Personal attacks aside, I’m actually serious in my inquiry. If you look at the link of last season’s thread about this topic, you’ll see a lot of “don’t want to talk about this” or “you don’t know what you’re talking about” type of comments.
Let’s just look at the targeting of TJW in games that Luckie called. We didn’t know it at the time of that thread, but that was the ACC player of the year.
When’s the last time the ACC player of the year got such bi-polar treatment? It sure didn’t happen to Hansborough, Zeller, Lawson or Nolan Smith. Here’s a foul comparison:
– Hansborough: 1. 3 foul outs in 4 years. Hansborough only had 77 fouls called against him the entire season, which was good for 705th in the nation.
– Zeller: 2. 2 foul outs in 4 years. His 2 foul outs his senior year were good for 552nd in the nation.
– Lawson: 0. He fouled out 2 times in 3 seasons, both his freshman year.
– Smith: 0. He fouled out 1 time in 4 years, as a sophomore.
One could argue that Lawson and Smith were guards and therefore less prone to fouling. That doesn’t explain the Zeller and Hansborough numbers. Hansborough in particular played the most physical inside game that I’ve seen in 20 years in the ACC, and drew more fouls than any player in league history. Yet, he seemingly never fouled out?
What about the tempo adjusted stats for UNC players? They’re even more staggering. UNC should have more fouls because they get more possession, yet they somehow amazingly foul less?
Now, let’s re-look at TJW, the ACC player of the year. Warren fouled out 5 times last year, which was the 3rd highest foul out rate in the ACC. He had the 7th most fouls called on him in the entire league at 94. Okay, so it looks like he fouled a lot, but let’s take a closer look.
TJW fouled out 3 times in the regular season. All three times were games that Luckie called. Luckie called 5 NC State regular season games, and Warren fouled out a staggering 60% of them, while not fouling out in another regular season game all year.
Warren committed 97 fouls last year, but 22 of them were in 5 regular season games that Luckie called. So, 22% of his fouls came from the 5 games where Luckie was involved. Those 5 games represented only 13% of the total games that we played. Putting it another way, in those five games, his foul rate was 4.4 fouls per game. In all the other games, it was 2.41. That’s a 82% greater foul rate when Mr. Luckie is on the whistle.
The numbers just don’t add up.
