Congrats on a great game from a WVU Fan

[WVU_Fan]

That was some great game - congratulations to the Xavier bball team and all of their fans. Your boys played their butts off and never flinched, they took our best shots and came back swinging.

That's the kind of game that makes the tournament so special imho. Two teams battling to the final second, knowing the outcome is survive and advance or lose and go home. Congrats to X for the hard fought but cleanly played victory.

My only gripe would be with the officials. Not that I think WVU got jobbed any worse than X got jobbed, just wish they would let the kids play and swallow the whistle on the ticky tack crap. The overtime would have been even better basketball if it had been WVU's best vs. Xavier's best players.

Just heard Coach Millers name mentioned regarding the Indiana job, hope y'all can hold on to him, we have some experience with 'supposedly' big name programs scooping up our coaches. Looking forward to meeting up again in the 2009 tourney and hope we can get a regular season series going.

Best of luck against UCLA, we've beat them our last 2 times out, looks to me like you've got a great shot at taking them out.

Let's Go Mountaineers,
JimL

[finalfourorbust]

Thanks for your kind post. I was a great game and cleanly played on both sides. Xavier hasn't had that many guys in foul trouble in any game this year, but, the way to avoid that is to not commit the fouls. I don't believe in referees swallowing their whistles at the end of games when fouls are committed. We were eliminated from the NCAA tournament last year because a ref refused to call an obvious flagrant foul.

[MuskieCinci]

The athletic departments at both schools are in talks to get a series started, and were doing so before anyone thought they would meet in the NCAA tournament. It should be a good series and I expect the teams to both do very well in the future. I think it will have a good chance to get picked up by ESPN as well.

As for the officiating I thought it was iffy at best but then again isn't it always? The call on Alexander could have gone either way, just like the non call on Drew on the final possession.

[Biff Tannen]

I have always held the position that fouls are broken down in the following way:

30% of calls are the right, good call and cannot be debated
30% of calls can go either way (for example last night with Alexander's 5th foul, it could have been also a charge on Duncan or preferably no call)
30% of calls are the result of officials blowing the whistle to early, for example almost every single call where a defender goes up for a block, the ref blows the whistle before anyone can know if it was a clean block or not.
10% of calls are absolutely atrocious and no one (even the team the foul was in favor of) can understand why that call went that way.

My opinion is that from what I have seen in the tournament so far we have seen 20% right calls, 40% calls that can go either way, 45% calls as a result of refs blowing the whistle too soon, and 5% absolutely atrocious calls.

The only call that WVU could really have a gripe against was Raymond's 3 where it appeared that Stan left his feet on the inbounds and maybe could have gotten a 5 second but here's why it is not much of a gripe:
1. Leaving your feet on inbounds is called as often as a football player pushing a teammate into the endzone (like Bush Push against ND in 05), which is never.
2. Officials always count slow, everyone should expect 5 seconds to inbound is usually 6 seconds, and 10 seconds to half court is usually 11-12.
3. WVU still would have needed to score on the other end.

[finalfourorbust]

My opinion is that 70% of Biff's post is wrong, 20% is questionable and 10% makes no sense at all.

[gundun]

Biff, I just hit you with a T. Your wote:
My opinion is that from what I have seen in the tournament so far we have seen 20% right calls, 40% calls that can go either way, 45% calls as a result of refs blowing the whistle too soon, and 5% absolutely atrocious calls.

Well, 20 + 40 +45 + 5 = 110.

You went over the limit

[rickf]

Thanks for the congrats. A home and home would be fantastic. No neutral courts.

[Biff Tannen]

Sorry i re-read my post, that doesn't make much sense at all, i've been living on an hour or two of sleep per night (thanks law school!) but I think the point I was trying to make is that part of the poor officiating has been because of refs not wanting to blow a call and calling it too early and also an inordinate number of fouls that could go either way. Sorry, I guess I got 1 T left before I am kicked out of posting until the final four.

[gundun]

Biff,
No problem.
I am having a bad day and took the math error out on you. Besides, I thought the refs let them play hard under the bucket and called a ton of ticky-tack one away from the bucket.

[wkrq59]

Gundun. His math wasn't wrong. First, no ref questioned it. Second they can't add anyway. Third, Thursday night another blown call (Drew being fouled) almost cost Xavier a game as Cahill's wrong call did. And no matter what the ref calls, he'll only please half the people which is almost 90 percent of the time.