OSU coach Chris Holtmann boils over on official John Higgins (above) during the first half of Thursday’s game with Wisconsin. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Thursday night’s meltdown during the Ohio State-Wisconsin game could have, and should have, happened before now. No one understands what to call, or when to call it, regarding contact in basketball…and the people who know the game the best (they think) just keep making it worse.
I was there Thursday night when Ohio State’s Chris Holtmann went off the Richter Scale on referee John Higgins, causing Holtmann to be ejected on back-to-back technical fouls…which overnight created seismic concern over the state of relationships between coaches and officials…over the spectacle caused by such outbursts…and the feared negative for adolescent athletes who don’t understand that basketball in the heat of the moment really has nothing to do with respect for the game.
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And before fifty people write to say that I’m the anti-Christ for writing such, you need to address reality. In the heat of the moment no one has ever been guided by a mandate to turn the other cheek, share and share alike, and…accept that it wasn’t meant to be! When you prepare all week with the intent of competing to win at a high level, it’s a little hard to pump the brakes when officiating, which is charged with balancing the playing field, appears to make a call that clearly tilts it to one side or the other.
Thursday night was an extreme example of what can happen when things go badly in college basketball, but there’s a similar overtone that comes with any given high school game. No one sees more of them than we do, nor does anyone watch and listen more intently for the tell-tale signs.
The issue on Thursday centered around not just one, but a series of charge/blocking calls made by the game officials that appeared to become more egregious as the game went on. Block/charge has always been a difficult task for officials, because the criteria for making the call is continually being changed. In college basketball, particularly, coaches will tell you that they have no idea about how the call is made, because the issue of how to gauge contact is subjective with a particular official.
Asked Thursday if he understood the block/charge call, Wisconsin coach Greg Gard admitted, “I have no idea what they’re going to call. And every time they try to fix it they make it worse.”
No one wants to admit it, but this situation is going to get worse – continually – as athletes continue to get bigger, faster, and stronger. The game is being played at a much greater tempo, which means that it’s that much harder for officials to keep up. Hence, the move several years ago to use three officials instead of two. Three, presumably, makes things better.
Want to see a ‘flop’? Zed Key muscled his way to the rim on Thursday, while Wisconsin’s Carter Gilmore goes for the best supporting actor in a basketball drama award.
But has it? Three officials may see block/charge with more perspective, but it doesn’t change the fact that players take any kind of contact as an excuse to dramatize, or ‘flop’, thereby creating a situation where an official has to make an instant decision, not on contact itself, but to whether what he saw was real, or made up.
In large part, that’s what happened Thursday in Columbus, when Ohio State’s Justice Sueing backed into Wisconsin’s Tyler Wahl before halftime, Wahl went flying backwards wildly, and Sueing was assessed with the charging call. It was about the third such call in the half at that point, all of them against Ohio State, and Holtmann had seen enough. Later he said that official John Higgins had refused to talk with him, or explain (another modern excuse for misunderstanding between coaches and officials), and he was thereby ejected. At that point, it got really ugly for those who go to basketball games wanting to see grown men hug in a display of good will towards fellow man.
Post-game talk shows were riveted on the incident – who was at fault, Holtmann or John Higgins? But none of them addressed the real issue with what’s wrong with the game and its officials, and why it’s hard for anyone to understand.
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And here it is. Coaches like it this way. They don’t want contact called. They want the game to be more athletic, because if they’ve got superior athletes they have an advantage. They don’t want the game to become a parade to the foul line, because that detracts from their advantage, as well the athletic attributes of the game – contact at the rim, contested dunks, and anything that might show up on Sports Center’s top plays. They want players to run and bang.
Hey…they actually brag about how physical it is in the Big Ten – that it’s not a place for the feint of heart!
Because of this officials bear the brunt of EVALUATING that contact, instead of CALLING contact. And evaluation is always going to be a matter of subjectivity.
But if you call more contact, and early in the game, players and coaches will adapt quickly. They have no choice. Either adapt or foul out. It might lead to less entertaining highlights, but it would certainly quell scenarios like Thursday night.
I sat at the end of the court during the game, adjacent to the Wisconsin bench, and players and Badger fans, alike, were aware of the mounting frustration on the court. There was actually talk of baiting calls, and eventually that’s what happened. When Higgins and associates finally did whistle it down, it was too little, and too late.
Again, basketball has made it impossible for officials to work the game with transparency, especially for those whose watch. Worse, veteran officials are leaving the game because they say the abuse from the stands is not worth it…not for $75 in high school. John Higgins, by the way, makes a thousand dollars, plus travel, so it probably is worth it at that level, but it still doesn’t address the degenerative flaw with basketball, and scenarios where players and coaches boil over.
Publisher/Editor Sonny Fulks writes the Big Ten and Buckeye sports for Press Pros Magazine.com.
Give an inch and humanity will always take a mile. They want it more physical and athletic? They got it, along with a by-product that was less-than-appreciated by members of ‘Buckeyes Nation’ Thursday.
People in the arena were talking as I left for the parking lot.
One: “embarrassing”.
Another: “there’s no excuse for that.”
I disagree, because I’d bet my house that neither of them ever experienced a competitive moment in their life. Emotion is not something you can turn on and off like tap water. And when the game and its rules are not transparent, the wrong kind of emotion is what you get.
Like it or not, you can’t have it both ways.
Like it or not, there is a way to fix it!
Kremer Roofing supports the Ohio State Buckeyes on Press Pros Magazine.com.