[Mark Dexter]

Here's a musing about the officiating.

All of the crews I saw were good (best crew, IMHO, being in the 8/9 game of Wisconsin/St. John's - R Scott Thornley and U's Mark Reischling and Rick Randall - from my perfect vantage point and perfect rules knowledge, they didn't miss a single call) with some being a bit better at certain calls, positionings, and signals than others. The tie that I found bound them all was communication - no matter how good/bad the call was or what the game situation was, all three officials knew what was going on and relayed that information to each other.

BTW, for those who asked (TH), I was in media relations, and my main job was preparing pre-game lists of projected starters and game officials (after the coaches and CBS, I was the first to know who was officiating each game!!) and distributing that to the media. After that, I got to watch lots of the games - I was two rows behind the scorer's table, right behind one of the team benches.

Also, a question for any of you NCAA guys. All of the officials at the tourney have the NCAA logo on their chest. Do the officials sew/press these on to their own shirts or does the NCAA provide brand new shirts?