Tracy Smith Suspended for Arizona Game (Updated at 2:15pm)

Jesus. Right before one of our ‘defining’ games for the season.

Obviously, Smith should have just called the refs a bunch of GD MutherF’ers right on the court during the game so that he could be afforded the same flexibility that Coach K and Gary Williams receive on a nightly basis.

Link to Wolfpacker

RALEIGH, N.C. – NC State men’s basketball coach Sidney Lowe has announced that junior Tracy Smith has been suspended for the Wolfpack’s game at Arizona for violating the ACC policy regarding commenting on officials.

Smith, who made the comments last night following the loss at Wake Forest, will continue to practice and travel with the team to Arizona, but will not compete.

“I was caught up in the heat of the moment, but should not of made the comments I did,” said Smith. “I want to apologize to my coaches, my teammates, and last night’s officials for this situation.”

To listen to Smith’s post game comments, click on the link.

NC State was called for 25 fouls last night compared to 17 for Wake Forest.

Link to the N&O, which clarifies that this decision was made by Coach Lowe, not the ACC.

The ACC confirmed Monday that it was N.C. State’s decision to suspend Smith, not a league-imposed penalty. Wolfpack coach Sidney Lowe declined to comment on Monday.

Folks, that is all semantics. The ACC should have also taken the time to confirm that they would have imposed the penalty if NC State had not imposed it. The N&O has also linked the audio of Smith’s comment in their entry.

Foul trouble limited Smith, State’s leading scorer and rebounder, to 9 minutes in the first half. He picked up his second foul with 8:27 left and sat the remainder of the half. He then fouled out with 5:28 left in the game, which State lost 67-59. Smith finished with 11 points and a team-best 10 rebounds but wasn’t happy with the way the game was called.”

You will note that many of the educated members of our community made comments about those ‘bad feelings’ that happened upon noticing Karl Hess’ presence at the beginning the game. They weren’t alone as things weren’t so rosy in my living room either when I saw Hess.

FWIW, you will find this recent entry at Rush the Court fantastically timely and details Sean McDonough (and Jay Bilas’) recent ripping of Hess.

Karl Hess, he was involved in the 54-foul game the other night, and he’s one of these officials, unfortunately, who always finds a way, it seems, to be at the center of the action. You don’t come here to watch him officiate, but more often than not, he finds himself at the center of attention.

There is A LOT more there that you should check out. What McDonough fails to recognize is that he just described almost every ‘lead’ official in the Atlantic Coast Conference while also crystallizing why our league’s institutions have fared so (relatively) poorly in the NCAA Tournament over the last few years.

This is also being discussed on the SFN forums by clicking here.

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09-10 Basketball

45 Responses to Tracy Smith Suspended for Arizona Game (Updated at 2:15pm)

  1. Daily Update 12/21/2009 at 2:03 PM #

    I was reading the paper over lunch and wondering when this suspension was going to come.

  2. T-FIC 12/21/2009 at 2:07 PM #

    GREEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTTT!

    (he was right, the officials were absolutely horrid last night)

  3. RBCRowdy 12/21/2009 at 2:14 PM #

    how long until the molding young men people and the just win people start an all out flame war in the chat room?

  4. norcalpack 12/21/2009 at 2:23 PM #

    Utter bull! He really is better off cussing them up and down the court like K. Unbelievable….

  5. StateFans 12/21/2009 at 2:23 PM #

    To be fair…I didn’t expect to win a road game in the mountain/pacific time zone the day before Christmas Eve…but, this really sucks.

  6. gcpack 12/21/2009 at 2:27 PM #

    Is the suspension being doled out by Lowe or by the ACC?

    It better be Lowe. If its the conference then another case of letting WF and UNC suspend their players when they screw up and enforcing the conference rules when its State.

    Remember when the ACC suspended J. Hodge for hitting Steve Blake but let WF take care of the suspension when Chris Paul tickled Julius’ jewels?

  7. Clarksa 12/21/2009 at 2:28 PM #

    ^N&O confirmed it was Lowe…but I thought it was an ACC rule…so he may have done it knowing that if he didn’t, they would.

  8. LRM 12/21/2009 at 2:32 PM #

    No one should be surprised that we are held accountable to a different set of rules than the league’s premier teams.

    I truly suspect that Lowe was in front of this one as a way to show everyone he’s in control.

  9. Daily Update 12/21/2009 at 2:35 PM #

    IMO, the ACC would have suspended him if Lowe didn’t. Just like the ACC would have suspended Donte Miss if Butch Davis didn’t.

  10. packbackr04 12/21/2009 at 2:40 PM #

    is there a video of all of smiths fouls? is there a video of the 30 or so missed muggings that our players recvd last night?

  11. old13 12/21/2009 at 2:41 PM #

    It’s too bad because his comments were spot on!

  12. Shadow722 12/21/2009 at 3:21 PM #

    Here is an interesting sidebar to the Tracy Smith suspension and referee Karl Hess:

    Apparently Sean Miller Zona’s head coach also has had major problems with calls by Referee Hess this year. And Hess is again scheduled to call the NCSU v Zona game on Wednesday Night in Tuson. So who is Hess going to favor, as he hates both teams? A conundrum for sure……Could we see both head coaches take their teams off the floor? That would be a sight, and put attention where it belongs; not on the intemperate remarks after a tough loss by 20 year old kid, but on middle aged wankers in pin-stripes….

    See link: http://www.pointguardu.com/cats/showthread.php?t=49815

  13. Gene 12/21/2009 at 3:39 PM #

    Officiating should be consistent, but in ACC games it rarely is.

    The quality of play in the ACC has gone down and it seems there’s no way for anyone to make a fuss about it because the ACC has rules against players and coaches making a fuss about it.

    Smith was spot on about the lack of consistency in the calls.

  14. GoldenChain 12/21/2009 at 3:59 PM #

    Hey, being spot-on is immaterial. There is a league rule. Smith broke the longstanding rule. I agree with LRM & Clarksa. If Lowe hadn’t done it the league would have…and that would have been a lot worse. And then Smith would have been a marked man and if he breathed on anyone he’d have been whistled.
    Our choices:
    1) Get A LOT better so we get the calls from Hess & Co.
    2) Get out of the league
    3) Keep things as they are and itch and moan about it

  15. Clarksa 12/21/2009 at 4:05 PM #

    There is no way in hell an official should be allowed to call two games in a row for a team.

  16. RickJ 12/21/2009 at 4:13 PM #

    I wish there was a monetary penalty included with the suspension so I make a contribution to the payment.

  17. Rick 12/21/2009 at 4:53 PM #

    While the reffing was bad I did not feel it was biased.
    But that might be because I gave up expecting us to win.

  18. robzucc 12/21/2009 at 5:06 PM #

    Please someone clear this up for me as I just caught Tracy Smith after the foul running to the bench. Was there something he said at the press conference from him about the refs or, did he say it to the refs face. All I saw was him running to the bench after the foul was called and my first impression was he knew he committed the foul and ran to the bench so he would not say anything to the ref. Thanks

  19. robzucc 12/21/2009 at 5:08 PM #

    Never mind! I just read the intro to this story. I don’t know why I missed that.

  20. StateFans 12/21/2009 at 5:14 PM #

    I agree with Rick…the officiating was more incompetent than it was biased. Much like the media’s problems. However, I do think that Wake benefited more from the incompetence than we did.

  21. leewolf 12/21/2009 at 5:14 PM #

    Karl Hess, one of the great a-holes of our time. I agree 100% with Tracy, but he needed to keep that to himself, his teams, friends, whatever. Just cannot say that kind of stuff to the media. This one hurts, big time.

    But, doesn’t mean we still don’t have a chance. Let’s see how much fight this team has and how they do without our best player. This game could show us a whole lot about how much they have grown together since last year. I’m expecting nothing, hopefully we will all get a pleasant surprise.

  22. Thinkpack17 12/21/2009 at 5:16 PM #

    I think it was bad and not purposely biased. But it’s hard to be bad equally both ways, in fact if you are bad both ways in proportion you aren’t bad at all. They missed a lot of calls and called a lot of cheap fouls…we just so happened to get more of the shaft last night.

    Ish’s block on Horner was clean…and embarassing.

  23. thekind 12/21/2009 at 5:34 PM #

    this suspension wreaks of Fowl-up and his political ways. He is probably trying to butt kiss Swofford, etc…

  24. Lunatic Fringe 12/21/2009 at 5:53 PM #

    I do not really think the foul trouble would have changed the outcome of the game since we had trouble putting points on the board, but it clearly changed the game.

    The key stat in my mind was Ish Smith = 0 fouls. The fact is that anything remotely resembling contact (whether initiated by the defender or Ish Smith) would result in a foul for the defender, but Ish never was called for fouls even though the same “contact” occurred when he defended.

    I think Ish is a good player, but I cannot get over his two blocks on players 7-9 inches taller than him that did not result in fouls. He clearly contacted them with his body and those would have been called fouls if the roles were reversed.

    Now…with that said…the 4 fouls on LD Williams in 5 minutes were just as stupid.

    The real sad part of this is that this piss poor officiating does not bode well when we play teams like the Big East who are simply allowed to play more physical and often “out physical” ACC teams in the tournament.

  25. Rufftown Wolf 12/21/2009 at 6:21 PM #

    The officials did suck, but State still could of won the game if they could hit a free throw or a layup. I hear ya Leewolf maybe this can help the team out by going on the road and playing a winnable game without your best player. If we want to win we need somebody to step up. Maybe Painter, Howell and Vanderburg will feed off the opportunity to get some playing time.

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