Attention John Swofford, you’ve got a major problem brewing. Unless you arrest the pathetic state of ACC officiating your league is headed for irrelevance.
An astounding 55 fouls were called in last night’s Wake-UNC game rendering what was a closely fought first-half of fast hoops into a free-throw shooting contest down the stretch. Both teams were penalized with phantom calls in a bizarre tit-for-tat routine that had the officials injecting themselves far too much into the action.
The root of the problem is the inability to establish a standard of what is a foul at the start of the game and stick with it. As a result, obvious fouls are allowed in the first half and then “cleaned up” in the second with a flurry of ticky-tack calls. And if one team happens to get “too many” fouls called against it, the refs quickly double back to “even” the game with yet more phantom calls.
As usual, I’m way ahead of the curve in noticing a trend, but you watch, soon enough there will be stories wondering if ACC hoops is suffering a decline in popularity. At Maryland we already have woofing and f-bombs between players and home fans. Bad things happen when you cease allowing the game to be fun to play and watch.
