Gee, why do State fans complain about ACC officiating?

12-13 Basketball ACC Headscratchers Multimedia58

Anyone who has ever watched an NC State game, please tell me how many times do you think Richard Howell would get away with this? I guess John Clougherty and the ACC officials haven’t yet identified this tendency from Miami.

I can’t wait for some jack ass to tell me how State should just do more/better to win games. Can’t wait to hear who we should just make our free throws on a day that we made ~85% of our free throws. Can’t wait to hear about how we should be held to a higher standard than our opponent in almost every game.

What I genuinely can’t wait to learn from one of our discerning fans is the dispersion of fouls from the moment NC State got ahead by 10 points to the time we were down six points. A rough estimate from sitting in the crowd was something like 2 for physical Miami to 8 fouls for State, including a couple of obviously clean blocks and a foul on Rodney Purvis on defense for running five feet behind his man.

We’ve got a ton on the blog, so don’t ignore some of the other recent entries on the blog and on our message forums.

About StateFans

'StateFansNation' is the shared profile used by any/all of the dozen or so authors that contribute to the blog. You may not always agree with us, but you will have little doubt about where we stand on most issues. Please follow us on Twitter and FaceBook

12-13 Basketball ACC Headscratchers Multimedia

58 Responses to Gee, why do State fans complain about ACC officiating?

  1. PackerInRussia 02/03/2013 at 1:21 PM #

    Wow, what a shame for a close game to come down to that. There have been losses where there was plenty of blame to go on the team, coaches, whoever before needing to get to the refs. This was a game where they played well even without their most important player. I’m sure refs don’t want to make a call like that at the end of the game, but how can you not? What was Howell supposed to do in that situation? He had position. Should he have elbowed Jellyman in the gut? I’d say that they should remember in the future that anything goes on the last play of the game, but I’m sure we won’t be so lucky.

  2. StateFans 02/03/2013 at 1:29 PM #

    WHICH call do the refs not want to make?

    The foul? or the 6 to 7 seconds in the lane?

  3. the_phisherman 02/03/2013 at 1:53 PM #

    I thought Miami was pushing Howell the whole second half. Why do you think he didn’t get his usual 10 rebounds? How did Miami get so many second chance points in the second half?

  4. Smasher 02/03/2013 at 1:55 PM #

    Who was in the lane for 6-7 seconds? What exactly does Howell think he is going to do standing right under the hoop with CJ Leslie in front of him? Furthermore, why was he even beyond the three point line on a last second play? Yeah, the push sucks but fouls are almost never called on last second chaos around the rim regardless of the conference you are in and our guys have to realize that and get just as scrappy as anyone else out there.

  5. Wulfpack 02/03/2013 at 2:17 PM #

    It should have never came down to that. And you just aren’t going to get that call in that situation. Fair? No. The way things go? Yep.

  6. colapack 02/03/2013 at 2:47 PM #

    How does Howell let that happen. Looks soft to me. If the Miami guy is pushing hard enough to move him back then Howell just steps away from the pressure and fat boy falls on his butt.

  7. Wulfpack 02/03/2013 at 3:03 PM #

    Agreed, cola. Often times to earn the foul you have to put forth some resistance and not just stare into the rafters. It isn’t fair, or right, but that is often times the way games are called, and you must adjust.

  8. BureauOfMines 02/03/2013 at 3:03 PM #

    Great Post. This is the kind of evidence that is needed to show all those who call us conspiracy theorists that no, we are not imagining things. The ACC refs _are_ biased against us. In this case, they threw the game.

    I hope Debbie Yow raises hell with the ACC over this.

  9. grifpack 02/03/2013 at 3:24 PM #

    Not that Vandenberg is a great player, but wouldn’t his big body and arms have been nice to have on the court the last 10 seconds to help box out and grab a rebound

  10. Khan 02/03/2013 at 3:30 PM #

    “It should have never came down to that. And you just aren’t going to get that call in that situation. Fair? No. The way things go? Yep.”

    Good post. You’re not going to get that call at the end of the game like that, usually. It’s unfortunate, but it’s true.

    I’ll be the jack a$$ that says if you expect to win games like that, you do what it takes to win. If that means hitting 90% from the line, you do it. If it means taking care of the ball, you do it. If it means hitting a critical shot, you do it. If you don’t do it, then you’ll leave the game in the hands of the other team and the refs.

    Notice how good teams always seem to win close games like that, and notice how composure down the stretch wins games in the tournament. We’re not going to magically win just because we have some talent now. They have got to put the final minute together. When it’s tight at the end, the other 39 minutes don’t mean a thing.

    This team can beat anybody, and it’s fun now to watch because of it. But they’re forming an identity of collapsing when it matters, and if they can’t find a way to change it, they won’t win the regular season, which apparently no body cares about now, or the ACC championship or the NCAA championship. And that’s just a fact. Sorry.

  11. DrWuffette1day 02/03/2013 at 3:42 PM #

    Sorry Khan, I don’t subscribe to that school of though.

    The kids and the fans deserve a game that is called fairly. Just because it’s 1 minute or less on the clock that the fellows get to brawl.

    Our guy was following fundamentally-sound basketball practice by boxing out. Reggie is a hulk and physically pushes (illegally by any standards) and then gets to sit all alone on the right side of the lane.

    All is fair in love and war…..hmmmm, NO.

    ACC officials dominate and control the game. Do you think they wouldn’t call that foul had it been Duke or UNC-CHeat. I don’t think there’s a basketball fan alive that doesn’t know the answer to that one. That’s the 3rd game this year for us that Swofford’s ACC refs have dictated the outcome of the game.

    That’s just one call. There were many others.

  12. Khan 02/03/2013 at 3:52 PM #

    ^ I don’t disagree with you at all. I think they absolutely deserve a fairly called game. My point about the officiating was that refs routinely hold their whistles in the last few seconds of the game. It happens in football also. You see it often. I don’t agree with that philosophy. If something is wrong for 39.9 minutes, it ought to be wrong in the last .1 minute. But unless it’s something catastrophic, it usually doesn’t get called.

  13. fullmoon1 02/03/2013 at 4:04 PM #

    Sorry but i don’t think theres an amount of effort, skill, talent that negates poor officiating. Officiating is increasingly bad from year to year. It gets harder to watch.

  14. fullmoon1 02/03/2013 at 4:05 PM #

    When Howell combats this type of play, by pushing back, being aggressive and so on he is whistled for a foul.

  15. GAWolf 02/03/2013 at 4:11 PM #

    Count how long Johnson is hanging out in the lane. 6 secs before the tip.

  16. Wulfpack 02/03/2013 at 4:34 PM #

    Having done some coaching, I subscribe to the theory that you have to maximize those elements you can control. You cannot control officiating. You can control execution, possessing the ball, free throw shooting, and good solid defense and rebounding. If you put yourself in a position to be screwed, you can and often will get screwed. If you have a 5 point margin late in the game, keep that cushion. That way, the officials cannot screw you in a way that causes you to lose the game. Simple to say and hard to execute, I know. But we do not do the little things well to close out games. And that is just not a call that is made in that situation, ever. And I do not feel as if the officiating has been completely terrible this year. They are letting them play and that has helped is, as we have no bench.

  17. mafpack 02/03/2013 at 4:43 PM #

    Only thing Howell can do in this situation is to play like Duke’s players and fall to the ground face first to over emphasize the foul. It seems a bit cheap, but if they refs won’t call it when it’s that obvious, you just have to go that extra mile to make it so they have to call it. Force their hand/whistle as it were.

  18. motorhead 02/03/2013 at 4:54 PM #

    I truly think I would rather lose than watch our guys start flopping like Duke.

  19. MrPlywood 02/03/2013 at 5:24 PM #

    AFAIK the 3-second count stops when a shot is released, so going by the vid, Johnson is in the lane at about 5 seconds into the vid, and the shot is released at about 8 seconds. Close enough if you ask me.

    That said, I perused the officials forum about this rule, and there are so many different individual grey area interpretations it will make your head spin – refs saying they let players stay in the lane longer than 3 because “they aren’t really gaining an advantage”, “he only had one foot in”, etc.

    And therein lies the problem – the rule is quite specific: “Art. 1. A player shall not be permitted to have any part of his or her body remain in the three-second lane for more than three consecutive seconds while the ball is in control of that player’s team in his or her front court.”

    Yet the refs make it a judgement call.

  20. norcalpack 02/03/2013 at 5:34 PM #

    The biggest kick in the balls is that Clougherty was there about 20 feet away from the last play….

  21. Dogbreath 02/03/2013 at 5:38 PM #

    And just like last year, Clougherty and Swofford, when confronted with hard evidence, will tell AD Yow to go make them a sandwich.

  22. choppack1 02/03/2013 at 6:16 PM #

    I don’t think this stops until drastic measures are taken. This means calling a press conference to call out officials or taking the team off the.court.

  23. ADVENTUROO 02/03/2013 at 6:29 PM #

    Is this a technical or a subjective question?

    I’ve read a lot of the posts here. I have spent hours in StatSheet looking at their data.

    I have spent a lot of time pulling data and trying my own amatuer looks at it.

    I also, as many do here, watch a LOT of BB, primarily ACC. I am not into any TV series (same Hiwaii 50 and Huckabee) and OD’ed on Fox and finally decided after the election that I could change the world and then formed my own opinion of the guliblity and intelligence of the voters. I believe we need a Voter Intelligence Quiz as well as Voter ID Card…..but that is not going to change.

    So, BB is a nice and pleasant diversion. Here goes….

    Why do we “despise or hate” refs or maybe certain refs…..Frustration is the FIRST word that comes to mind.

    We watch, perhaps not with too much objectivity, players like Tami Hansbrough’s beastly Tyler and hear Coach Williams bemoan the fact that he is molested worse than (fill in the blank….Linda Lovelace, your shapely daughter by a TSA full body cavity search, et. al).

    What IS then more discouraging is he antics of the “Multiple Ring Wearers”. Those two local coaches that have NCAA rings with different years. They browbeat and heckle and admonish the referres and we see them, seemingly, make partisan calls immediately thereafter. It is almost like them whispering that their Alumni has taken the ref’s first born and injected a poison and if they do not make X calls in their favor, no antidote will be given.

    I watched the game yesterday and was curious about the Zeb’s. They did NOT look familiar (wonder how many fans, State or otherwise carry Statsheet Photo’s of Refs on their phones and borrow binoculars to identify them during the warm-ups?) Just kidding, but I can spot a few of the more celebrated (celebrity?) refs or watch their movement and tell you their names.

    I also noticed the coaching staffs (Miami and State) greet the refs. My seats are in 214 and I look down the benches. Gottfried had a brief conversation with Each One. He shook their hand and then put his other hand on their back or shoulder and had a 15 second conversation. Bobby Lutz did the same thing. Their body language, like the line from Twas the Night before Christmas, told me that I had NOTHING to fear.

    So, since the they whistled 16 time for one team and 17 for another, which was our “average” for the past 8 games, I was not quite that upset.

    Now, did they seem inconsistent during the game and was their tweeting upsetting the momentum and pace. YES. We seemed to be on the short side in the second half.

    It HAS been WORSE…..a WHOLE LOT WORSE.

    Coach Gottfried is a very savvy individual and has great people skills. Being an On Air Talent also hone his skills on how to be “friendly”, but also how to get his point across. He has been vocal, as well as using body language to get an officials attention. That was NOT a trait that Coaches Lowe, Sendek or Robinson EVER mastered.

    Will he be he master that Jimmy V. WAS? That I do NOT know. Stormin Norm and Jimmy V. had a certain personna and used it effectively to level the court….just as Mikey and Huckleberry DO today. Coach G. will have to hone that skill set, but he is improving.

    So, I do NOT blame the lack of calls or errant calls on yesterday’s loss. That has been analyzed, disected (but not yet given a decent funeral) in the OTHER Thread.

    We have a gripe…but it is ONLY with a few….and they certainly do seem to have their biases and appear NOT to be impartial. I still expect to see Herr Hess next Tuesday night with video of him having a pre-game meal at Mickey and Mikey’s palacial domicile…..

    For the record, I was totally behind Debbie Yow and her approach (Wolfpack Unlimited) regarding the KH incident. The fellow solidarity members and their cutesy little “KH” stickers got them NO prizes for impartiality or perhaps, COMMON SENSE

    But, if we grandstand and do some really stupid things, then we are going to look like the idiots. I think we won the “war” last year. We lost a battle (UNC game), but generally speaking, the rest of the ACC agreed with the idioacity or “stupdity” of Hess and his ejection. They saw the potential bias in the tournament and sided with us about that….they also saw that our litle WP Unlimited Jab did not set well with the Zeb Frat House and that we probably suffered a little.

    That is behind us…..to do something utterly stupid or make a statement just so WE WILL FEEL BETTER is like me doing a burnout in my Vette on Pennsylvania Avenue to “thumb my nose” at the occupants of 1600. I will get arrested and be charged an those that cheered me on will not be in court or pay my fines or pay my insurance…..

  24. Cncstatefan17 02/03/2013 at 7:20 PM #

    It’s no foul. Howell was too deep under the basket to get that call. Yes there was a push but unless you are in a better rebounding position you can’t get that call. That’s just the way she goes boys

  25. motorhead 02/03/2013 at 7:42 PM #

    If there truly was a conspiracy, they could call CJ for travelling. All day long.

1 2 3

Leave a Reply