About the officiating in that Xavier game

It’s the Holiday season, which means a time for myrth and joy and relaxation with loved ones. Unless your house is under siege against a merciless stomach virus, then you just use it as a time to stew over atrocious refereeing.

So as much as I’d love to have enjoyed Marquette’s victory and moved on, I could not. If you hate ref whining (as you should) or think it’s for losers, as the great Rob Lowe (no not that one, the Cracked Sidewalks one) constantly reminds me, feel free to skip this post.

I on the other hand, am not above that petty. Marquette played well enough to have won by 20+ and the only reason it stayed within 4-ish possessions was because of the bad calls against it. I thought maybe I was being dramatic, but a rewatch confirmed as much. So here’s a compilation of the atrociousness that was the officiating last Saturday at Xavier, ranked by lack of quality.

5. Benny Block

Watch the Xavier player literally pull him, and still Gold maintains positioning, literally looking away from the play.

4. Golden Statue

I’m not asking if this is a foul or not, it 100% isn’t, I’m simply asking, what could the call possibly have been? He’s standing still the whole time.

3. Stevie Block

Perfect positioning from Stevie here, and an additional chicken wing to boot. This should have been an offensive foul, not 2 FTs for X.

2. Owens Strip

Don’t you love when refs have no view of the play and still blow the whistle, accuracy be damned.

1. Kam Strip

The only reason this is 1 over Owens’ is that MU would have kept possession. And look again, every single one resulted in FTs, where X went 7/9 when none of them should have. It wasn’t simply fouls accumulating, though that also hurt, but these were free points being given to a team that was not able to score the first 34 minutes of the game.

And I didn’t go through the non calls on the other end that made it feel that much more lopsided.

So if anyone wants to keep complaining about the last non-foul on Chase, send them this link and tell them they have no leg to stand on.

One more thing, the camera zoomed in on a distraught Chase in foul trouble at one point, and here are the 3 reasons why, which didn’t even make the top-5 worst calls. Bonus points for Chase being called for an offensive foul for being tripped into an X player at the exact spot of the last play of the game.

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