what a fair game called by the refs tonight wow. They let us play aggressive d all night and dominate reddick. Sure there were some questionable calls on big baby but I could have sworn they were going to give the "landlord" all the calls tonight and let jj have his perfect lane.
i thought the calls were INCREDIBLY inconsistent....no calls on flagrant fouls and then calling fouls that were negligible. I didn't understand it but there didn't seem to be a bias either so it was all good.
I thought Williams got away with a hook on Davis early in the game, and a couple of body contacts on blocks that could have been called. Davis and Thomas were both called for at least 1 ticky tack foul each, so it wasn't too bad but it was a little inconsistent. What surprised me was that Reddick didn't get more calls, and that sure worked to our advantage as he had one of his frustrated type games where he never gets it going.
I am surprised that Reddick and Duke didn't get more calls too. I wasn't too impressed with the refs except that they let us play a very physical game, which obviously was to our advantage. But they also called some questionable fouls on us. In all, I agree that the calls were inconsistent but unbiased.
If there was a bias, it wasn't that bad. The only call that made me really mad was when they called the foul on another Duke player even though it was obviously Sheldon and would have given him 5 fouls.
I thought there were some BS calls, but I don't think it was one-sided. The refs let Temple grab and push Redick all night long.
I don't know what game ya'll were watching. If GD or TT so much as looked at Williams hard they screamed foul. Shelden, on the other hand, would have fouled out twice had they been consistent. They literally took our two big men out of the first half, then caused them to play not as aggressive in the second.
I thought it looked pretty clear on the replay that the other kid made contact first. We really have no room to complain even though both of our big guys were hampered because of questionable calls. Temple was very physical with Reddick, and in all the refs allowed us to play a very physical game.
But the Paulus contact was before the shot. Since TT got two free throws on the play that meant the foul was on the shot. The only contact on the shot was Sheldon Williams. They were keeping Sheldon in the game. The "charge" on BB was a flop. The only contact between BB and the defender was BB's forearm on his leg. There was literally air between them. Tyrus was inbounds by a good 2 inches. Those were the only blatant bad calls I saw, but blatant bad calls aren't the problem. In basketball very few plays are 100%. What duke gets are calls that are iffy but would normally either go uncalled or be in the other team's favor. Therefore, the calls are easily defended by saying, "See he did make some contact." That doesn't make it any less BS, and it is a result of K's stature and using this stature to work over the ref's in ways that other coaches can't get away with. Even their players are able to whine to officials where in college that will get you a tech quite often.
Oh well, you may be right, but you wouldn't be the first to accuse officials of favoring Duke. We overcame any bias, benefited from the refs allowing us to play physical, and are now an elite 8 team.
