Agreed.

And another reason why I completely disagree with OKREF's take on the game. There is a huge difference between being physically dominant based on sheer size and athletic ability and being purposely physical in style of play.

The L-Ville coach came in with a calculated strategy to take a bunch of 3s, get physical with Griner, and turn the game into a street fight. It was a great coaching move and his team shot the ball incredibly well. The deserved to win and Baylor did not respond as well as they should have and deserved to lose.

That said, I think the officials did a very poor job of controlling the game and not letting much of the illegal physicality and resulting emotions escalate.

I agree with everything you just said. I have never said any different.

I don't think the game was overly physical, in regards to calls that weren't made. Watching the game again I found a couple of times the crew could've put a whistle on something and didn't and a couple of times they put a whistle on something a little later than some would have liked. Otherwise, IMO, it was called pretty well from that standpoint. There wasn't any post play to speak of on the Louisville offensive end (16-25 from three will do that) and Baylor didn't use Griner as well as it could have.

Did Louisville just have two defensive players not even paying attention to what was going on away from Griner? Yep. When I saw it live my first thought was Walz must've seen the NC State "30 for 30" episode and decided to do to Griner what Valvano did when the Wolfpack played against Ralph Sampson - triangle-and-2 with the 2 on the post player. Griner had to fight through some stuff but even she implied it wasn't anything unusual. The fouls were 24-14 for the game, three Louisville starters fouled out and another had four.

Again, to me where the game changed was when Baylor woke up emotionally after Schimmel got into Griner's face. From that point Baylor's attitude changed (they outscored Louisville 33-17) and the whole tone of the game changed but it didn't seem like the crew adjusted fast enough to the little things.

this game was "weakly" officiated from start to finish. they did not have any control on the game and allowed multiple fouls and infractions by both teams to go un-punished. this was a classic case of a crew that was "reactionary" rather than being "proactive".

Coach Mulkey was corrected in her postgame press conference: "This game was WAY too physical from the very beginning!".

+1000 %. That's was my take watching the game. I couldn't say it any better.

I don't know what sort of guidance is given to NCAA-W officials, but under Fed I'm going with a T for the Louisville player getting in BG's face.

Agreed.
 

+1

Jumped right out at me watching the game.

Agree. Know your teams and players and nip anything in the bud before it ruins your game.

I'm not sure what you mean by "guidance" but believe me, we're told more than often enough to take care of business on stuff like that.

Just allowing for the fact that I don't know a lot about officiating expectations in NCAA-W.

Understood. One of the sections of our preseason NCAA clinic focused on sportsmanship. The feeling was players and coaches were getting away with too much unsporting behavior, be it towards us or the opposition. The message was repeated in January so I'm guessing our collective enforcement wasn't what the powers that be had hoped it would be.

I'm very lucky. My supervisor is very clear that she'll support us in handing out Ts to players or coaches as long as we've taken care of business beforehand. To a certain extent I think she encourages us...not in an Ed Rush way though ;)

The problem is that this type of behavior has been tolerated (and even sometimes encouraged via ESPN etc) at the highest level (NBA) for a few years now. You cannot watch Sportscenter without seeing a "staredown" after a dunk. Unfortunately this cancer has metastasized to the college ranks, first at the men’s level and now at the ladies level. Soon we will be witnessing this at 6th grade games. Please ladies and gentlemen, put a stop to this type of behavior at all levels.

I thought the officials made the right decision with the taunting and double technicals. I had the exact same thing in a high school game this year.

You don't think the first taunting incident should have been called?

This is one of the clearest examples of a skip-the-warning technical you'll see, IMO.

Yes I do. I include in my pre-game to the players. red jersey players talk to the red jersey players and the blue jersey players talk to the blue jersey players. As soon as the Louisvile bounced up and faced Grinder. Tweet!!!!