Bad Night in Blacksburg for Men in Stripes
If you’ve dropped by for an excuse as to why Wake Forest lost to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg last night, you’ve come to the wrong place.
The Deacons lost because the Hokies, after falling behind by 11 early in the second half, took the game by the throat and played harder and better than Wake down the stretch. They attacked the basket with abandon, they hit their free throws, they outscrapped the Deacons for rebounds and they shut down Al-Farouq Aminu after Aminu’s amazing 21-point first half outburst. Their crowd was the best I’ve seen this season outside of Cameron, and Coach Seth Greenberg made the right moves down the stretch.
Kudos to Tech. It was an impressive win, one that should all but lock them into a bid for the NCAA Tournament.
And I’ll say once again, the next best thing to winning is to lose with a good excuse. As humans, we always think we’ve been wronged when we lose. Apparently, that’s the way we’re programmed.
Now having stipulated all that, I’ll agree with the general outcry that it was a terribly officiated basketball game. It was so bad it was hard to watch Mike Eades, Bob Donato and Tim Kelly botch one call and one situation after another.
The biggest problem was there wasn’t a lead official—technically known as a referee—among them. Eades was designated as such, but last night’s performance is pretty compelling evidence that he’s not up to the role. I agree with a good friend who said that if there had been a true referee on the court, a guy like a Karl Hess or Les Jones or even a Mike Wood working that game, it wouldn’t have disintegrated the way it did.
I didn’t see a replay of the shot by Malcolm Delaney that put the Hokies ahead in the second half, but I’ve heard from enough people that it was a two-pointer and not a three to believe it must have been. Putting the wrong player on the free throw line in the second half was an embarrassment, especially when he’s allowed to shoot and miss a free throw that is waved off while they get the right guy.
To me the saddest call of all was the double technical, and I’m basing that on having seen a good replay of the incident. Kelly called it originally on J.T. Thompson for shoving Chas McFarland. But after the officials huddled for about five minutes, and watched video of the play, they came back to say they were assessing a double technical on both players.
First off, I’m not even sure Thompson should have gotten a technical. I’ve seen far harder shoves that didn’t result in technicals. But I’m absolutely convinced that no other player in the ACC would have gotten the other technical besides Chas McFarland. He got that one on reputation. You could say he bumped Thompson, but it was little more than a brush, and much, much less than it was made out to be. I’ve seen Hess and Jones officiate enough games to know that they would have gone to both players and told them in no uncertain terms to knock it off. And the players would have, and play would have gone on.
Chas McFarland has a reputation as an agitator, and it’s well deserved. I wrote about it early this season and I read about it recently in ESPN The Magazine. Everyone knows that reputation, including Mike Eades, Bob Donato and Tim Kelly, and last night they allowed that reputation to influence the way a game was called. You can say McFarland brought it up himself, but it’s up to the officials to call the game as it’s played on the floor, period.
A good game was marred by bad officiating. It was hard to watch.