Louisville-Baylor unsporting situations
 

This is two plays: the +1 by Schimmel where she goes at it with Griner and the double technical. I left in - no sound - Mulkey speaking with the official after the Griner play. You can see the official says she gave Schimmel a warning.

As I watched the game again my thought was this is where the tenor changed. Up until then it was Louisville hitting 3s - and some crazy ones, at that - and Baylor not being aggressive. There really wasn't a whole lot of stuff missed on either end by the crew. When Schimmel got into Griner and didn't get a T, it got personal and it was tough to reign things back in.

Again, just the opinion of a tired video guy.

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I'm not an experienced official and maybe I'm completely wrong but I would have given the Louisville player a T for taunting just because they had a decent lead. If Louisville was down by 16, then I would think that the player was taunting just to fire the team up and would have let it go with a warning.

That taunting gets a T regardless of the score.

I can see where they let the first one go and give a warning. I am not saying it is right, or I would do that, but I can see it. Simms' play is actually more taunting than the first play, the L-Ville girl didn't taunt much if at all. Actually Baylor kind of got lucky that the double T was called, but I can unserstand it. It seems they were at least trying to get some kind of control.

I disagree with the bolded.

The endline camera view of the first play shows the UL player getting up in Griner's face and yelling something at her. It is the definition of taunting.

The second play it looks like the Baylor player took exception to what she thought was a bump/elbow by the UL player taking the ball out for the inbound. Both taunting but I don't see how this was more of a taunt than the first play.

And I could be wrong but from reading your post in the various threads related to this game I'm picking up a very strong anti-Baylor bias.

Simms does the exact same thing and even crosses the endline to go get the girl. Semantics really, as I believe both should have been called. However with the double T it doesn't look like the L-ville player does much.

I have no anti Baylor bias, I in fact grew up and lived for half my life only 45 minutes from Waco. I just think that Mulkey complaining about the game being to physical is the pot calling the kettle black, when she had the most dominating physcial player ever in the womens game. That's all.

UL player tells Baylor player "scoreboard" by looking at the board and then saying it to her.

It's not the exact same thing. The UL player yells something in Griner's face. Simms did not say a word. And if you think it's the exact same thing then how is what the Baylor player did more of a taunt?

I disagree with this assessment for a few reasons but that doesnt really matter. But I do find it interesting that as an official you seem to let this perception affect how you see some of the plays/situations involving her team. All IMO of course.

Your're right. This game was physical, and like I said earlier. I had no problem with the double T.

The UL player should have been stuck, I already said I have no problem with the Double T. All I am saying is that in this particular game the officials decided to let the physical play happen, and Mulkey should be the last person to complain about that.

On the And-1 the Lead started leaving the scene of the crime and then had to double back. She should have stayed with the play and got Schimmel right away with a T.

Calling a T in the first play would have most likely prevented the second situation. By not T'ing the UL player ( who if you read lips dropped the F bomb) you give the impression that its ok to square up on a player, which is exactly what Sims did.

Schimmel is the type of player I'm pregaming with my partner and keeping my eyes on from opening tip.

Agreed. Now Baylor gets to wonder why they don't get a warning, too.

And if they had T'd one of the best players, then they probably do not have to give a T later to the HC. Now they know you mean business and things do not escalate. I am actually surprised by the restraint Griner showed in that game.

Peace

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!!!!

I misread you, then, I thought you were saying you liked their decisions. I see now you only meant on the double Ts.

Not so sure how things work in the NCAA women's "real world", but in H.S. ball that display by the L'ville player is a textbook example of taunting which earns an instant whacking.

"Especially" since she was taunting based on a freaking circus shot.

Actually, you did say something different.....

As I stated, there is a huge difference between being physically dominant based on size and athletic ability and being physical in style of play. So to say that Mulkey shouldn't complain about physical play just because she has a player that is physically dominant based on her natural size and ability is wrong IMO.

That's the type of mentality that leads to some officials allowing bigger players to get beat up just b/c of their size.

I won't pretend that I watch a lot of women's basketball (other than Skylar Diggins :) ) but whenever I watch Griner I don't see a player being extremely physical. I see a player who has decent footwork, post moves, and touch, who uses her size and length to get position and shoot over people.

And you also seem to gloss over the taunt by the L-ville player saying that what the Baylor player did was worse. I just don't see how you come to that conclusion.