MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Even while describing the Duke-Wisconsin national championship as “a heck of a game,” Bob Huggins figured missed calls would detract from college basketball’s ultimate shining moment.
“I wish that at one point in time you could talk about the game and not talk about the officiating and all that other kind of stuff,” West Virginia’s coach said Tuesday night on MetroNews “Sportsline.”
With 28.3 million viewers, Duke’s 68-63 win over Wisconsin on Monday night represented the title game’s biggest audience since 1997. That meant 56 million eyeballs to scrutinize some obvious officiating gaffes.
The block/charge call has become so inconsistent that the hashtag #Charbage now looms as a game-time staple. (See Justise Winslow rambling into the lane, crashing into a stationary defender and somehow being rewarded with free throws.)
“They want to increase scoring, but you’ve got to be able to guard people,” Huggins said. “You just can’t let people put their head down and drive it at the goal—that’s not basketball.
“They’re going to have to call a charge. They keep saying it’s the hardest call to get right. Well, you know what? Spend a little bit of time watching tape and get better.”
The freedom-of-movement points of emphasis, vigilantly enforced last season and drastically relaxed this one, have muddled the definitions of what warrants a foul in some circumstances.
“In their defense, I don’t think they know what to call,” Huggins said. “It hasn’t been very consistent from the people that are supervising the officials nationwide.”
The Final Four officials endured a rough run in Indianapolis. Despite the aid of replay, they erred on a crucial late-game out-of-bounds call Monday night (again with Winslow benefiting). That followed Saturday’s replay review that somehow yielded no flagrant foul for Kentucky’s Trey Lyles chop-slapping Wisconsin’s Josh Gasser. Wisconsin also scored a late basket against Kentucky after the shot clock expired—a play that because it wasn’t reviewable might have saved officials from missing it twice.
Huggins advocates regionalizing officiating crews to cut down on travel fatigue that can impair their split-second judgments. He also suggested the NCAA require officials to face postgame interviews, same as coaches and players.
“These 18-year-old kids have to go in and answer for missing a free throw, throwing the ball out of bounds, letting their guy score, making an ill-advised comment, whatever. And coaches have to go answer for pulling the ball out, and (asked) ‘Why didn’t you run this?'” Huggins said. “Well, there’s calls that everybody says were pivotal plays, so why shouldn’t (officials) have to go explain that?”
Among the more animated coaches on the sideline, Huggins thinks officiating has been complicated by one more factor: Ego-inflation.
“When I first got in this business, everyone said the best officials are the guys where you don’t remember who did the game. They were inconspicuous, I think that part of it has really changed.”