Agreed. I think the Illini play a bit frenetically also that at times can or seemingly can border on out of control. They push it on both ends. I thought that was the case with the early offensive fouls. Those are bang-bang plays and if the ref is seeing a somewhat seemingly out of control player, they’re more likely to call the foul on them.
The other factor is perception. Ninety-five percent of the time a fan thinks his team is being jobbed by refs. There are always bad and borderline calls. Officiating is never going to be perfect. Fans always notice/remember those that go against their team, but far less notice the ones that go against the other team — or consider those calls “correct.”
As to perception, in the Maryland game I saw several posters point to the fact that Maryland took more foul shots (10 more I think) as “proof” officiating was one sided. But Illini fouled 3-point shooter twice, accounting for 6 of those extra shots. Against Texas, tons of posts about how bad refs were and that they were killing the Illini and how Texas was committing fouls but weren’t getting called for them. This despite the fact Texas was whistled for 4 more fouls and Illini took 12 more foul shots.
Was the officiating great? No, it never is. We’re there some bad or missed calls? Yes, there always are. was the officiating as bad as all the complaining on here would indicate? No, and it rarely is. I’ve come to learn that there are four things that are inevitable: death, taxes, and griping on here that 1) refs are jobbing the Illini and 2) that the announcers are terrible cuz they don’t talk about or say enough good things about the Illini.
All that aside, great win by the Illini and fun game to watch.
. I think he's one of those guys, however, that will work at it and show massive improvement.
