This is Big East mens bball. Not sure you could apply that universally to all contact at the D1 level for fouls on the dribbler.

I'll give you two out of the four on this play. If you watch the replay at regular speed, you'll see that the dribbler actually got around Stokes and continued his dribble upcourt (whether he stepped OOB or not).

Not that I expect anyone to change their opinion whether this was a foul or not. It's just not as cut and dried as most seem to want to make it.

So I ask again, pizanno, would you have called the OB violation and given the ball back to Nova?

Look, I don't know what your issue is and I don't care but this IS very cut & dried:

1. the call was made
2. the call was backed up publicly by the league

You think that maybe this should have been let go? Fine. And you even got further and say if he had been pushed OOB both the foul & the OOB should have both been ignored. Whatever, good luck with that. You can continue to defend yourself, that's your right. As far as I'm concerned it was a good foul call at any point of the game. Apparently the league agrees.

And why would you want to be in that post-game? Because you think the league and Hank and all of us are just covering for a bad call and that his crew would have ripped him a new one in post-game and that if you had been there you might, might, might finally have one shred of confirmation from somebody that your opinion of this is right?

Tell you what, go to the Jay Bilas chat forum if you want to cry about how your team got screwed by a corrupt/incompetent/conspiratorial/whatever-it-is-you-want-to-believe referee.

You obviously are not interested in unbiased, objective, and informed discussion. Unless, of course, it all goes your way.

Go away, troll.

In my mind, the author of the story was just another pretentious prick. His preamble was ample proof of that. Hopefully, he'll grow out of it. Being a Dookie though, the odds are against it.:D

Okay...

the reason i'd want to be in that post-game is to get the unbiased, objective, and informed discussion from Donato himself...and of course to learn from the situation...isn't that why we're here?

I've been in post-games with some pretty darn good officials who have made some pretty high-profile controversial calls and said "you know, i really wish I didn't make that call...and will tell the coach and supervisor that."...and have even seen the supervisors (and even the coach) do exactly what you think is a cover-up: diplomatically state in the media that the call was the right call and/or didn't affect the outcome of the game.

Now if I ever get a chance to hear from Donato himself that that was the right call to make and he's happy with it, then great...i've learned something new today.

Everyone else's opinion (including mine) is an uninformed, biased and subjective opinion.

Nope. Pizanno is definitely not a troll. From his posts, imo he's a knowledgeable official.

One disagreement does not make a troll. I may not agree with him on this particular situation but I still respect his right to have his own opinion.

Okay, perhaps it's because it's near the end of the season, and maybe I anticipated a troll and made the wrong call? :D

Well, if his comments were OOB, you either have to call him on that, or call him a troll. You can't let both go, right? ;)

He's also an official:" The Play Caller is a nine-year high school and college basketball official who happens to be a Duke fan."

OK. We'll alter it. He's a nine-year high school and college basketball official who is also a Dookie fan as well as being a pompous, pretentious prick.

That better?

HAHAHA! Nice one M&M! :p

The Media, Can't Live with Them, Can't Live Without Them
 

From our Hartford, CT, morning, drive-time, sports announcer. This is his daily "Sports Commentary". Normally I almost always agree with him, however I didn't like the tone of today's commentary:

http://www.wtic.com/topic/play_windo...udioId=1460289

Wednesday, February 13th 2008 - Sports Commentary
"I've always been a proponent of the human element in the officiating of sports events. The fallibility of the umpire in baseball has been one of the enduring charms of the game. Larry Barnett and Don Denkinger have provided as much fuel for the hot stoves as anyone who ever played the game. Nothing shortens winters more than a raging controversy. Unfortunately, in most sports, those days are forever behind us. Sports have long since moved into the electronic age and technology has replaced the human eye and human instinct in determining the minutest points of arbitration. The primary directive with the electronic surveillance of sporting events should be simply, "Get it right". If slow motion replay analysis of every action on the court or on the field or on the ice is going to be the determining factor there is no excuse for getting the call wrong. All parties have distanced themselves from responsibility for the nearly second and a half pause on the game clock at the end of the Tennessee women's basketball win over Rutgers monday night. The president of the company that produces the precision game clocks says there is room for human error in the operation of the timepiece, but the clock itself is infallible. Only the on court officials are supposed to have the ability to stop the clock once play is underway. Responsibility for causing the clock to pause at the end of the game, holding two tenths of a second on the board long enough for a Tennessee player to be fouled with time remaining isn't the issue here. The responsibility of the referees is clear. They did review a replay to determine if there was time left. That was the only decision they made based on the review, despite the fact the replay clearly showed the clock paused while the ball was still in the air on the rebound after a missed shot. In another game on the same night, the men's game between Georgetown and Villanova, with the clock running down, less than a second left with a Georgetown player tightroping the sideline at the far end of the court from his offensive basket, one of the officials chose to whistle a foul on a Villanova player, who was leaning away from the offensive player, hands extended over his head in an obvious attempt to avoid a foul. One tenth of a second left in a tied game. It's hard to watch the way college basketball games are officiated on a nightly basis and buy the argument from officials that the game is forty minutes long, not thirty nine minutes, fifty nine and nine tenths seconds, and every foul should be called the same. On a nightly basis they give themselves little evidence to back that philosophy. Their's is a position of judicious arbitration. The spirit of the law versus the letter of the law. If modern technology is going to provide the final determination the call must be right. If the deciding factor is common sense, then common sense must be the deciding factor. In both cases on the same night the outcome was determined by the wrong call. It was a bad day for modern officiating. With a comment from the sports world, I'm Scott Gray."

I wish that he had consulted an NCAA official before he wrote this commentary. The Rutgers Tennessee situation was really weird, but I believe that the Villanova Georgetown situtaiton was very clear. The blocking foul by the Villanova player put the Georgetown player at a disadvantage, causing him to go out of bounds. I would call this in the first second of a game, or the last second of a game. If the fact that the Georgetown player was 80 feet away from his basket with less than one second left in the game is important, as the announcer states, than why was the Villanova player anywhere near the Georgetown player?

Sounds like you found exactly what you were looking for in the piece. Funny. A perfect example of the confirmation bias he wrote about.

I found what I was looking for in the very first paragraph......another typical Dookie. That's why I quit reading.:D