USA v. Greece

ChuckElias · #1 (**permalink**) Tue Aug 17, 2004, 02:33pm

One official is wearing a belt, the other official is not. The official who is not wearing a belt has a white spot on his left thigh, large enough to be noticed on TV. Is that a logo? A rip?

More than halfway through the first quarter and US still can't shoot.

Anybody see the play wiht about 3 minutes left in the 1st? US player on the line. Greek player clearly in the lane early, followed by a US player. FT misses. Trail official calls the lane violation, but the Lead calls a foul (on Duncan, I think).

Since there was an obvious violation, and it was called by one official, why not ignore the non-flagrant, non-intentional contact? I didn't like the way they handled that one.

ChuckElias · #2 (**permalink**) Tue Aug 17, 2004, 03:54pm

Wow. Duncan's gone with about 3:45 left in the game. His 5th foul didn't look like much. Didn't look like he extended the arms to push off.

ref18 · #3 (**permalink**) Tue Aug 17, 2004, 04:05pm

I believe the little white spot is the logo for Champion, the official uniform supplier for FIBA officials.

Jay R · #4 (**permalink**) Tue Aug 17, 2004, 04:11pm

Quote:

Originally posted by ChuckElias
Wow. Duncan's gone with about 3:45 left in the game. His 5th foul didn't look like much. Didn't look like he extended the arms to push off.

How about the 4th foul on Duncan. He had a clean block.

The officials were not impressive. Late in the 3rd, Greece had two fouls to give. They fouled once and tried to foul a second time but the official did not call anything and it cost the US a turnover.

RefSouthAlb · #5 (**permalink**) Wed Aug 18, 2004, 12:40pm

Is their any websites indicating who the refs are for each game - Womens and Men's.

We have a couple from Canada and would like to see what games they are doing.

jbduke · #6 (**permalink**) Wed Aug 18, 2004, 05:36pm

"Kinda took out the dude's formarm"? Even if I agreed with that, the lead official had no way of having a clear look at that play. That was a far worse call than Duncan's fifth. Chuck is right that there was no extension, but even with the acting job, there was at least a clear advantage gained. That said, the best decision on both plays would have been to suck, not blow.

Really, though, it's a shame, the way FIBA puts so many obstacles to success in front of the men and women who work these games. Two-whistle crews at this level, in this day and time, are absolutely farcical. And what about communication problems? I don't think I'm assumig too much to guess that the Serbian in that crew doesn't speak fluent Spanish, and the Spaniard doesn't speak fluent Serbio-Croatian. Even conceding greater language breadth of the average European relative to Americans, chances diminish greatly when you're looking at connecting the dots between an Eastern and a Western European. The best bet would be English, but it certainly didn't look like the USA team was having an easy time communicating with either official.

Dribble · #7 (**permalink**) Wed Aug 18, 2004, 05:45pm

Hey RefSouthAlb,

Check out: http://www.athens2004.com/en/results...?rsc=BK0000000

If you click on the results of each game you can see which officials worked that game.

Mike Homsy did the Women's Spain-Czech game and Men's Spain-Argentina, while Nancy Ethier has done Women's Russia-Australia and Greece-Nigeria.

NICK · #8 (**permalink**) Thu Aug 19, 2004, 02:35am

Looking at the number of Greek referees in this competition, it looks like Fiba cannot afford to have more international referees in the Olympics seeing as they have only doing 2 man games. where have all the top referees gone? The only name I can recognise is the Russian M. Davidov and he is getting on in years now.