Monday, February 27, 2012

Officiating in the Virginia Game

Some complaints about officiating in the Carolina-Virginia game are coming from the Virginia side. I thought we might have gotten a couple of breaks in the game, as I've said, though it didn't seem egregious to me. And I like Virginia, so I don't have a huge stake in beating them.

This, from Streaking the Lawn, states the case. It's pretty weak. In 2, for instance, Scott whacks Henson with his forearm/elbow, and StL pretends there's something illegitimate about the call. The Scott-Zeller call can't really be evaluated from the angle we get, so there are no grounds for complaint. As for 3, Henson did do some acting, but this ignores the context of the play. What StL doesn't show is Scott repeatedly shoving off of Henson's face earlier in the game, with no call. Scott got away with at least as many push-offs as he got called for, so I'm not sure there are grounds for complaint here. I'm against "selling" fouls, as I've said, except in extreme cases. I certainly understand Henson "selling" the foul given the earlier push-offs...but, again, I'm not fond of it. It does seem to balance out, FWIW, against earlier, uncalled Scott fouls.

What's irritating is that the announcers go on and on about e.g the Henson "selling" job, a much less egregiously bad call than any of the 3-4 terrible calls that handed the recent Carolina game to Duke. I wish the officials had made the right call there, and that it would not have counted against Scott. Too bad, though, that so much less attention was given to calls that were so much more consequential in the Duke game. But Fishsticks is none too wild about Carolina...but I digress...

This is not par for the course for Henson, and was pretty clearly in response to several earlier uncalled fouls by Scott--not shown in the StL video, but clear in the game. I'm partisan here, but I'm pretty sure that the 'Hoos are exaggerating the officiating errors. And, FWIW, it's not as if Scott was playing that well. Seemed to me that his inability to get his offense going might have been what led to all his push-offs, actually.

(Oh and LOOOOL at StL's "gutless John Henson." What pathetic pantywaist nonsense. That's just a temper tantrum, and kind of embarrassing for this Schwartz fellow...)

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