Summit League Officiating

[filbert]

Re: Summit League Officiating

I call a double-dribble on Chains!

[Nidaros]

Re: Summit League Officiating

Excellent choice of words "better" officated vs well officiated. Well officated games would be an oxymoron. That being said, its a tough job. I've tried it certainly not at the college level. At this level it is fast paced, physical, above the rim and demanding of both the players and officials. Albiet the officials at this level are expected to perform at this level. In each and every close call the officials are 50% wrong or right if your an optimist. Agrueably the games this past week were officiated fairly. We would not even be discussing the officiating if it were not for a few impact calls such as the goaltending, inadvertant whistle, a couple phantom travels an so on. In these instances the officials clearly stepped on thier ?*&$'s. The players, coach's and fans deserve the best available officials and unfortunately I believe we have them! We would not be happy if we could not pound on the officials. I am amazed they can find anyone foolish enough to put themselves through the abuse.

Go big, Go blue, Go Jacks

Thank you, I was hoping someone with sufficent creditials and experience would chime in on this thread.

[tmh8286]

Re: Summit League Officiating

ORU fan here. I hope you don't mind me giving a few of my thoughts on this subject. In response to a post on the ORU board by BlueHatMan regarding officiating at SDSU this weekend I posted the following:

"We've bemoaned the officiating in the conference for years, BHM, and haven't really seen much improvement. Actually, as you may have seen I posted elsewhere, in the game you had with Oakland you had a couple of the Summit League's best in Terry Wymer and Lamont Simpson. Wymer has officiated the last three Mid-Con Tournament Championship games. The third guy, Van Sossen, I couldn't find out anything about, and I HOPE it was him that made the egregious goaltending call that cost you the game.

As far as Ed Grom is concerned, he IS a great guy. Glad he was there to see the poor officiating, but as I said, don't expect too much to result from it."

Here are a couple of other random observations we've come up with over time: as a conference with smaller schools, the Summit may pay somewhat less. That's something that we've never been able to determine for sure, but at the very least has less glamor or prestige than schools in the larger conferences, and consequently the better, more experienced officials, for the most part, end up officiating in those conferences.

In addition, it has seemed to some of us, that we see better officiating on Thursday games than we see on Saturday games - supply and demand, we think. You can see if you agree over time.

The third thing I wondered about this weekend, and you can tell me if you think it's so - that officiating favored the team with the longer track record in the Summit vs. the new teams - i.e., Oakland on Thursday night. As you can tell from what I said earlier in this post, at least two of the guys officiating your game on Thursday have worked with Greg Kampe for years - maybe familiarity caused them, either consciously or unconsciously, to lean a little in his direction.

Officiating is what it is in the Summit League. We've been frustrated by it for years. If you let it it will drive you crazy. There has been talk of the league trying to improve it, but it's hard to see positive results from those efforts. We have some very good refs in the conference, but unfortunately we have a lot of average to poor ones as well. As the conference grows we'll have to see if the officiating situation improves along with it.

I would disagree with one of your posters on expectations - basketball officials are paid VERY WELL to perform a skill that takes years to develop sufficiently to officiate at the D-I level. They had BETTER be able to do a better job at it than I can. I don't think we should expect perfection - but we can expect competency, and on that, sometimes I feel they let us down.

[Jacks-02]

Re: Summit League Officiating

From my observations Sat. night I didn't get the feeling that we were being "slighted" because of our short tenure in the Summit. I thought there were multiple questionable calls against both teams in both games, several times followed by "makeup" calls against the opposite team. Really made for some choppy play at times and some frustrated players and coaches on the court.

[RowdyRabbit]

Re: Summit League Officiating

I received negative points for starting this thread. Interesting.

Well then, I'll give you positive rep for starting this thread, as I would agree that is is a very worthy and appropriate thread given the quality of ref'ing the Jack's games have gotten so far this year.

The calls made have been atrocious, plain and simple.

[JimmyJack]

Re: Summit League Officiating

Thank you, I was hoping someone with sufficent creditials and experience would chime in on this thread.

Another smart-alecky shot at me (recall that in the Stu thread, I noted that I have some credentials and experience in journalism... which Nidaros immediately mocked because he can't disagree without being disagreeable.)

I'm saying this here so the moderators will notice: Leave this junk off the board, Nidaros. Send me a PM and tell me what an a-hole I am. That's fine. I'll just delete it. But stop posting this junk. Nobody likes it. Maybe it makes you feel tough, or smart or something. But it's not part of this or any other discussion on this board. Why must you make everything personal?

[filbert]

Re: Summit League Officiating

Another smart-alecky shot at me (recall that in the Stu thread, I noted that I have some credentials and experience in journalism... which Nidaros immediately mocked because he can't disagree without being disagreeable.)

I'm saying this here so the moderators will notice: Leave this junk off the board, Nidaros. Send me a PM and tell me what an a-hole I am. That's fine. I'll just delete it. But stop posting this junk. Nobody likes it. Maybe it makes you feel tough, or smart or something. But it's not part of this or any other discussion on this board. Why must you make everything personal?

This would be the point where I suggest that people discuss posts and not posters, and invite folks to return to the topic of the thread.

[Nidaros]

Re: Summit League Officiating

Another smart-alecky shot at me (recall that in the Stu thread, I noted that I have some credentials and experience in journalism... which Nidaros immediately mocked because he can't disagree without being disagreeable.)

I'm saying this here so the moderators will notice: Leave this junk off the board, Nidaros. Send me a PM and tell me what an a-hole I am. That's fine. I'll just delete it. But stop posting this junk. Nobody likes it. Maybe it makes you feel tough, or smart or something. But it's not part of this or any other discussion on this board. Why must you make everything personal?

Chains said he had been a referee and if he had he would have had to have some credentials of some sort. If he is speaking from experience and questioning why anyone would want the abuse of a ref I thought it was indeed an expression based on experience. Now how this applies to the thread about Stu Whitney is beyond me. BTW I am not an offical worshipper nor do I think they are god, but I do believe they are paid to call the game and they call it the way they see it. I suggest some of you should read the OxBow Incident. Its a good book.

[bub94]

Re: Summit League Officiating

ORU fan here. I hope you don't mind me giving a few of my thoughts on this subject. In response to a post on the ORU board by BlueHatMan regarding officiating at SDSU this weekend I posted the following:

"We've bemoaned the officiating in the conference for years, BHM, and haven't really seen much improvement. Actually, as you may have seen I posted elsewhere, in the game you had with Oakland you had a couple of the Summit League's best in Terry Wymer and Lamont Simpson. Wymer has officiated the last three Mid-Con Tournament Championship games. The third guy, Van Sossen, I couldn't find out anything about, and I HOPE it was him that made the egregious goaltending call that cost you the game.

As far as Ed Grom is concerned, he IS a great guy. Glad he was there to see the poor officiating, but as I said, don't expect too much to result from it."

Here are a couple of other random observations we've come up with over time: as a conference with smaller schools, the Summit may pay somewhat less. That's something that we've never been able to determine for sure, but at the very least has less glamor or prestige than schools in the larger conferences, and consequently the better, more experienced officials, for the most part, end up officiating in those conferences.

In addition, it has seemed to some of us, that we see better officiating on Thursday games than we see on Saturday games - supply and demand, we think. You can see if you agree over time.

The third thing I wondered about this weekend, and you can tell me if you think it's so - that officiating favored the team with the longer track record in the Summit vs. the new teams - i.e., Oakland on Thursday night. As you can tell from what I said earlier in this post, at least two of the guys officiating your game on Thursday have worked with Greg Kampe for years - maybe familiarity caused them, either consciously or unconsciously, to lean a little in his direction.

Officiating is what it is in the Summit League. We've been frustrated by it for years. If you let it it will drive you crazy. There has been talk of the league trying to improve it, but it's hard to see positive results from those efforts. We have some very good refs in the conference, but unfortunately we have a lot of average to poor ones as well. As the conference grows we'll have to see if the officiating situation improves along with it.

I would disagree with one of your posters on expectations - basketball officials are paid VERY WELL to perform a skill that takes years to develop sufficiently to officiate at the D-I level. They had BETTER be able to do a better job at it than I can. I don't think we should expect perfection - but we can expect competency, and on that, sometimes I feel they let us down.

Nice to read from someone who has had more than a couple of games of experience with these refs. For me in reference to the game against IPFW, only one of the refs stood out as making some really questionable calls and he was the ref who blew his whistle at the end of the first half. He was also the ref who called the off-setting fouls. The other two refs didn't stick out as being as bad as this ref. Same thing with the women's game. The female ref seemed to stick out to me as calling some bad fouls. Sometimes my comments regarding the refs groups them all together but there might only be one out of the three that my comments are directed.

[Just in the crowd]

Re: Summit League Officiating

You guys don't understand at all what it takes to be a basketball official. It is completely different sitting up in the croud versus running the court with those athletes. The officials are giving it their best, as are the players. Please lighten up on the referees and let them do their best.

[91jack]

Re: Summit League Officiating

Jacks-02 I think IPFW is new to the Summit this year, too. Didn't they join the league this year with us and NDSU? Neither team has tenure on the other.
I agree a lot with bub94.
On Thursday night only 1 of the 3 officials had a rough game. The other 2 did a good job. In all fairness to the 1 that had the bad game, he didn't make the goaltending call. I think that was made by Wymer(according to Oaklands coaches words after the game).
It seems like they are just calling every little touch this year. I think that is a new "point of emphasis". It sure ruins any flow of the game. Teams should just put their heads down and take the ball to the hole. It's called a block 90% of the time. You get the other team in foul trouble and get to the line.
I know Oaklands women's team had a lot of turnovers but that game was better. Both teams liked getting the ball up and down the court.

[SUPERBUNNY]

Re: Summit League Officiating

You guys don't understand at all what it takes to be a basketball official. It is completely different sitting up in the croud versus running the court with those athletes. The officials are giving it their best, as are the players. Please lighten up on the referees and let them do their best.

Welcome to the board "just in the crowd". You bring up a couple of points that I agree with.

Sure it is easy for those of us in the stands to be armchair referees. We don't miss a call!Most of us could stand to give officials more credit for what they go through.

However, I've watched a lot of games in Frost Arena and seen a lot of officials over the years. The performance of the official in the IPFW game stood out to me and apparently several others as one of the worst performances in memory. Maybe he had a bad game. Maybe he wasn't feeling the best. Maybe he doesn't have what it takes to be an official. Either way, he was terrible and just about everyone can agree on that. That said, I'll give him another chance to do better the next time and I sure hope he does.

The best games are always when you don't really even notice the officials because their calls didn't effect the outcome of the game. That wasn't the case Saturday night and I noticed that from the same seat that I have watched games in for years.

The great things is that the team won and we can move on!

SUPERBUNNY

[1bunnies]

Re: Summit League Officiating

Welcome to the board "just in the crowd". You bring up a couple of points that I agree with.

Sure it is easy for those of us in the stands to be armchair referees. We don't miss a call!Most of us could stand to give officials more credit for what they go through.

However, I've watched a lot of games in Frost Arena and seen a lot of officials over the years. The performance of the official in the IPFW game stood out to me and apparently several others as one of the worst performances in memory. Maybe he had a bad game. Maybe he wasn't feeling the best. Maybe he doesn't have what it takes to be an official. Either way, he was terrible and just about everyone can agree on that. That said, I'll give him another chance to do better the next time and I sure hope he does.

The best games are always when you don't really even notice the officials because their calls didn't effect the outcome of the game. That wasn't the case Saturday night and I noticed that from the same seat that I have watched games in for years.

The great things is that the team won and we can move on!

SUPERBUNNY

So your saying we won because of the officiating, in that they affected the outcome of the game. I say that's ridiculous. No official has ever determined the outcome of the game. Yes, officials are not perfect, and yes, they do make mistakes, but I'll bet if you watch the film of any game, the players on each team make more mistakes than the officials. One more thing, in most cases the players are compensated much more than the officals ever could be.

[Germane]

Re: Summit League Officiating

Oakland fan here, posting for the first time (although I've been reading periodically here for most of the season). I thought I'd throw in my two cents' worth on the issue of league officiating. First off, I agree that the goaltending call at the end of the OU-SDSU game was bad. We've had plenty of calls go against us in the past, so I don't exactly feel terrible that this one went OU's way. That said, there is no excuse for an official who is out of position to decide the game on a call like that. I also agree with the poster from ORU, tmh8286, about the difference between Thursday and Saturday officiating (as strange as it sounds), although I don't think there's anything to the idea that officials might be favoring teams that have been in the league longer.

The Jacks look to me to be solid and very well coached. Very impressive turn-around from last year. Good luck against Western Illinois on Thursday, and we'll look forward to seeing you in our gym on February 2.

[Jacks-02]

Re: Summit League Officiating

So your saying we won because of the officiating, in that they affected the outcome of the game. I say that's ridiculous. No official has ever determined the outcome of the game. Yes, officials are not perfect, and yes, they do make mistakes, but I'll bet if you watch the film of any game, the players on each team make more mistakes than the officials. One more thing, in most cases the players are compensated much more than the officals ever could be.

You need to read his sentence again:
"The great things is that the team won and we can move on!"

That doesn't mean we won because of the officiating, it means its great that the Jacks won.