Final 33 seconds bite Wolverines in Ohio State loss

It was clear to me that Simpson was trying to brace his fall but I’m shocked to hear Juwan say that the ref acknowledged that. I assumed that the officials thought Simpson was trying to pull Young down- so the referee is basically saying:

  1. Simpson was fouled on the play, causing him to lose control of his body in the air
  2. Simpson grabs Young in an attempt to brace himself

And that’s worthy of a flagrant 1? What we are we doing here?

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I’ll be dead for a long time before this god awful conference hires a competent basketball official.

Maybe some of the logic was “well Kyle Young didn’t really foul him” … Simpson created all of the contact by kind of pulling Young into him. Can’t un-call the foul but maybe that makes you more likely to call the flagrant?

Except Young knocked him off balance with his lower body on the way to the hoop. That’s what started the whole process of Simpson being off balance. It was a foul.

simpson

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That’s a perfect screen shot of the foul. That type of foul happens all the time, with the player either finishing the layup or not, then falling to the floor. What doesn’t happen all the time is the player tearing the jersey of the defender while trying to finish the layup. Proper call or not, who does that? Totally unnecessary play by X.

It was a freak accident. He grabbed to brace himself and the jersey happened to tear.

Remember how many times VCU and Minnesota were called for techs/flagrants when they ripped our jerseys? Yeah, zero.

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/Verbatim exchange with DJ Carstensen and Jay Bilas/

Bilas “Never seen this one before”
Carstensen “We have a common foul on red 25. We have an F1 on gold grabbing the jersey bringing him all the way down to the ground.”
Bilas “Is that a contact technical?”
Carstensen “Well it’s a flagrant one. We’re going to shoot two, shoot two, then red’s going to get the basketball over there.”

How Carstensen can say Zavier (gold) brought Young “all the way down to the ground” is puzzling to me. It doesn’t add up.

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Right. I mean, Young stayed on his feet, didn’t he?

He sure as heck did stay on his feet. Stumbled a bit with the photographers but never went down.

All the way to the ground or enough time to whine to the ref and then trip over his own feet.

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I’ll probably be in the minority here but I do think X did that intentionally. I was the type that took it to the rack when I played and sometimes with reckless abandon. If I were falling I can’t imagine reaching back like that in any situation to “brace myself”. I’d be more focused on trying to brace my fall with the ground. Plus, X has had that leaning slip shot on various sides of the rim where he’s trying to get around the bigger player and he’s never reached back before that I recall. I feel like this was him trying to get a competitive advantage and it bit him in the rear this time.

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I agree he most likely did it on purpose. Still dumb as hell that they called it and shitty luck that the jersey ripped.

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I’m guessing that you are probably right that it was intentional. But there are two reasons that it was nonetheless ludicrous to call that flagrant, ignoring that it completely swung the game.

First, even though we may think X did that intentionally, we (and, more importantly, the refs) can’t know for sure X’s intent while grabbing the jersey to brace himself on the way to the ground after being fouled is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why he grabbed the jersey.

Second, even if we know with certainty that it was intentional, he didn’t drag him to the ground or anything. Seems more like it should have been a regular foul, but the play was already over so it would be irrelevant.

I also think X did it on purpose. And, assuming this is the case, that makes the shirt grab a rather dumb thing to do at a crucial moment in the game.

OTOH, it’s not like X didn’t get beat up by Ohio guys throughout the game. And I’m sure he got plenty of sh*t for being a traitor to Ohio. So I can’t be too upset about his reaction.

He seemed to do it on purpose to embellish the contact and draw the whistle. I don’t really understand the angle that he was trying to really do it as an act of aggression as some people seem to be implying.

I definitely don’t think it was to try and hurt someone or anything along those lines. If we’re being honest X has a tendency to tug and hold at times to embellish calls or to invite refs to call something. He’s a bulldog (and he’s our bulldog, which I love) and sometimes that can manifest in things like this play. It’s unfortunate but agree that if the jersey hadn’t ripped and/or Wymer hadn’t been on the call it would have been nothing.

One additional note. I wish we had a player who hustles like Young. Hopefully Brandon can become a more talented version of that.

I’m still not sure how I feel about the call, so don’t get me wrong here, but intent is irrelevant when calling a flagrant 1 foul. If a personal foul is deemed to be excessive and/or unnecessary, then it meets the definition of a flagrant 1 foul. The ball was not yet dead when X’s foul occurred, which is why they were able to go with the flagrant 1 call. The reason they could not have gone with a common foul is that replay can only be used to determine whether a flagrant foul occurred.

The status of the ball is key here. I said above that the ball was not dead when X’s foul occurred. That’s what the officials deemed, but I’m not sure that was actually true. If the shot was still in the air when X ripped, then the ball was live, and the call was justifiable. If it wasn’t still in the air, then the ball was dead, replay cannot be used to assess a dead ball technical foul, and we got screwed. (EDIT: watched the video a few more times, and the ball was still live when X ripped, so using video to assess the flagrant 1 was valid).

This is over officiating at its finest. I mentioned it after the Rutgers review the other day that it is probably best to just be done with replay. I truly think it creates more problems than it solves.