Let me defend myself. I know better than to think an official has money on a certain game, or doesn't like a certain coach. I have no ties to either school...I was simply happy to be watching basketball in the morning.

The difference is you're here to defend yourself from my wild and unfounded accusations.

FWIW, I was on SIU's message board today and one of their fans said that he heard one of their guys call the timeout. You can also see Fay from SIU (tall white guy) put his hands on his face and shake his head as soon as the timeout is granted because he knew they had screwed the pooch.

Amazing. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't the official's fault.

Stiffler, how many posts do you think you would you have made in this thread if you had information like that beforehand?

Do you have a video link?

There is a lot of wisdom in this statement. I think it may have gotten lost in all of the other back and forth.
Had a TO request tonite during a quasi fast break. Coach asked me who called it and was able to give her the number. Saved a lot of grief. Aren't we supposed to give the number of the player calling the TO? i.e. "White 23 Time Out. Full"?

If we are going to bust someones chops about assuming, then we need to be conssitent. The expression by the SIU player in no way proves anything one way or another.
He could have made the expression b/c HE was the one who called for the TO. He could have made that expression b/c he knew SOMEONE on his team called a TO. that he knew they didn't have
He could have made that expression b/c he thought it was a bad call.
We just don't know and can't just jump to conclusions. Not defending one position or another, just trying to apply the same standards to each side.

Yes, we are supposed to. Last year, the two times I had players request TOs, I instinctively reported them to the table as "C".

That's b/c in the pregame write up the coach called that player their "Coach on the Floor". So you were really correct!:D

I'll take that as a rhetorical question.

I still don't get why you all think I'm attacking the official. All I did was throw possibilities out there. I didn't have any information, neither did anyone else until that bit of information came out...

Right, and without information, raising the possibility of officials' misconduct is irresponsible fanboy behavior.

You still don't get it. Hopefully, one day you will. Or not.

We take enough shots at our integrity from the outside; so why do it to each other without information that points in that direction?

Well that is a very dangerous position to take. There will be a time when you will be doing your job and some reporter will claim you had some motive to make a call that you clearly did not. If the national media is not making that claim, not sure we should either. And the visiting team benefited from this which makes this even more "above board" as we all know that the home team benefits from any close call. ;)

Peace

Heck, one of those officials used to post here for a while. Maybe he'll come back just to discuss the play!! :D