Jerry Stackhouse calls out SEC officials for missed calls against Kentucky

Jerry Stackhouse led Vanderbilt to two SEC Tournament wins and brought Kentucky down to the wire before losing late on Friday night. While he felt the Commodores held the fate of the game in their own hands, he also expressed frustration with SEC officials after some missed calls turned the momentum.

Despite his belief that multiple fouls could have been given, or that questionable calls were given the other way, Jerry Stackhouse made sure to point out his team’s need to rise above it in his postgame press conference while discussing his technical foul.

“I thought Rodney (Chatman) got fouled right there in front of me,” said Stackhouse. “I thought that was a missed 3-point opportunity right there, but, again, that’s the ebbs and flows of the game. When you got — again, I said it last night, when you got high-level athletes like that on the floor, they’re not going to get every call right, and I feel like there might have been a couple of missed.

“Again, those are the breaks, but I think we had enough opportunities to make our own breaks to where a call that didn’t go our way or did go our way wasn’t a difference in the game. We had to step up and take responsibility for making our own breaks, and we didn’t do that enough tonight.”

Among the calls which many have complained, a controversial out-of-bounds call stands out as they one most egregious. However, even after that decision and the plays Jerry Stackhouse mentions, Vanderbilt still had a chance to win the SEC Tournament game late before a flurry of Kentucky free throws ended things.

Jerry Stackhouse on Kentucky

Vanderbilt made it close against Kentucky on Friday night, but the Wildcats held off the Commodores to advance to the SEC Tournament semifinals. Afterward, Jerry Stackhouse had a challenge of sorts for Kentucky.

“I sit here talking about what we didn’t do,” Stackhouse said in his postgame press conference. “They did a lot of things well. They beat us, and I hope they win it all, honestly. The team that beat us, I hope they wind up winning it all.”

The road to a championship will not be easy, though. Kentucky has to take on No. 2 seed Tennessee in the SEC Tournament semifinals Saturday night. If the Wildcats win, they’d face either No. 4 Arkansas or red-hot No. 8 seed Texas A&M. The Wildcats lost to both Tennessee and Arkansas in their final six games of the regular season.