Mike Kitts... B1G Championship
 

First he T's up Izzo after missing a rebounding foul, then he blows his whistle thinking the shot clock buzzer was the horn at the end of the half.

Extremely poor awareness...not to mention he simply can't keep up with the speed of the game anymore--frankly, I'm surprised he earned today's assignment.

Why would you blame the *lead* for "missing" a rebounding foul?

Because it was right in front of him, in the paint. Is it possible he was screened by someone, sure... the larger gaffe is the shot clock/game clock lack of awareness, IMO.

There were also bodies in between him and the players getting tangled up. And the contact was fairly marginal.

What gets me in this game is Valentine's extremely late foul calls. He's literally waiting to see if the ball goes in and calling the foul 3-4 seconds after it occurs.

I would argue that it would be a bigger gaffe to miss a foul, as you say he did, than to have an IW when the two horns would have been less than a second apart.

Agree to disagree. I've never understood why officials even feel the need to whistle at the end of a period, unless there's a shot to wave off... if I'm making $2500+ to do a game, I'm going to know there's .9 difference between game and shot clock at the end of a half.

Wow...Mike Kitts is having a bad weekend!
 

I haven't seen much of his games @ the Big Ten tourney, but what I have seen is not good:

wrongly wiping off good layup by Illinois player
calling goal-tend as lead in transition (Ill v Iowa)
letting MSU post player literally sit on Sullengers back while tipping & then gathering a rebound. (MSU v OSU).
not calling obvious foul on OSU player...which lead to him whacking Izzo (when Izzo complained)
blowing whistle to end first half when time had not expired...it was only the shot clock horn (he's gotta know there will be 2 horns in that situation)

I hope, for his sake, it gets better! Hate to think what else he has screwed up if I actually watched ALL of his game....

I agree with this. The IW was a pretty big gaffe, IMO.

I think the T was to Izzo because Izzo wanted a DOG for the OSU player passing the ball to a ref after a made OSU basket.
And Izzo did get the stop sign.

Why? As far as IW's go, this one was as minor as it gets. Less that a second until the end of the half, there was clear team control when the IW happened, and quite frankly, Ohio State was already heading off the floor for halftime, maybe they thought the same thing that Kitts did?

Except that it put MSU at a disadvantage by allowing a better scoring than they would have if he was paying attention...

The real problem is it illustrated his lack of awareness that has occurred ALL weekend! You CANNOT perform this poorly and still get the Campionship Game assignment.

If you are to be believed about earlier this tournament......apparently you can!

Goaltendng, Basket Interference ...
 

I haven't seen the video, but around these parts, this can be, in a few circumstances, acceptable. Remember we're 99% two person here in Connecticut. Breakaway, transition situation, one official, lead, and a few players in the new frontcourt, new trail is deep in the backcourt, lead hasn't reached the endline yet, and is 100% sure. Blow the whistle, look to make sure your partner, the new trail, is still way back in the play, he doesn't have a whistle, and then count the basket. Usually pregamed.

Yep, it's that time of year.

I don't think 2 cents is a troll, but I do miss JR saying "piss off fanboy" and "Lah me". :cool: