We NEVER get a fair shake in that arena. EVER. I know this team has issues. I know we try and revolve our offense around a player who's been historically bad as far as shooting percentages and turnovers go with Knox. I know when Washington went down the game might as well have ended right there. But these refs impacted this game by more than 11 points. TN had NO business being within 15 in the first half at best. The entire 40 minutes was corrupt. Such as late in the first half the and one green got that wasn't called. And the very next play Gabriel got called for I couldn't even tell you what he got called for he had to be a made up foul call because there's nothing in the rule book you could've called that. So we don't get and one. TN gets ball. And gets 2 FTs for no reason.
Multiple times in first half we had very clean blocks get called for fouls where tn went to the line at least two different times in the first half alone. Wait did I say first half? Second half as well as there were at least 3 clean blocks that resulted in 2 fts for TN. How about all those and ones TN got in the second half? The last one Knox didn't even touch the guy. Like literally Knox didn't touch the guy and they gave him an and one. The other and ones were the definition of a player going straight up and down and every single time TN got a trash and one call. And these calls I'm mentioning are just the tip of the iceberg
I said before the game that if the officiating is anything like last season at TN we won't even have a chance. And believe it or not it was worse. Last years game was the third worst game of the season as far as one sided officiating goes behind both UNC games. I'd even venture to say this game was half as bad as the Higgins UNC game last year. HALF AS BAD. And for it to be half as bad as that game is just complete overkill as far as the officials making there point of putting in the screwjob. I see games get officiated fairly all the time. Hardly us though! It's so sad man, these kids though showed zero fight, were robbed of even an opportunity to have a chance in this game.
Three of Gabriel's fouls were complete garbage. I know we didn't play well. But this officiating directly impacted the outcome of this game because TN should've have been within 15-20 at halftime. And the officiating was even worse in the second half. I said before the game I don't like our chances at getting a fair shake at TN. Welp. Ain't that the truth. Cal needs to give refs more hell in postgame pressers or else this will never end until he shines as much light on the corruption as humanly possible. I'm talking about erupting having a tirade after the game breaking mics what you gotta lose other than shining light on a problem that's been hampering this promgram for years.
People who have an issue with the teams fight. The officiating probably directly caused that to happen. Think about it. These are abunch of 18-19 year old kids, and every single time they make a clean block the player they blocked shoots 2 free throws. Everytime you put your hands up and down they call an and one. You get mugged on a layup and one attempt and no call for you, and then the 10 seconds later we get called for a foul and send TN to the line for 2 FTs for not even touching the guy.
These are 18-19 year old kids. They're defending the way they're taught to defend without fouling. And are still getting called for fouls. Believe it or not that's going to take a lot of the fight out of these kids who are this young. When literally every single time you make a clean block they call a foul, as nd then everytime you get mugged at the rim no call. It's just mind blowing to me and I'm tired of getting shafted by officials. We played with fight for awhile tonight until it seemed like the officials weren't gonna make it fair and stole whatever fight we had left away from us.
Sorry for the long post but that was as one sided of a game as you'll ever see besides the Higgins UNC game.
