On Officiating
by KJ@theonlycolors on Apr 7, 2010 9:13 PM CDT
in Michigan State Spartans Basketball
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Print[So, yes, this post is partially a response to the vigorous commenting from you, our gentle readers, regarding the officiating over the course of the Final Four weekend. In that context, publishing a post specifically on the topic of officiating is probably a bad idea, since it will result in even more commenting on a topic I generally find tiresome. But the content of this post represents the culmination of my thinking over the course of a season in which I have perceived a general uptick in complaints about officiating across the college basketball blogosphere. I might as well get my thoughts out of my head while they're fresh.
Plus, if we don't talk about this, we have to talk more about the Durrell Summers draft situation--about which there is really nothing left to say at the moment. Or nothing left to say of an informed nature, at least. Speculating on the motives of 21-year old potential professional basketball players is almost as creepy as speculating about the motives of 17-year old potential college basketball players.]
Fifteen things I think about college basketball officiating:
15. There are 347 Division 1 basketball teams--each of which plays 30+ games per season, each of which has 3 officials assigned to it. Just counting BCS conferences, you're up around 75 teams.
14. It takes a lot of officials to call all those games.
13. Not all of them are really good at it.
12. Some of them have particularly-aggravating styles.
11. Basketball's basic premise rests on who has position at any particular moment. Position is a difficult thing to precisely determine in the context of 10 big, fast guys running around in a relatively small area.
10. The charge-block call represents the height of that difficulty.
9. College basketball has become an increasingly physical sport over the last decade.
8. The Michigan State Spartans have played a not insignificant role in that trend. (Yes, we hold, too, on occasion.)
7. If officials called every bump, hold, and grab, it would probably not be to MSU's net benefit.
6. The general reaction from fans when officials do call games tightly is that the refs should "let 'em play."
5. While fewer officials are needed in the NCAA Tournament, the tournament also represents the point at which the competition becomes the most intense and the play becomes the most physical.
4. My preferences to the contrary, officials call the game differently in the final 10 seconds than they do in the preceding 2,390 seconds.
3. Some times that works to your team's benefit.
2. Some times it doesn't.
1. College basketball is a fabulous spectator sport, offering a balanced blend of athleticism, teamwork, discipline, and emotion. Watching and enjoying the sport requires, however, that the spectator not obsess about the inherent vagaries and inconsistencies of its officiating.
[/piece spoken]
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Guilty.
I believe that basketball officials, in general, are virtually incompetent. It’s at the point where most normal people cannot watch a game with me and enjoy it. It’s also one of the major reasons I stopped coaching-for fear I would basically attack an offiical.
KJ, I hope to someday develop the ability you have exhibited above. It’s going to take awhile.
I also feel that at some point, college basketball will have to do something about the physicality of the game. It’s getting pretty tough to watch.
Took the words right off my keyboard
(Apart from the bit about coaching – I never have and probably won’t ever.)
I’m sure all the refs are trying to get every call right. I just hate that half the calls are virtually coin-flips. A night where the majority of them go the wrong way is enormously frustrating, because those coin flips can easily tip the scales. (One can look at most shots the same way – semi-random trials which will collectively determine the outcome of the game – but at least that’s influenced by your own skill rather than being mostly outside your control.) And the nights where they do get a couple of really obvious calls wrong are even more frustrating.
Same problem exists with the soccer offside rule – impossible to judge without being able to watch three things at once while a dozen players (or more) may be running around in the midst of all that. (That and it makes “run away! run away!” a legitimate defensive tactic, rather than actually attempting to deny the ball to an attacking player or prevent him from having a clean run at goal. Any team that runs the offside trap richly deserves those nights where it results in multiple EPIC FAILs and an 8-1 loss. But I digress.) There are ways to solve that one, though they’d probably result in a few tactical changes on offense as well as destroying the offside trap. I’m not sure what can be done to solve the basketball officiating problem – and there definitely is one.
I generally dislike instant replay
but soccer needs it for the offsides call.
Fight for The Only Colors: Green and White!
by KJ@theonlycolors on Apr 7, 2010 10:16 PM CDT up reply actions
NO no no no no no no no no
Not for offsides. They would stop the game every 5 seconds. Only for goal line scoring decisions, such as if the ball crossed the goal line or not.
If it's close, they continue play and then go back and check it
Too many offsides calls now when players were even because refs don’t want to be blamed for allowing goal when player was offsides.
Fight for The Only Colors: Green and White!
by KJ@theonlycolors on Apr 8, 2010 7:37 AM CDT via mobile up reply actions
Exactly.
Play the advantage then check it. Arsenal got jobbed on a goal against Barca the other day because of this (not that it would have made a difference with Messi scoring 24 goals in that game…).
Less memorable than Sam Okey's Hawkeye career.
by Kyle McCann't on Apr 8, 2010 11:10 AM CDT up reply actions
Thinking about this more
The hitch would be if play continues and the offense maintains possession but doesn’t score or kick the ball out of bounds. Not sure how you’d decide when to stop play to review.
Fight for The Only Colors: Green and White!
by KJ@theonlycolors on Apr 8, 2010 11:58 AM CDT up reply actions
Well it would have to be fluid
i.e. the replay crew would have to take the initiative and begin reviewing the tape during the run of play. It wouldn’t be perfect, but there are much smarter people out there than myself who could surely devise a way to make it work.
Less memorable than Sam Okey's Hawkeye career.
by Kyle McCann't on Apr 8, 2010 2:29 PM CDT up reply actions
Related
We need some sort of Big Ten Fan World Cup Open Forum for this June.
Fight for The Only Colors: Green and White!
by KJ@theonlycolors on Apr 8, 2010 3:54 PM CDT up reply actions
I'm thinking about pitching it to Hawkeye State and Jacobi
over on BHGP. HS and RossWB are both fans. If you think you’d be better equipped over here, I’m all for it. I would love to contribute in any way possible.
Less memorable than Sam Okey's Hawkeye career.
by Kyle McCann't on Apr 8, 2010 5:53 PM CDT up reply actions
KJ and I are both big, big WC fans.
Wherever it is, I’m in.
PP-TPW.
The Only Colors
by LVS on Apr 8, 2010 6:26 PM CDT up reply actions
Will ponder further
Brian @ MGoBlog also a soccer guy.
Fight for The Only Colors: Green and White!
by KJ@theonlycolors on Apr 8, 2010 7:24 PM CDT up reply actions
Emailing HS as we type.
Less memorable than Sam Okey's Hawkeye career.
by Kyle McCann't on Apr 8, 2010 7:25 PM CDT up reply actions
Yes. Yes we do.
Although my opportunities for participating may be limited (time difference meaning I’ll be at work for most of the games, and I’m hoping to find a good spot downtown to watch the US-England game).
How to put this
I know you’re trying to speak broadly of the blogosphere, but one comment I would make is that, if you read MSU sports talk online widely, the frequent (and infrequent) commenters on TheOnlyColors are some of the fairest, respectful, level-headed of the bunch. Maybe that’s not saying a great deal but the way the Butler game (the elephant-in-the-room) unfolded was tough on a lot of fans and brought out perhaps their less than prettiest moments. I think of myself as someone who isn’t quick to harp about officiating but it definitely got to me too and I was predisposed to like Butler.
We can all work to be better observers and appreciators of the game. That’s a noble goal, but I can’t help but feel like something needs defending here. It’s my nature. You’re a quality sports blogger and you’ve earned the right to speak your mind, KJ. Many of your fifteen points are spot on, but the italics stuff? Are your readers really that “tiresome” and “creepy”?
Clarification
Nothing anyone’s said here about Summers has been creepy. Everyone’s done an outstanding job of keeping the discussion right where it belongs.
On the “tiresome” part: First, I’m calling the topic, not the readers/commenters, tiresome. (I’m not the first blogger to say that.) I wholeheartedly agree that the TOC commentariat is the best there is and I fully expect my aggravation with the nature of the Final Four discussion was a blip on the radar (as evidenced by the Summers discussion).
Fight for The Only Colors: Green and White!
by KJ@theonlycolors on Apr 7, 2010 10:14 PM CDT up reply actions
Very gracious clarification
I should have expected nothing less!
“Commentariat?” Is that a Marxist thing? Haha.
And I agree about the topic of RE: Butler officiating wearing out. I’ve moved on but it took some time. As for Summers, yeah, nothing really left to say either.
Last note: I reached that point with the “Where will Trey Zeigler go to school?” question a few months ago. Ugh. Should be an enforced radio silence until a press conference.
Also
I don’t read any other MSU internet forums or listen to sports talk radio—so all I have to compare you guys to is . . . yourselves. Those are high standards. :)
Fight for The Only Colors: Green and White!
by KJ@theonlycolors on Apr 7, 2010 10:37 PM CDT up reply actions
Missing one point I think is important
And that is the consistency of the calls throughout a game. I understand each game is different and each referee “team” is different, but what you see more and more are officials who are terribly inconsistent throughout a single game. I will not blame officiating for the Butler loss, there is no point in doing that. But if you watched that game it was never called on a consistent basis. One minute they are calling touch fouls, the next it was a MMA match and nothing is called. Referees need to be accounted for on consistency of calls. I also realize that will probably never happen. So I guess we’ll just keep complaining.
That's the most frustrating part.
People always say the bad calls even out. Um, they don’t. Hardly ever.
Guess it’s something a team has to overcome, like home court noise. But it shouldn’t be as bad as it is.
That was and remains my issue
I don’t care “how” an official calls the game, just call it the “same” way the entire game, for/against both teams.
I’ve never officiated a basketball game, and I’m sure its very difficult. But I do officiate football games. And one thing I always try to do is call the game the same way the entire game for both teams. I’ve had to honestly turn around and flat out tell a coach that was screaming for a penalty call that I didn’t call it against his team earlier and I don’t plan on starting now.
Benefit?
How can you compare the end of the Michigan game to the end of the National Semis?
1) At the FF we are supposed to have the best of the best officiating
2) Sims clearly pushed off on Summers so the net sum was 0.
3) Sims was off the ball, Day-Day was the focal point of every official
4) There is a difference from fighting through contact (end of Minny/Mich) and having the contact completely destroy the shot attempt. Sims still had a clean look and the shot was not rendered futile because of contact.
5) The same exact play occurred earlier in the game and they made the correct call and Green went to the line.
6) What about Roe being bear hugged on the intentional miss?
7) I have never complained about officiating in my life (30+) except on the Pylon Play. Officiating is a huge part of the game. It is ok to say it was terrible and changed the outcome. It doesn’t make you a whiner or a poor loser when the calls that were missed were that obvious.
8) How many times has MSU been screwed by the officials in tournament play? Fortunately, for Izzo, Jud had to deal with even bigger officiating mishaps.
No, it's not a perfect comparison
But I think a lot of MSU fans would have argued that the officials should have swallowed their whistles had the situation been reversed. Again, my opinion is the game should be called at the end of the game the same way it is the rest of the game. But, by informal convention, that’s not how things work. You have to adjust to it.
Do you really think there’s a multi-decade officiating conspiracy being perpetrated against Michigan State?
Fight for The Only Colors: Green and White!
by KJ@theonlycolors on Apr 7, 2010 10:23 PM CDT up reply actions
Ha
The discussion in certain MSU circles was pointing towards calling the Butler game “the Foul Game” a la the “Clock Game” that Jud had.
Light a man a fire, he'll stay warm for a day.
Light a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
I don't know if that clock game...
was worse than the Kenny Anderson game.
Clearly there is no conspiracy. But the bug has bitten us more than most.
If they had not called the identical play earlier, sure.
But he fouled him. He was called for it earlier. Hayward himself admitted it was a foul.
He clearly got away with something and knew it. That’s what stung the most.
I think I missed that one
Is it printable on this post?
This article might be a great last word on the topic
All the players know the score.
http://www.mlive.com/spartans/index.ssf/2010/04/yes_draymond_green_was_fouled.html
Derrick Nix understood, and put his opinion even more succinctly. Place the Spartans in precisely the same position as Butler and call that foul with a one-point lead, and what would the MSU freshman center think? "I would think it was (expletive)," Nix said.
Meh.
Foul’s a foul. You give the defense an enormous advantage when you give them license to hack in a win or lose situation.
Just my opinion, and that’s from years of playing and coaching.
The players are clearly more mature than I am on the issue. I probably would have run to the bench, grabbed a chair, and gone Randy Savage with it.
Answer to #8
I can remember one other arguable one (UNC ‘05, the Sean May Elbow-Fest). But UNC was a more talented team than us, it didn’t end up all that close, and I’m not entirely convinced that would have made a significant difference. Here, it probably would have.
Big Ten regular season play, there seem to be quite a few more. (Maybe that’s just because there are a lot more losses in Big Ten play than there are in the tournament. Or maybe it’s the Hightower Effect.)
Cookie Monster May....
was the Chosen One in that tournament, like Okafor was the season before. Every so often, a player is pretty much immune to picking up fouls. It was even worse for May in the Final against Illinois, in which his strategy was to simply run into James Augustine over and over again and get a foul called. It worked.
Kevin Love and Hansborough were also Chosen Ones who just ran into people and got call after call.
At least, be consistent
That is all anyone can ask for and the Butler game was, ahem, “partisan”. Ask Day-Day.
The physicality of the game has got to change.
If it changes the way MSU/Izzo plays defense, so be it. I sat in the Izzone while they were on break last year and could not believe all the hacks that were not called (Both ways.) I swear I even heard hacks through the tv during the tourney that were not called. Basketball was never meant to be a physical sport. There has to be a happy medium between the college game and the NBA.
The way I....
…think of it is that officials are like the weather. There’s no point in complaining about that, either, but a lot of people still do.
I also don’t have much of a problem with how the game is getting more physical. I still remember what an absolute fight MSU/Wiscy in the 2000 tourney was and how much I enjoyed it.
And KJ, just get a feel of the average comment sections and read the mlive boards for one day. It’s like when the church groups sleep in a cardboard box overnight. All hail to everyone on the masthead for creating this place and long may it occupy bandwidth.
separate issues
Look, the "we wuz robbed" theme gets old, even when it comes from people who support the same team you do. It seems pretty obvious that MSU (and all other teams) gets bad calls, and while these may even out in the long run, in the short run, they affect outcomes. Given the fact that in the modern game, refs in fact call only every other (every third?) actual foul, they obviously have discretion over the outcome by calling some fouls and not others. I thought at least two of the fouls called on Morgan should not have been called, given the circumstances, for instance, but I am uncomfortable with the fact that the same is probably true for any number of players MSU has played against this year, and I did no even notice. And, the truth is you only harp on these things if you lose the game…
I do think there are several interesting issues about fouls that deserves the high brow attention that many of you can give to basketball matters. First, the variation across refs: in statistical terms, can we say that some are "better" than others? Are some refs "homers"? do some refs call games differently than others? Have some refs systematically called more fouls on MSU? I assume these questions are amenable to the kind of statistical analysis which is the strength of this blog. It seems clear that home teams get more calls; I read somewhere for instance that refs tend to call more fouls on the team that is ahead.
Second, differences across teams: I remember Jay Bilas saying that the fact that Duke got called on fewer calls was actually the result of coaching – they were coached both to not foul and to get fouls called on the other team. Wisconsin fans say the same – at least during the Big Ten season. Is this true? If so, why don’t more teams play this way? Just as often, on the other hand, you hear that there are reputational effects. Teams and players have the reputation of being physical and fouling a lot, others are reputedly "disciplined" and don’t foul. I’m always curious about these theories — it does seem like MSU either in actual fact, or in reputation, fouls a lot. Individual players like Morgan are magnets for fouls. This is the NBA theory of reffing — where refs just don’t foul out the stars,and treat rookies with contempt. Could there be similar dynamics at the college level? I always felt like Purdue’s Kramer got calls for reputational reasons. I’m not sure how one would test for this statistically.
Don't think it can be tested statistically
Stats can’t tell you whether a player is just really, really good at defending without fouling or is getting away with actions that should be fouls (and thus achieves excellent defensive results) and not getting whistled.
Agree
It is impossible, without watching tape, to determine whether a player or team is just being allowed to get away with stuff or is really good at keeping their hands up and out, which is basically what you need to do not to get called for a foul.
I will say that my general impression is that teams are allowed to play more agressively on the perimeter than down low in a lot of games. I can’t understand why a guard on a ball handler is allowed to bump, reach in, and ride a guy without a foul call, but a little off-the-ball clutching a grabbing in the post is called. Constant contact on the perimeter is permitted, but you never know when some little bump in the post is going to draw a cheapie. That’s my main complaint about the way the officials call games lately – post players pick up cheap fouls while perimeter players are allowed to get away with murder.
by TheCrestedHelm on Apr 9, 2010 8:37 AM CDT up reply actions
This times a million
I want defense to be physical as far as body contact goes, no reason not to put your chest on a guy. It’s the grabbing and holding on the perimeter that drives me nuts.
Light a man a fire, he'll stay warm for a day.
Light a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Officiating Reconsidered
I think it’s a tiresome topic not because it lacks interest but because it’s so hard to get a constructive dialog going about it. It normally comes up in the context of a specific game (in this case, for the most part, it was the Butler game) and emotions are running high at that moment. And it’s not just the “we wuz robbed” stuff. It’s just as often the “don’t even bring it up cuz if we had [insert one: made our free throws, kept the turnovers down, played better defense] it wouldn’t matter.” There are definitely aspects to how games are called that are interesting in ways other than whether they “cost us the game”. For example, in the loss to Wisconsin, the fouls were pretty even (15-14 MSU) but MSU shot 16 foul shots to Wisconsin’s 4. I tried to make the argument then that, in fact, the officiating worked against MSU because Wisconsin’s fouls prevented layups and dunks while MSU’s were unpredictable and led to tentative defensive play. This same configuration of fouls and foul shooting then became a strange feature of MSU’s defensive numbers for the rest of the season. Another topic I’ve brought up is the advantage that aggressive ball-hawking man-to-man defenses (Texas, Purdue, Butler, et al.) have by forcing the officials’ hand at the beginning of games: either they have to make 3, 4 or 5 quick foul calls (which they are rarely willing to do) or the baseline for the game becomes a state of constant fouling, to the advantage of the more aggressive team. All of this is made even more interesting by the research that shows quantifiable tendencies of officials to favor the home team, even up the foul count and so on. I’d love to see more discussion that uses the wealth of data now accumulating at statsheet.com on the officials to look at who the officials were for games and how that might have affected what happened. Right now we don’t go much deeper than looking for Ed Hightower’s smug visage on the court. Anyway, I feel confident that if any group can turn this straw man into a worthy subject of discussion it’s the moderators and readers here at TOC, whose insights are truly an oasis in the desert of the sports blogosphere.
Good comment
Ultimately, I think this is a tough topic to tackle quantitatively, though. Too many variables to control for to get to reliable conclusions about any given team/official.
Fight for The Only Colors: Green and White!
by KJ@theonlycolors on Apr 8, 2010 7:27 PM CDT up reply actions
You're probably right
That a rigorous statistical analysis of how a particular team gets reffed or something similar would be a daunting task. In the interest of looking at more manageable issues, here’s a link to an article from the New York Times that dips into the referee data on Statsheet. Do these guys work too many games with too little time off between them? Could it be affecting performance? Good questions. . .
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