If you’re not going to suspend someone, at least they went against Davison on 50/50 calls.
I don’t think he held Teske on the flagrant hook and hold. I think it might’ve been a charge down low in the second half. His reputation bit him today, in my opinion.
Harder to play from behind.
The strategy was to favor Happ twos vs. open 3’s to others. It worked for the most part, until late where we either doubled or failed to close out (can’t remember) and they got a couple open 3’s.
It was kind of a wash in this game because Trice never found Happ, but Trice also hit 2 improbable pull-ups over Teske. I liked it because X could just foul Happ if the pass came, and it could definitely be a useful wrinkle against teams with weaker centers/centers that are poor foul shooters.
What your eyes saw and my eyes saw apparently 100% different. Come on man yourself.
Is the world of Big Ten officials out to get Michigan?
0 voters
Hahaha 
I rewatched the Ohio State game yesterday and I seriously can’t believe how bad the reffing was against OSU lol.
This includes football right?
I’m not a big refs are out to get us guy but I agree. Happ should have been In foul trouble early. That’s not considering he was doing these fore arm shivers to create space because teske was keeping good position. My buddy took Michigan minus 4 on the first half ( I told him not to) and he was livid. He’s a cuse fan and he was tight. I told him wisconsin likes to rugby the game up.
What impresses me is how well this team defends with out fouling. They really understand how to move their feet and to stay vertical when contesting so the refs CANT call a foul. That said I do think refs overall call to many fouls when a guy gets all ball on a strip/blocked shot that isn’t perfectly vertical.
Is it still a foul if you get all ball and don’t touch someone? I always thought no but maybe I misunderstand the rule all these years.
Nice try Dylan. 
Don’t confuse my (our?) lifelong over emotional helpless in-game feeling of being frequently cheated by the refs with my (our) objectivity of realizing it almost balances out in the long run. But hey, the block WAS clean and cost us a title - against cheaters no less. Charles White phantom touchdown in Rose Bowl, Desmond Howard tackle in end zone at MSU, over-ruling the fourth down stop at OSU, etc, etc. Almost always VERY HIGH STAKES on the bad calls that change game outcomes. Almost forgot Bobby Hurley charge being called a block in 92 against Fab Five in Durham that put them in 1:1 near end of game to take the lead at the line. These pains never leave. 
I don’t think refs are “out to get us” (and I prefer not to believe that any of them bet on the outcome) but I do think they can, subconsciously, give certain players/teams the benefit of the doubt once they get a reputation. Happ’s an established star and I think he may be one of those guys. Also, Wisconsin in general has a rep as a team that doesn’t foul much. Now to be fair, we also do…
I was at the game and my group thought Wiscy definitely got the benefit of the officials’ whistles or lack thereof early. I told my guys, the good news is we’re tied at half and whether the officials “try” to do it or not (they don’t), things tend to even out eventually, especially when those early calls are going against the home team. Now, having said that, from my vantage point (you really can see things much better on TV, especially with replays), I don’t think the calls went more beneficially FOR Michigan or blatantly AGAINST Wiscy in the second half, but I CAN be a little biased! I’ll watch the replay later tonight or tomorrow.
I’m watching the Duke/ UVA game right now. There is no question in my mind that Zion Willimson gets the benefit of the Officials’ whistles. Star treatment, I guess. But I agree. I think it’s more subconscious than intentional. In fact, I don’t think it’s intentional at all.
Counterpoint: two huge calls at the end of the Cuse game that went against them and would have been incredibly frustrating as a fan of the opponent. Also a “probably should’ve been a J-Mo block” at the end of the Tennessee game in the Sweet 16 the next year.
I think a case in point today was on Teske’s and-one that made it 49-45. Happ clearly hit Teske on the arm while he shot, but his teammate (who had hardly committed contact) was given the foul. That would have been Happ’s 4th personal. The ref knew there was contact and called a foul, but assigned the foul to the less important player.
Not out to get us, thats ridiculous. We can question their competency though. And some of the refs out there are just not good. I know Dylan said Wymer is a Final Four caliber ref but he has had some ROUGH games this year. Practically handed Purdue their game @ Penn St. with his blown call and one that looms large now in the B1G race. Followed that up with his (awful?) work with Michigan @ Iowa the following day.
Its funny that once the crazy inconsistent whistles from the first half stopped, the game had better flow and favored M. To say there is a conspiracy theory is crazy, its just the refs don’t know what they are looking at most of the time and directly influence the game in a negative way more often than not…
I gave you the answer you wanted
It’s too bad that officiating isn’t subject to the same intense statistical scrutiny that the rest of the game is, because to my knowledge we just don’t even have many models to judge these questions, especially on a game-to-game basis. Such a crucial, human, often instantaneous operation, repeated 100s of times throughout a game, is undoubtedly subject to flaws, biases, and mistakes, like everything else we do. Leagues and institutions have an investment in maintaining an aura of competence for officials, because they want to maintain the credibility of their games. I think we have some superficial evidence that officials are affected by home crowds, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some officials work to counter that in their whistle-blowing. A certain percentage are better at their jobs, some worse. I doubt many perceive themselves as biased or work to affect outcomes, but likely some do. Some studies have found racial bias in sports, in the NBA and baseball, and that wouldn’t surprise too many people, though I’d be super-skeptical about how you established such an animal or controlled for it, in its great complexity, in a study,
Some people argue that we should worry less about officiating, not more, because if refs called every actual infraction games would grind to a halt. We see some evidence that this could be the case already, with the introduction of additional reviews; they can make the end of games absolute hell. But I’d be for just learning how to think about it like everything else–some people think the over-emphasis on statistics, period, ruins the fun but it’s a path that–once embarked on. . . More scrutiny could reduce paranoia–certainly that seems to happen sometimes when people go looking for bias and find little of it, or see that what statistical evidence there is mostly random/noise.
That said, I’d agree that some teams absolutely do get a reputation for clean play; Michigan is in fact an absolute leader in this regard! But that doesn’t mean bad calls in a game–the failure to call fouls–can’t hurt a team. (I’ve long believed that with really close games it’s probably pretty difficult to establish that the winner was much more deserving of the outcome than the loser, although when the winner dominated statistically that makes us feel better about it.) And while I’d have to watch again, there looked to be upwards of four calls early that left Michigan in a hole that did seem to set the tenor of the game yesterday.
It’s also worth noting that all this arbitrary stuff is what makes games games, part of the drama and even the fun; we enjoy grousing and debating the merits. Like most Michigan fans, however, I’m just looking for how Michigan is affected as I watch; if I tried to watch through Wisconsin’s eyes who knows what I would see!
