Referees ruined game (from the M'ville Bulletin)

[mhsalum 31]

Referees ruined game

I've seen some bad referees in my time, but the three men who officiated Martinsville's state semifinal game with Robert E. Lee take the cake.

 

I don't know who those three referees were, and I don't care. They ruined the game for the players and the fans.

 

Lee had shot 25 foul shots by halftime, and ended up taking 47 attempts from the charity stripe.

 

That statistic is ridiculous. It makes people think the game was physical, but it wasn't. The refs called the most pathetic, ticky-tack fouls that I've ever seen. I think Vic Hairston sneezed on an opponent and got called for a foul at one point.

 

There were 51 personal fouls called in the game. Both teams had two players foul out and at the end of the game, Martinsville had four players with four fouls, while Lee had one with three and two with two.

 

It seemed like the referess were calling a foul on every offensive possession, and the effect was paralyzing to Martinsville's style of basketball.

 

The Bulldogs are a run-and-gun team, and with whistle after whistle slowing down the pace of the game, they were forced to play a half-court type of game. Seeing Martinsville play like this was almost unbearable.

 

I watched the game from the press table, and the consensus of the people sitting around me -- all sports writers like myself -- was the same: these refs need to let the kids play.

 

The sports writer sitting next to me got so angry that he started heckling the refs.

 

"Can you guys go a play without blowing a whistle?" he said to a ref as he jogged past.

 

And that writer was there covering Lee, which ended the game with 19 fouls compared to Martinsville's 32.

 

I kept my mouth shut, but when one of the refs called a foul from halfcourt on a Bulldog who was underneath the basket, I wanted to scream my head off.

 

But I kept calm and buried my disbelief in a bag of chips. I took it a lot better than the sports writer sitting next to me.

 

"How could he call that? He was 20 feet away," he said, punching the table. "These refs are controlling the game. They're the kind of refs that want to be the stars."

 

He stood up and yelled with his hands cupping his mouth.

 

"That's it hot shot. Blow your whistle. You the man. That's right, you the man. You're deciding the outcome of this game!"

 

I felt the same way. The referees were shaming the sport of basketball and making what should have been an up-and-down game extremely boring.

 

To be fair to the referees and the players on Fighting Leemen, the officials weren't the only reason for the Bulldogs' downfall. Martinsville shot 52.2 percent from the foul line and 37.3 percent from the floor, while getting beaten under the boards.

 

But the refs didn't help. Good officials aren't supposed to help or handicap a team. They're supposed to call the game evenly, let the kids play when it's appropriate and they should never, ever, control a game like those three guys did last Friday.

[RichlandsAlum 678]

Although the list of potential culprits is very large.

[lee_fan 10]

I feel the sports writer's pain. He just described ninety-eight percent of the games from the old cumberland district, before Jonesville, Pennington, Keokee, Flatwoods, and Dryden consolidated to form Lee High. And Lord help anyone who had to play a Scott County team when some of that Scott County "gang" called the game.

[FatBoy 10]

I know for a fact that Sanders didn't call the Robert E. Lee / Martinsville game. If you had been watching TV that evening, Sanders was preaching with Brother Bobby and Sister Shelia Stanley on the Channel 8 'Good News' TV down at the Pea Patch True-Word Tabernacle in Whitewood. I am pretty sure that Sanders retired from reffing games this year and is spending all his spare time saving souls.