Last night I lost half of my Final Four picks with WVU's tough loss and Gonzaga's choke. Tonight, after Boston College racked up dumb turnovers at a Maryland-like pace and went 8-17 from the foul line, I was down to UConn. I picked UConn to win the National Championship because they have the best players and every now and then play like a great team. However, on my "College Hoops Disdain Chart" they're about a 7. They don't evoke the ire that Duke does, but in most games I root against them. (I haven't always disliked them. I liked them well enough during the Tate George years and even in the Richard Hamilton years. It's their recent teams that bug me, particularly this year's squad--a group of hot dogs led by a laptop swiping point guard.) So when Washington started the game with a full head of steam, I had no qualms abandoning my bracket and rooting for UW.
Unfortunately, UW's boneheaded plays at the end of regulation and OT coupled with some of the absolutely worst officiating I've ever seen allowed UConn to stumble on to the Elite Eight.
Boneheaded Play #1 -- Up four with eleven seconds in the game, UW's center fouls Marcus Williams going in for a layup, leading to a three-point play. Just concede the basket, you idiot! Maybe repeatedly bleaching his hair caused brain damage.
Boneheaded Play #2 -- Up three with nine seconds to play, Lorenzo Romar elects to just play straight up D rather than fouling UConn just as they cross half court, with say five seconds left, and forcing them to hit two FT's, which would still leave them trailing. Instead, Rashad Anderson (a.k.a. "The Dagger") hits a game-tying three. Kudos to Anderson; he did play quite well.
Boneheaded Play #3 -- Appleby deciding not to put up a shot after a great steal in OT, only to throw the ball away on a cross-court pass.
However, even with these plays, UW still would've won the game rather comfortably if the refs hadn't been an embarassment to their profession. For starters, UConn shot 47 FT's to UW's 23. Now, I realize that sometimes FT discrepancies like that indicate that one team was more aggressive than the other, but that was certainly not the case tonight. I don't have the time or energy to list the myriad of poor calls (or no calls) the refs made, but a few of the worst were the foul and the technical foul on Roy (neither he nor Gay really merited a T), the obvious goaltending call in OT that would've put UW up one, and the foul on Dentmon when Williams fell down without Dentmon so much as breathing on him.
So, despite picking UConn to win the tournament, my mantra from now until the end of the tourney will be "anybody but UConn."
Unfortunately, UW's boneheaded plays at the end of regulation and OT coupled with some of the absolutely worst officiating I've ever seen allowed UConn to stumble on to the Elite Eight.
Boneheaded Play #1 -- Up four with eleven seconds in the game, UW's center fouls Marcus Williams going in for a layup, leading to a three-point play. Just concede the basket, you idiot! Maybe repeatedly bleaching his hair caused brain damage.
Boneheaded Play #2 -- Up three with nine seconds to play, Lorenzo Romar elects to just play straight up D rather than fouling UConn just as they cross half court, with say five seconds left, and forcing them to hit two FT's, which would still leave them trailing. Instead, Rashad Anderson (a.k.a. "The Dagger") hits a game-tying three. Kudos to Anderson; he did play quite well.
Boneheaded Play #3 -- Appleby deciding not to put up a shot after a great steal in OT, only to throw the ball away on a cross-court pass.
However, even with these plays, UW still would've won the game rather comfortably if the refs hadn't been an embarassment to their profession. For starters, UConn shot 47 FT's to UW's 23. Now, I realize that sometimes FT discrepancies like that indicate that one team was more aggressive than the other, but that was certainly not the case tonight. I don't have the time or energy to list the myriad of poor calls (or no calls) the refs made, but a few of the worst were the foul and the technical foul on Roy (neither he nor Gay really merited a T), the obvious goaltending call in OT that would've put UW up one, and the foul on Dentmon when Williams fell down without Dentmon so much as breathing on him.
So, despite picking UConn to win the tournament, my mantra from now until the end of the tourney will be "anybody but UConn."
Did you watch the end of the BC/Villanova game??? HORRIBLE officiating. Nova was up 1 ... 12 seconds left, they miss a shot and BC pulls down the rebound. As the player comes down with the ball (don't recall who it was), he gets tied up. No big deal ... the possession arrow is to BC ... so it's still OUR (hey, I'm from Massachusetts, even if I haven't lived there in 11 years and I've never actively followed BC) ball with 12 seconds left to take the last shot to win. Right? WRONG. The ref calls TRAVELLING on the guy who came down with the rebound because when he got tied up, he was pulled to the floor in the fight for the ball. ALKSDFJALKSJD?!
Villanova gets the ball and promptly scores. BC manages to hit a desparation three to tie the game and force OT, which they eventually lost... but it was an OT that never should have been played. BC should have had the last shot of the game to decide the winner one way or the other at the end of regulation. GRRRRRRR
And I misspelled desperation. I suck. /sigh
Yeah, there were some bad calls in that game, too. The traveling call in particular was terrible; it was obviously a jump ball. But if BC hadn't gone 8-17 from the foul line, they would've won in regulation.