Is OFFICIATING!

When your team is winning it is a lot easier to overlook bad officiating than when your team is losing.  It's also a lot easier for bad officiating to go unnoticed when watching on TV if the commentators don't make an issue of it. Yesterday though, I was at the BC-Clemson game, BC lost and the officiating was terrible!  I'm not saying terrible in Clemson's favor.  Probably just standard home court advantage type officiating.

If you have the game taped, fast forward to 15:40 left in the second half.  Trevor Booker scores inside and BC is in-bounding the ball.

Joe Trapani in-bounds to Rakim Sanders in the corner and Jennings goes for the steal and the ball ends up out of bounds.  The officials claim they don't know who touched it last and  call a jump ball.  I guess maybe that's OK if they really were not sure but officiating had been awful before this point.  TV timeout occurs.

BC in-bounds the ball again after the time out with now 33 seconds left on the shot clock.  Every official and avid college basketball fan knows that BC now has a fresh 10 seconds to get the ball over mid-court.  Trapani inbounds to Raji.  Raji passes back to Trapani. Trapani to Paris. Paris to Trapani. Trapani back to Paris who brings it over the line. BUT WAIT. The shot clock ticks down to 25, Clemson fans go nuts, officials listen and call a ten second violation.  The whistle was audible with 24 seconds left on the shot clock. Terrible officiating.

Next Clemson possession BC gets a steal that leads to a Trapani dunk where he gets hit in the mouth but no call.

Seconds later, Paris gets called for a bump after a light tap in the backcourt. Six seconds after that, Paris gets called again for a bump out by the sideline.  At this point officials stop play because Trapani is bleeding from the previously mentioned hit in the mouth.  Also curious is that the officials don't force Trapani to leave the game or charge a timeout to BC. Action resumes and a bump is called on Josh Southern against Booker. Maybe legit. Maybe. Still same Clemson possession, Southern gets all ball as Booker goes up and they call Southern for his fourth foul. Southern gets benched for Courtney Dunn at that point.  

BC ball. Sanders drives the lane and they call a jump ball when he gets blocked going to the rim.  Was there some contact? Yes. Was this the wrong call? No. Did this call make much sense given how the game had been called up until that point?  No.

In less than 2 minutes of game time in the second half BC got screwed on some calls.  Some of the officials should have realized the mistakes made here and maybe BC could have caught a break with some makeup calls especially after play was stopped for Trapani's bloody lip. That didn't happen though. The officials instead got whistle happy and called four BC fouls in one Clemson possession. One might have been legit.

I could dissect almost the entire game yesterday and find points where BC benefited from bad calls but that would just be far too boring. The point is that the officials have a ton of impact on every basketball game and yesterday they inserted themselves unnecessarily into what was otherwise not a very physical game.  It was frustrating to watch in person.