Takeaways from one helluva win!
- Thread starter lou v
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I thought so too; Buie got clobbered a few times and no call. But I think the missed calls were pretty evened out.
I will say that Verhoeven seemed quite mystified by each of his 5 fouls. I don’t think they goofed on any of those. If you’re mystified every time, maybe the problem isn’t the officials. Just a thought.
Maybe he's used to more physical play from the C-USA rather than these snowflake B1G refs.
Well, I have to admit if I’m a conference ref and I see #10 on the court I make sure I’m watching.Maybe he's used to more physical play from the C-USA rather than these snowflake B1G refs.
Great article. Heck of a job by the Cats. I stayed up until 1:40am in foggy London town and they did not disappoint. We just made one more play / a couple more FTs than they did. As you pointed out it’s a lovely change of pace from some of the prior years when we so often seemed to fall one key play or one big shot short. Boo gets a lot of criticism including sometimes from me but that’s a game we don’t win without him. Thanks Boo. This team just seems to feel and play and most importantly finish a bit differently. Lots of season left but this was a huge win.
Rest up (very briefly!), then on to Nebraska. GO CATS
Boo was the difference. He was fired up. Directing traffic all night and he was getting on his teammates for mistakes. This was in a good way, and much different than we saw from last years team, including Boo. He took big shots and constantly penetrated to the paint. Great game.
Boo was not going to let us lose.
Nice thing is last year (I think) against the same team, we lost this type of game. They got defensive stops this time and made free throws.
Three calls that pissed me off included when refs called that tiny little side bump on Berry even though it had no impact on the driving Wisconsin player, but then on a similar play when Boo drove to the basket and scored against Wahl, they didn't call the side bump contact. The third call was when Boo drove to the basket on Chucky Hepburn and the replay clearly showed Hepburn was not anywhere close to set or squared up too Boo and they called the offensive foul. That was outrageous. I'm sure there were others, but those three were at critical moments of the second half.
I thought our defensive prowess was on full display last night. There were a few lapses, but in general we made it very difficult for WI to get good shots.
The Badgers scored 8 in 2.5 minutes to open the second half, but only scored 1 (only thanks to Chase's dumb foul at 0:007) in the final 2.5 minutes.
If we hold teams to zero points over the final 2.5 minutes, I love our chances.
The Badgers scored 8 in 2.5 minutes to open the second half, but only scored 1 (only thanks to Chase's dumb foul at 0:007) in the final 2.5 minutes.
If we hold teams to zero points over the final 2.5 minutes, I love our chances.
As much as we (I) complain about the double teams leading to wide open 3 pointers, I guess NU is betting that the other team can't keep making them all night. Eventually they will either cool off or get tired. As much as Wisky kept hanging around by hitting their threes, that shot eventually failed them down the stretch. As long as NU can score enough to hang with a team making their 3's, they have a shot at the end. It worked last night.
The refs in our conference are horrid. I’ve said it for years and I’ll stand by it. They’re just awful and try way to hard to impact games.
Verhoeven doesn't add a lot of value. One of those "more fouls than points" guys
That was my takeaway as well. Verhoeven hacked the guy hard about a second earlier and got away with it, then got called for the touch foul. He deserved a foul anyway. The endless complaining tends to draw more attention and fouls in the long run. We went through that with Nance for a while.
I felt this was a companion to the Rutgers game, where we objectively played much better but got killed by a Cam Spencer hot streak. It seems right that we split those two.
A couple of them on him were clear like the time he tried to ride the wisky player out of bounds. At least one wasn’t a foul and one when they showed the replay should have been called on Berry
He’s little more than a warm tall body. His finishing around the rim might be more frustrating than Nicholson
They need new emphasis and training from the conference. They should be told not to call marginal fouls especially those that have no real affect on the outcome of a play. In general they should be told to error on the side of no call versus the current call everything mode of officiating. The number of “phantom” calls last night was incredibly frustrating
I have no doubt that officiating is an extremely difficult task. I'm no neuroscientist, but I imagine the neural circuitry involved in seeing something happen, processing it and then making the decision to blow the whistle or not can not really function entirely in the split second we expect them to act in. Although I know it would slow things down more, I would be in favor of more referee conferences where they quickly huddle after a call to discuss. You wouldn't need to do this on every whistle, but I think they could do it more often.
The refs were beyond frustrating last night and while I felt NU took the brunt of it, there was still plenty of stupid calls on WI as well, and plenty of no-calls on legit play changing fouls - again, on both sides.
It's a hard job and I certainly couldn't do it, but when both fan bases are booing the same calls over and over again, maybe stop and re-evaluate. I still can't get over that last whistle on Matt's rebound.
It's a hard job and I certainly couldn't do it, but when both fan bases are booing the same calls over and over again, maybe stop and re-evaluate. I still can't get over that last whistle on Matt's rebound.
Fortunately we didn’t need to do anything special to beat Illinois.Great job using the Michigan plan to get your team some rest during the grind of January hoops!
Nice article, Lou. Since you're sort of the "enthusiasm barometer" for the rest of us, I think it was worth mentioning that Max Klesmit missed the game for the Badgers... 30 minute a game guard for Wisconsin, plays good defense.
May have made a difference yesterday, but I think we did not play our best and still beat the Badgers.
Agree with you about Nick Martinelli - credit to him for coming in ice cold and not freezing up. Thats a good sign.
May have made a difference yesterday, but I think we did not play our best and still beat the Badgers.
Agree with you about Nick Martinelli - credit to him for coming in ice cold and not freezing up. Thats a good sign.
Verhoeven is not a Power-six caliber player - not even close. But we need someone to give Matt a rest, and Verhoeven is about all we have. Beran can handle the role for a few minutes, but that is quite burden to put on him.
I was shocked they were making them earlier! We definitely
had too much leg 
speed for em!That’s it for me too. Closing out games is something we have not seen in awhile. And that’s what these guys are doing.
Really wish the snow was lining up tomorrow as I really want
The issue is that they tend to be inconsistent. Sometimes they call anything and sometimes they call nothing. Sometimes differential calling one one team than the other.
College hoops officials, unlike football, don't work for one conference alone. Yes, each conference has a "supervisor" of officiating but they do little supervisory training as such. Any official we see working a Big 10 game will likely be on the roster of at least two other Div 1 conferences. If there's a "reporting" structure, it's with a supervising assignor who usually contracts with various conferences to provide officials (who are in turn independent contractors).
Think of it as a Venn diagram in which a single official fits into multiple overlaps. Not at all uncommon to find the same person calling games in as many as four different conferences in a given week. So it's hard to find much that would characterize B1G basketball officials from, say, Big 12, MAC, or Big East.
Not so in football, which is why in bowl games they can refer to an SEC crew, etc.