Michigan State 80, Illinois 78 Postgame
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I find it helps to think of that game out of the teams control.
They still had a few chances to win that game, despite not have KJ or the refs. I think if you want an actual, huge positive from that game: Riley looked like a 5 star. If he can play within his game, I foresee that being a massive plus for us.
Agreed.
Watching this game, I kept thinking Izzo is retiring at the end of year. Send him off with a BIG championship.
The lead ref for this game called four Final Four games. If we are sidelining him, we may as well get rid of refs and let the players make the calls.
Jeffrey Anderson was the number 1 rated official last year. Maybe he was having a bad day. Or he needs a few games to warm up.
NCAA Men's Tournament Officials (2024) - The Official Forum
New for 2024 - KenPom Ratings in ( ) Names in green advanced to the next round. Regional officials (Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight) only work one game.
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90% of the issues are cleared up if the officials are held to the same accountability as coaches and players IMO; been saying this for many years. They are not, so these things will continue.
I haven't seen or don't remember your posts on holding officials accountable. Maybe you could restate your ideas here.
My idea is to use world football as an example. Ban coaches from lobbying referees. You can huff and puff all you want, but no talking. If you talk you get removed from the game. No exceptions. In world football, for those who dont follow, there is one referee, 2 linesmen and a 4th official. Managers can only talk to the 4th official who is on the sideline.
As I suggested before why not give refs a chance to explain their decisions. Everyone makes mistakes. Coaches and players have to face the press to explain what happened. Why not the officials. It would remove much of the conspiracy thinking that hangs over many of their calls. And if they were required to justify/explain calls they might be inclined to be more measured in what they did call. If they are just lousy officials that would be obvious. There is so much riding on the outcome of games with the increase in legal gambling that the role of officials will eventually have to be improved. If not, conspiracy thoughts and possible corruption will only increase.
In a nutshell, very similar to what Elder has just posted. At every level in sports (with the exception of Jr High), coaches and players field questions about every game from the press. Why are officials not held to that same standard?
But the bigger issue in my opinion is those who are paid quite handsomely to "coordinate" the officials. If there is an evaluation system in place, which I doubt very seriously that there is in any meaningful sense, why not simply make it very clear to fans what that process is? My unverified suspicion is guys like Terrry Wymer (who was not a good ref from the games I witnessed him work) simply hire and continue to use buddies and contacts regardless of their performance. If that's not the case, then tell us how these guys are graded and assigned. Simple. This could be done very quickly if only the coaches and ADs of the conference lobbied the league. This is the least the players and fans are owed as the economic drivers of the sport.
Your ideas are interesting, but I would ask how is a coach supposed to adjust his coaching if he is not allowed to question how an official is making his calls in a game? Maybe it could be modified to allow those questions.
There is no way in hell the conference big-wigs are going to allow any post game explanations by officials. Such transparency risks revealing conference skullduggery. My only question is: Was there any kissing between Izzo and Anderson on their post game date? I mean, check out that picture of Tommy placing his hands on Anderson's shoulders. "We need to get together and catch up later. Maybe a post game rendezvous?". Picture is on page 20.
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I definitely like the transparent evaluation process. We’ve heard over the years the officials are evaluated. But how, when results? No.
An officials press conference would be very interesting. Have this along with an in game lobbying ban.
Kenpom states in his rankings they are partially created based off “quality” of game the ref gets. Which by his logic (the best refs must get the best games) that makes sense.
I refute that almost certainly isn’t true. Really what we need is a more quantitative way to say if a ref is good or bad at his job. Similar to some X handles that track strike zone accuracy for umps. Either way I’ve watched games were Anderson was reffing that some calls were objectively bad.
Devils advocate: I know he’s coached our games before and I never noticed him being an issue. Maybe he’s had some rough games, maybe he’s over worked, maybe he’s enjoying being in the limelight a bit more. Also could be recency bias (probably the most accurate take).
OrangeBlue98
Iowa is not in a great spot right now (LvilleILL1)
- Des Moines, IA
This is always a tough situation to deal with.
Personally, I'd rather see gradings/assessment scores for officials become public. Or, at the very least, translate the official scores into some sort of scale that doesn't completely expose the official scoring system. I'm not in favor of referees speaking to the media, because all you're going to get are "That ref sucked, and so did his explanation" from fans and the media. The issue is that assessment scores being public becomes something of a HR issue.
I don't really have a good answer for this. Honestly, I think something where officials are not independent contractors and can only work a set number of games per week would be a good start. The reason you think you see so many of these guys working games almost every night is because they ARE working games almost every night. I remember an old News-Gazette article talking about how Steve Wellmer (still one of my all-time favorite officials) worked something like 70 games in a season. Think about that - 18-23 year olds are playing around 38-40 games, but the 40-65 year old guys refereeing and running similar distances to the players are working almost double that.
I can tell you that at just under 50 years old, I've had to DRASTICALLY reduce the number of soccer games I can officiate in a given week the last three years or so. I used to be able to officiate five days a week. Now, I'm down to three days a week and try hard to not officiate on back to back days. And that's for someone who's doing high school and small college soccer and not doing D-1 men's basketball having to run through airports at 6 AM to get to a new game site after working a game at 8 PM the night before.
I've said it before - I genuinely think officials do a good job under trying circumstances. Obviously, anyone and everyone can have a bad day at the office. God knows I've sat in my car driving home from a game and said, "What in the **** just happened???" Couple that with guys older than me trying to run 3-5 miles every night on hardwood floors with messed up sleep patterns from travel, and I can see why things happen.
It could be the case that reffing a game, any game, is really freaking hard. I know for sure that I could never do it, and I suspect the same is true for much of Loyalty. It is hard enough with replays, but in real time, you will make mistakes no matter how good you are.
1m4tr
Cliffmas
To that I would question who does he have pictures on? Definitely is blackmailing someone. He was awful in our game. I never complain about refs but the whole crew should be demoted to Y league.
KJ getting taken out of the game definitely changed how the game went about. Nevertheless, our guys went to the free throw line 27 times! 27 times on the road at the Breslin! That basically is a free gift handed to us but the guys couldn't capitalized on it. Can't miss 10 free throws when you get to the line that many times. I think that was the gut punch for us.
Does the Big Ten want to go back in which tricky tac fouls get called, good way to scare away you MCAA and high level transfers. We had 15+ years of this crap and it made BIG bball difficult to watch and recruit.
I for one believe they have been consistently ....Bad!You are suggesting that big ten refs have been consistent last 15 years?
OrangeBlue98
Iowa is not in a great spot right now (LvilleILL1)
- Des Moines, IA
Just call games like how they are called in the NCAA tournament. It is clear that the Big Ten wants games called differently than in the tournament, and I think that really hurts the conference. Doesn't seem hard to follow whatever it is the national people want called. If that's the standard and it's consistently followed, everyone will adjust.
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