Q&A with Big East official Mike Kitts

[Larks]

Q and A with Mike Kitts, a Syracuse native who recently won the Naismith Award bestowed upon the nation's best college official.

Donna Ditota: How do you establish credibility during the game? Do you talk to players? Do you talk to coaches? What kind of conversations do you have with them?

Mike Kitts: I don't like to talk to coaches a lot. Unless I have a play -- I call 'em a 50-50 or a 'tweener.' (Block-charge, for example.) Where something has to be said. I'll say, 'This is the way I saw it. You might have seen it totally different, but this is the way I saw it.'

Those things need to be explained during the game. There are other plays where I'm 100 percent right; I don't have to explain anything. I like talking to the players. If I get those guys on my side, for the most part, the kids in Division I basketball are phenomenal. They're good kids. They want to win. You can talk to them.

DD: When you say 'Get them on my side,' what do you mean by that?

MK: When there's a free throw being taken and I've got, say Levance Fields next to me, I'll say, 'How would you like to referee this game?' And he'll say, 'No, this is not easy, Mr. Kitts.' Just let them know how difficult the job is. And if you have a problem with a particular kid, you can go to the captain on the team.

DD: And what do you view as a problem?

MK: Well, what we're seeing a lot of now is the stuff with the pounding the chest, the unsporting acts that they want us to call now. Getting in your face on a dunk. The coach comes back and tells us, 'The kid's just excited because he made a nice play.' But during the course of the game, I have to have composure as an official, the coaches have to have composure and the players have to have composure.

And if they don't have composure, we have a rule to take care of that. For the most part, I'm probably a guy that leans the other way. I'll talk to the kid before I tech him up. Unless it's so blatant there's nothing else I can do but tech him up.

DD: Do players get reputations about being difficult around the league?

MK: Nah. For the most part, it just comes down to players are very good players and they want to win. I kind of take that into consideration. I know how much the games mean to them. Coaches say we don't have a lot of stake in the games, that we don't care once the games are over with. I know that their job depends on wins and losses. I try to do the best I can to create a level playing field.

DD: Let me ask you this: Do you like going to the television replays? What has it done for the game?

MK: I like it. At first I wasn't sure about it because I thought there should be a human element. But if we have the technology to get it right -- especially on plays that end the half or the game -- we should do it. The perfect example was the (Eric) Devendorf play in the six overtime game. (An official) made a call to count the basket. If we didn't have that technology, the game would have been over with and the shot would have been on his fingertips.

"I like that to see what's going on. I wish they would add a few more things. Say for example, the shot-clock violation. They give us the luxury to go to the monitor to see if a shot's good at the end of the half. There's so many close plays where the ball is still in the hand and a kid releases on a shot clock. Why not go for that, too?

DD: Don't you think it could get to a point where there's too much disruption of the game?

MK: Yeah. It slows things down. But I think that one thing with the shot clock -- it's a judgment call. There are times when it's so close -- has it left his hand? Is it a shot clock violation or not?

Then ESPN will show it still in the palm of his hand and they kill us on that. And they don't know we can't go look at that. Going to the monitor for flagrant fouls, I think helps a lot.

DD: The flagrant foul was interesting this year because I think people were confused about the rule.

MK: The biggest thing is when a kid's up in the air and another kid makes a play on him. The kid flips over or something like that.

That's a hard play (to call). You got the intentional foul, the hard foul, which is basically the same thing but two different mechanics.

The play now is the flagrant foul.

DD: Well, if you're a player and you're on a breakaway layup, you're expecting to get fouled hard. It's part of the game. How difficult is it to differentiate the various kinds of fouls?

MK: We have a clinic every year in October. The coordinator of officials shows plays. I think we'll see more of those plays. 'This is a hard foul. This is a flagrant foul.' If we see things visually, it's a lot easier to (interpret). We always tell them, 'Give us some film, give us some pictures.' And then you get a better idea of what you should call.

Q&A with Big East official Mike Kitts - Orange Basketball Blog on syracuse.com

[mick]

Originally Posted by Larks

DD: The flagrant foul was interesting this year because I think people were confused about the rule.

MK: The biggest thing is when a kid's up in the air and another kid makes a play on him. The kid flips over or something like that.

That's a hard play (to call). You got the intentional foul, the hard foul, which is basically the same thing but two different mechanics.

The play now is the flagrant foul.

Like Goran Suton MSU throwing that hip into Thabeet Uconn.