It’s been said already everywhere and this is not just because of tonight but refereeing across college basketball has to be addressed. You can’t grow the game and even call this an entertaining product when there are nearly 50 fouls called and a game takes 2 and half hours that didn’t even go to OT.
Tonight was just one of hundreds of games across college basketball that are so bad for the sport. Not sure the exact answer because a foul is a foul and you want to keep it from becoming a hockey game but it already is plus 50 fouls.
And to me, it's not just that too many fouls were called - in the first 10 minutes or so of the game, West Virginia was being VERY physical on defense away from the ball, grabbing cutters, bumping screeners, boxing out very hard. In that time, they were called for only about 3 total fouls (none of which were away from the ball, to my recollection), and in my view, that set the tone for the game as being a physical affair. But later in the game, maybe realizing how physical the game was getting, the officials changed the way they were calling things, and got very tight on the whistle (again, typically on or around the ball, letting WVU continue to grab and bump away from the ball, but that's another story), AFTER players adopted a pretty physical style of play. I think that's why you saw the players getting so clearly frustrated (on both sides, actually) with the way the game was called in the second half. I try pretty hard to watch these games fairly objectively when it comes to the whistle (admitting that I do have a rooting interest), but this one was tough to see as being fair. And despite it all, we had a shot at it down the stretch, could have won it with a couple more plays. And, again, like OSU, we saw the opponent make two long accidental bank shots on the road in a close loss, which is pretty frustrating...
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