Late in the UVA/Tenn game. UVA needs to foul but UT breaks the press and UT big man gets ball under his basket, pump fakes UVA's Jason Cain into the air and UT player takes a step to the side. Cain grabs the rim with both hands and then lets go with left hand and attempts to block shot and ends up fouling UT player.

I was wondering why no 'T' was called on Cain.

I saw it, too. My guess is that because there was a man underneath him, the officials thought he was trying to prevent an injury.

Actually, that isn't true. If the player would NOT have grabbed the rim he would have drifted to the other side of the rim and the offensive player would have had an uncontested layup.

It should have been a T.

While I like the idea of a T on this particular play, I disagree that it should have been one.

While we could see from the replay that he may have drifted away from the other players, he doesn't necessarily know that. The fact that there was a foul when he was still in contact with the rim is all I need to know to not call the T for grabbing the rim...if he was close enough to another player to foul them, they were close enough for him to hang onto the rim for safety.....and it wasn't like he held on for a long time.

Still, I think he deliberately held on to the rim for an advantage...but that is not part of the rule.

10-3
A player shall not:
5. Illegally contact the backcoard or ring by:
(a) placing a hand on the backboard or ring to gain an advantage.

The player wasn't looking to prevent injury, he was looking to the ball, methinks.

He was moving one way and hanging on the rim stopped his momentum so he could remain in the play. You can easily apply the rule Mick quoted above.

While the injury prevention question is certainly not conclusive, the rule you now quote is sufficient....I can agree with that.

The only thing I could imagine is that refs didn't see it, they didn't feel an advantage was gained, the personal foul occurred before an advantaged was gained, or that they felt the personal foul sufficiently penalized the situation.

No way did it cost them the game. They had a 9 point lead late in the game and let it slip away. THAT is what cost them the game.

Well it sure as h-e-double toothpicks didn't help matters. It was a contributing factor.

A classic 'blame the ref' comment. They did not take care of bidness. They had 'em on the mat and let 'em back up.

Using that mindset seems quite commonplace.
I have not noticed (m)any last minute ballsy calls that were not assisted by the monitor. :)

Courage is something that very few officials have. The best officials have it, and I'm not talking about tournament officials, because based on my observations of situations this weekend, I didn't see any of it on display. What I did see was an inordinate amount of calls outside officials' primaries. Basically what these guys are saying is that they're better than the mechanics and floor coverages. Contrast that with the women's tournament and compare how many calls are outside their primaries. The ratio has to be at least 10 to 1. I know for myself, I'm just not good enough to get plays right all over the floor. I guess someday I can be as good as Jim Burr and be successful at it.

So, according to you, the NCAA officials working in the tournament not only are terrible, they also lack balls too.

Would you mind telling everybody exactly what <b>your</b> qualifications are to completely denigrate the accomplishments of what the NCAA has determined to be the best officials available? Are you currently working at the D1 level? Have you <b>ever</b> worked at the D1 level? Are you currently evaluating for a D1 conference?

Or, as is probably more likely, maybe you're just another back-stabbing, integrity-free clown that's full of jealousy because you're not good enough to be working at that level.

When someone like you dumps on every single official working in the NCAA tournament, it kinda makes you wonder what we're dealing with. We expect that crap from fanboys. We don't expect it from people who actually profess to be an official. If you really are an official, you've got one helluva lot to learn about integrity imo.

JR, I don't want to get in the middle of this, but I have a question for you. When talking amongst "family" or a group of officials, do you think we should have unconditional support?

Yeah. I can imagine Lead looking at the contact [not the rim] and Center not getting a good look.
There surely was some stuff happening on that play.

But then, by choosing an applicable rule, we were only playing: "What if we had had a great look". ;)