the obvious foul they called Talley for stepping on the sideline. I'm with Sam on the garbage charging calls, and there were a couple lame calls on Samuels.

i don't normally complain about the refs. when i do, it's because they're slowing down the pace of the game, not because i think they have an agenda. in the UM game, however, it seemed to me that they were heavily favoring Michigan.

exactly, the clock stops when a ref recognizes the time out by raising his arm and blowing his whistle. on the replay they are supposed to set the clock by when they can observe a ref raising his arm. in the replay none of the refs raised their arm until about 1.5 (beilen signaled timeout at about 2.3). there was one ref not in the camera shot. i was just blown away that the refs and tv guys were missing the obvious. it should be emu ball. game basically over. the whole point of having the long tv monitor replay ref conferences was to check on close calls like the who the ball went off of in the final minute of a close game. here was a (potentially) game decided call and everyone ignored the obvious.

generally, i agree, refs over time seem to even things out. however, there can be prejudices and assumptions and in all sports i think mens college ball teams on the road against name programs have it the hardest. as a mac type team you can't get fair calls until you begin to dominate a name opponent in those situations. emu could have easily lost that game because of questionable or outright blown calls. congrats for playing through. the zone d was a thing of beauty.

(12-12-2014 03:26 AM)pono Wrote:  exactly, the clock stops when a ref recognizes the time out by raising his arm and blowing his whistle. on the replay they are supposed to set the clock by when they can observe a ref raising his arm. in the replay none of the refs raised their arm until about 1.5 (beilen signaled timeout at about 2.3). there was one ref not in the camera shot. i was just blown away that the refs and tv guys were missing the obvious. it should be emu ball. game basically over. the whole point of having the long tv monitor replay ref conferences was to check on close calls like the who the ball went off of in the final minute of a close game. here was a (potentially) game decided call and everyone ignored the obvious.

generally, i agree, refs over time seem to even things out. however, there can be prejudices and assumptions and in all sports i think mens college ball teams on the road against name programs have it the hardest. as a mac type team you can't get fair calls until you begin to dominate a name opponent in those situations. emu could have easily lost that game because of questionable or outright blown calls. congrats for playing through. the zone d was a thing of beauty.

I completely agree that the built in biases of game officials are toward the higher ranked team and the home team.

I think it also cares forward to coaches. There are plenty of 'legendary' coaches like Izzo, Pitino, Roy Williams, etc. who are probably considered 'infallible'. I'm sure plenty of game officials doubt their own eyes when Izzo vehemently disagrees.

It seems true in all sports. E.g., Cabrera gets calls on balls/strikes that a .250 rookie would never get.