We sure saw it when he was out vs Maryland
Illini Basketball 2024-2025
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We sure saw it when he was out vs Maryland
OrangeBlue98
Iowa is not in a great spot right now (LvilleILL1)
- Des Moines, IA
So as a follow-up to the officiating discussion, DJ Carstensen (cue Prue's angst here) was on the crew for the Loyola-St. Louis game at Loyola with a 6 PM tip last night. He was on the crew for the Purdue-Wisconsin this morning.
He played at Utica College from 81-85, so that puts him at something like 61 years old. A 61-year-old guy referees a game at 6 PM, drives 2 hours and 18 minutes (per Google Maps) after the game to West Lafayette, and then is officiating a game with an 11 AM CT tipoff the next morning.
You cannot tell me that DJ was physically ready to officiate today. I know how I feel during the rare times I officiate on a Friday night and then turn around for a Saturday morning or afternoon game, and I'm 12 years younger than DJ Carstensen.
He played at Utica College from 81-85, so that puts him at something like 61 years old. A 61-year-old guy referees a game at 6 PM, drives 2 hours and 18 minutes (per Google Maps) after the game to West Lafayette, and then is officiating a game with an 11 AM CT tipoff the next morning.
You cannot tell me that DJ was physically ready to officiate today. I know how I feel during the rare times I officiate on a Friday night and then turn around for a Saturday morning or afternoon game, and I'm 12 years younger than DJ Carstensen.
Dude they do 6 games a week. It’s insane. Someone(can’t remember who) did our game and then was out in LA the next day for UCLA game.(about a month ago)
skyIdub
"I can't tell you. Secret."
Tevo
- Wilmette, IL
It's always a good discussion, and I hope that my in the trenches experience (even if in a different sport) can help with the discussion.
If I could wave a magic wand and make two big changes to college basketball officiating, here's how I would change it.
1) Mandate that officials could not work consecutive days and would work no more than three games in a 7-day period.
2) Ensure that the officiating consortiums have a clear line of communication to the national officiating people that eventually handle the assigning for the post-season tournaments.
As I've said a lot before, the reason you always seem to see DJ Carstensen and Jeffrey Anderson working games is because they ARE always working games. For a lot of these officials, this is essentially their full-time income (or at least a substantial part of their income). So they are working too many games because this is their income source. They are also officially independent contractors. They can accept as many games as they want because they are not bound by any employment agreements like NBA officials are.
I'd love to get one or two of the officials' schedules for a season just to see how many games they work. But here's some very back of the napkin work.
I counted 20 weeks from the first week of November to the week of the Big Ten Tournament. If a referee works five games a week (and this is not completely unheard of), that's close to 100 games. At a rate of $2,000 per game (I don't know specific rates, but given a center referee in a mid-major non-revenue sport like soccer makes $600/game I don't think that's unreasonable), that's $200,000/season. And that's before any NCAA tournament assignments.
If I'm an independent contractor, I'm grabbing that bag as well.The issue is you're doing those five games in different cities every night. That's wearing at a bare minimum. We are talking about the physical toll on 18-22 year old kids playing a Saturday and then a Tuesday. Now think about that for a 50-55 year old guy refereeing in Champaign on Tuesday, Stillwater on Wednesday, maybe Chapel Hill on Saturday, Charlottesville on Sunday, and Storrs on Monday. Yikes!
According to ChatGPT, in 2015-16, at least, Carstensen officiated 82 games. So, 4 per week?
Tevo
- Wilmette, IL
Just found this, too: https://www.phillyref.com/basketball/d1/d1refsleads23-24.html
I am very hopeful that Morez Johnson and Tomi Ivisic come back next year. I am concerned about how will run the team from the point guard position. We need a winner, somebody with guts and heart, who can do that. Roster turnover is a huge, huge, huge detriment.
Haven’t posted in a while but this season has been maddening. Just a huge miss from Brad and Co this season with the roster construction. And to rehash what has been said before, some overall questionable decisions in the program. Letting Frazier and TA go seems a lot more worrisome than it did at the time. If TA wanted money and we didn’t have it fine, but Chester was an all time Illini that gave his heart and sole to the program. We recruited over most of his guys because they were limited offensively. Kind of funny when you think about how bad we’ve been shooting the ball this year. At least they had that dawg in them. I’ll admit the offensive talent is there but the execution and coaching is lacking. We’re a young team so bumps are somewhat expected but if we get 3 guys returning next year that young talent doesn’t mean much. Have to hope we can get hot shooting the ball down the stretch because that seems like our only hope of making a run.
Yes, that is a huge problem with officiating. Too few to work this many games, and not requiring them to devote full time to officiating. It's insane. And that's why we get what we get season after season.
Illini in Indiana
- Indiana
I'm not out on this team this year or on Brad as our coach. But, wow I wonder how we'd be if we had a guy like Ty playing instead of Ben. Ty's brings character, defense, hustle, ... plus other intangibles. DGL can also add the penetrate & kick offense that we need. It all comes down to we don't know how to create good 3's, other than Tomi pick & pop the rest just seem out of rhythm flicks..
Figure out paint touches or the rest of the year will be ugly to watch.
Figure out paint touches or the rest of the year will be ugly to watch.
People were all upset when Ty’s redshirt was announced. I remember posting after the EIU game that it was clear that we needed shooters for this year to be successful in the system we were going to run.
White’s shot looked great early. We were told Ben and Jake were pure shooters etc. we were told Booth would be a good player.
Made sense that Ty didn’t fit the style we’d play.
And now here we are.
Ben’s issues are obvious and have been discussed ad nauseam. Jake has made some shots and hustle plays, but his defense and athleticism is not going to cause a B1G team too many issues, Tre has been benched and Booth has been a complete zero.
We definitely needed guys like Ty, Buck, and Dainja last night.
White’s shot looked great early. We were told Ben and Jake were pure shooters etc. we were told Booth would be a good player.
Made sense that Ty didn’t fit the style we’d play.
And now here we are.
Ben’s issues are obvious and have been discussed ad nauseam. Jake has made some shots and hustle plays, but his defense and athleticism is not going to cause a B1G team too many issues, Tre has been benched and Booth has been a complete zero.
We definitely needed guys like Ty, Buck, and Dainja last night.
I’m with you, but that’s not what this team was built to do, so it’s going to take a lot to get it fixed.
We could post up an injured Tomi more
I thought we had something figured out with Wil and Morez last night but it didn’t last.
Maybe we need to post up Wil and KJ a la the old Bo Ryan swing offense.
sacraig
- The desert
Maybe he told Underwood he's more playable than Ben.
Lol….that will be like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
We thought they would be gelling by now.
Instead:
Instead:
We need guys... just plain and simply guys. The 7 man rotation ain't it and, judging by these last two games, has led to a total debacle. We've been starting out aggressive and energized but faultering late - it might just be the legs. It makes good shooting all the more less feasible - if you look at last night (particularly late) the threes were just short, and those were going early. Plus, settling for those "bad" threes could also mirror fatigue. Same with the inadequate defense/rebounding at times (which was also a real strong point to start).
To put it simply, the lack of depth is an issue and holding out a starter level guy (for presumably coaches decision) only adds to the problem on the court right now.
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I just hate we’re talking about next year, but here we are. Tomi & Morez returning are vital and a great place to start - pick up a serviceable big in the portal and you have yourself a really good front court. If DGL and Jake stick around, awesome…I start to see issues when we get to Boswell. I truly hope I’m wrong here, but I see a broken player. There’s a difference between slumps and regression and I think we’re at a point of regression between the shooting, decision-making and inability to finish at the rim. Continuity is vital, but if there’s a better secondary guard in the portal willing to take on that role, do you consider it?
Dra is gone at this point. And Boswell can't be your starting PG if you plan to make it past the first weekend of the Tourney. If they don't land an elite PG who can shoot lights out, good luck.
And are we truly sure that's not with DGL either? Is he truly sick for this long or is he just being scrapped???
20 in KenPom, 18 in the Net. Somehow still above MSU in the Net despite losing to them twice. MSU is really good, but clearly coaching was the difference.
We have the most talented team in the BIG. Izzo, Painter, Gard, May and probably a few others would have coached this team into a legit FF contender
If morez transfers that’s all we need to know about the state of this program
Oh, I'm sure that there are a TON of magic words and/or actions that could have led to this.
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