~ Bristol: GREAT post. All-timer. I love college basketball. I love the players. But it isn't a player's game anymore. Not sure if it ever was.
~ I go back to the 2014 SEC Tournament, Florida vs. Tennessee. Pat Adams calls a pretty dicey moving screen on Jeronne Maymon. Call could have gone either way. Adams calls the offensive foul and then doesn't take his eyes off of Maymon. Stares him down as if to say "I dare you to say something, anything." Sure enough, Maymon opens his mouth, technical, fifth foul, game effectively over. And in that particular situation, a player has to try and keep his cool. But it remains the only time I saw a referee goad a player into a technical foul.
Pat Adams inserted himself into what had been an otherwise good game and made the game about him.
Yeah.
There's more accountability for officiating in football. Officiating stinks in football too, but I've at least seen crews get suspended for it by their respective leagues. Adams and Doug Sirmons have worked the Final Four. Multiple times. You get there based on merit. Shew.
~ Dumb game. I'd like to think that towards the end of the game, Cal would have stuck with Humphries if the game had gone to 8 overtimes. I'd like to think that. His rebounding was too good for him to come out of the game without fouling out. Played his balls off, and thank goodness I haven't seen many folks making him out to be the goat.
~ The context of Skal being in the game at the end should be the context of Skal being in any game in any situation - multiple injuries and foul outs. When he makes a good play at Rupp, the crowd pops like he's Todd Svoboda or something. That's bad. He's bad. He shouldn't play. I'd take Todd Svoboda. In 2016.
~ Consider...
* True road game
* 2 injuries
* 2 foul outs
* That dumb technical, a turd cherry on top of a poop sundae of bad officiating both ways
...lost at the buzzer. If that's what it takes to beat Kentucky at this juncture of the season, fine. I can live with that. You have to. Hopefully by the NCAA, there won't be any true road games and we'll heal up, decreasing the likelihood of foul outs. That just leaves officiating, which is always what it is. Whatever.