Oregon State @ Washington

So I watched the game last night and again this morning. And I have to rant about officiating for once this season I guess.

I was red-faced in the first half for refs calling absolutely nothing inside on UW. They were ticky-tack on the perimeter, but UW was setting multiple moving screens inside to block the defensive rotations and to pick defenders off the drives. Normally I would call this an awesome scheme/plan/whatever. If it was well run, stationary double screens and back screens are a thing of beauty. But they were moving so much their own players were getting chipped in the process as well.

As the half wore on, I was happy to see the Beavs move beyond the dirty play and the absent refs. I haven’t seen our team do that before. It was like they realized they were better, and they just started beating UW down. And it seemed to carry on into the second half.

Then there came a call against UW which was a more than valid call. But Romar got on the refs about it, and they completely swallowed their whistles. They had to call the obvious two or three maulings UW committed through the rest of the game. But there were at least four times as many which would have been called in the first half as well. And the interior dirty play seemed to only be emboldened by the lack of overall calls. Until the last minute of play their screens turned from the moving variety with flared elbows that were common in the first half into them full on reaching out and grabbing arms and jerseys and even three or four bear hugs. And I’m not talking the kind of screen where you hold your arms out like you want a hug, and the defender is trying to go through you to get behind you. I’m talking about them standing behind one of our guys and literally giving them a bear hug so they can’t move forward to get to the shooter… arms wrapped around the body and all.

And the obvious travels occurring over the last 15 minutes were beyond NBA bad. Wilcox lifts his foot on a rocker step to shake Moreland on the perimeter, leading to a step back jumper to the left. That’s a forgivable miss by the refs if it happens once. But they called him on it earlier in the game. That was the point I knew something bad was going to happen. Williams-Goss gets fouled then takes three full steps to get to the rim and put in a lay-up. Even in the last 30 seconds Andrews gets the easy transition hoop, picks up the ball and takes two steps then puts the ball back on the floor and dribbles out to kill time.

Wilcox also had the transition put back dunk… which was clearly in the cylinder when he grabbed it. They were even nice enough to show a replay from below the rim which showed it clearly, not that Ernie Kent would have said anything about it. Does that guy ever shut up? It’s like he’s one stream of conscious voice talking about everything except the game he’s watching and vacations in Mexico. Holy crap that dude can talk.

But my favorite non-call of the night was when Wilcox comes to a stutter stop on the right side of the lane. I don’t get pissed off about stutter stops or walking stops any more. The jump stop died years ago, and the pivot foot became an optional thing. So it didn’t surprise me when Wilcox picked up his pivot on this play. What did surprise me was that he then picked up his other foot and jump-spun into the lane with another stutter stop.

“Well,” I thought, “that will certainly be called.” Okay, I didn’t think that. I just silently called “walk” under my breath.

It wasn’t called. In fact, Wilcox then picks up his pivot and shuffles backward with both feet in order to put a shot fake on. Then he steps forward again with his third pivot foot since he’s picked up the ball, and he does a full on legal lay-up step and a half… as if that was where he picked up the ball.

Don’t get me wrong. The Beavs did enough wrong to lose. But UW did nothing to win without the refs. If they call it in the second half like they did in the first, OSU wins by 10 even with all the bad play.