Oh the Excuses.....

[anderson4xu]

Just read the game recap on Yahoo sports and the excuses for Georgia are as expected. Too many games in a short period, free throw differential. How bout the better team won. Georgia could have been called for at least another dozen fouls just on pushes to the back when we were trying to rebound. How about the 3 technicals that should have been called on Ga? Close game but the better team showed up in the second half. It was good to see Xavier handle a physical opponent. Only 5 more to go!

[Mr. Neutral]

Too many games in a short period-pretty much out of everyone's hands, certainly ours, unless the committee had put Georgia in a Friday/Sunday regional. Pretty lame excuse.

Free throw differential-as I posted elsewhere, you could see this coming, and if there was a 33-5 FT differential AGAINST us, we'd probably be screaming, too. But it did look like UGA was a pretty physical team, and probably got more so as they got tired.

UGA shot a lot better than would have been expected, too, which gave them the lead in the 1st place.

[muskieman]

The UGA guard put it like this. They broke us down and were very tough. We thought we had the game when we were up by 11 but they didn't panic and showed poise.

The team might not have panicked but a lot of us on here sure did. I think the fact that X started shooting at a better percentage was a real key and that was because X got some good fast breaks going.

[bluegrass]

That's about as big a free throw differential as I've ever seen.Of course I had no problems with the officials.Thought they called a perfect game!

[drudy23]

Who cares...we won.

UGA is now an afterthought.

Go drink.

[Goodenchiladas]

Georgia fouled 6 times in order to stop the clock. That's 12 free throws, and explains almost half of the free throw differential. Georgia was called for 16 non-intentional fouls to Xavier's 12 non-intentional fouls. Difference enough to matter in a close game, no doubt, but not exactly the makings of an Oliver Stone movie.

[Biff Tannen]

The Free Throw/ Foul differential was not really that much of a cause for an excuse on the part of Georgia. However uga could have a complaint with Ed Hightower. I've never been a fan of Hightower (in fact he is the only NCAA ref I know by name), he tends to be way over dramatic in calls, gets whistle happy down low, and is really inconsistent with his calls. In this game these are the only bad calls I happened to catch that I know he called (I'll fill you in on the single most atrocious call ever by any ref, which was actually called by Hightower):
1. The jump ball when Gaines had the ball and Stan's legs where on top of him, this should have been uga ball, but this didn't have an effect on the game but still a bad one nonetheless (However I will speak as a one year benchwarmer at NAIA Georgetown, sometimes a call like that can get in your head, and effect how you play, however these guys are d1 so it probs doesn't matter as much).
2. Inconsistently calling hand checks, Gaines and Stan were getting away them all day, then randomly he would call one. However this was bad against both teams and canceled each other out.
3. Two or Three (depending how you look at it) of the fouls on Bliss were really bad. One was a clear block (those are always called before the play ever really happens, with the ref assuming a foul), one should have been called against a different player. The third I thought was bad, some people don't mind. This was when Josh lowered his shoulder and initiated the contact with Bliss and drew the foul. In this scenario as long as the defender doesn't flop the call will be against the defender 70% of the time, which I don't like. Even taking away just one of the calls could have effected the outcome, since they were playing much better with Bliss in the game.
4. Price, Jackson (Uga's dreaded dude) and Love where getting away with lots of holds under the basket, that would get called every 8 or 9 plays, so inconsistently.
5. Woodbury got away with a lot of "Michael Jordan pushoffs"

Ultimately the officiating was fairly bad, but I do have a bias against Hightower, but with the exception of the Bliss calls I don't think that it could have ultimately changed the outcome of the game.

Now the worst call ever: I am a s UCks law student (Undergrad: XU: theology, work experience: USMC) and had the opportunity to go to several UC games (more UC than XU, disappointing I know, but when deciding between A10 and BE, I picked BE), including the UC-UCONN (where UC blew a big over the final 3 or 4 minutes because of their awfulness). This call had no effect on the outcome but nonetheless deserves the distinction as being the worst call ever. UC's Bishop fouls a UConn player, Hightower goes over the scorers table to call it,as he is doing this Deonta Vaughn was checking into the game, Hightower proceeds to call the foul on #5 white, Deonta Vaughn. Understandably Mick Cronin is upset, his star player has been called with a foul that occurred when he was not even in the game. Cronin is also about ready to receive his second T when Jim Calhoun and the other officials inform Hightower that Vaughn wasn't in the game when the foul happened, so Hightower and crew go over to the replay monitor and watch it, then ultimately decide who to call the foul on. That may be the reasoning behind my hatred of Ed Hightower.

[olsingledigit]

Not really interested in the UC calls or games. If you can't support X 100%, then you are not loyal to your school.

Having said that, the worst non-call, IMHO, was when UGA still had a chance to win and X missed a shot with about 1 1/2 minutes remaining. Josh was in position to go get the long rebound and was held so tightly by the UGA player that you actually could see him struggling to get free. NO call, though the officials might not have been in position to make the call. Fortunately UGA did not score.

[Mr. Neutral]

Have to agree with Biff on the Gaines held ball. Those of us watching the game at Mother Hubbard's wondered how the X player (Burrell?) putting his foot in Gaines' face amounted to a held ball.

[deepX]

Biff,

I would agree that the Bliss block of Duncan looks fairly clean when you look at the hand on ball, except that when I watched the replay later, Bliss made significant contact with by Duncan's hip area with his left knee which was bent & high as he was jumping off of his right foot. (one-foot and two-foot jumping ability has been discussed here prevouusly).

There were certainly fouls called & not called wrong on both sides. On Love's great hustle play where he dove for the ball and called a time-out, there was Bliss basically tackling him with his hand firmly in Love's back as he was going for the ball.

In the end the team that played more agressive defensive and offense ended up winning.

-deepX