FOUL BEHAVIOR
ET’S take the two big Tournament hassles in chronological order: 1. Seton Hall, Friday, lost to Arkansas after a replay review determined SHU’s Desi Rodriguez’s foul on Jaylen Barford with 18.3 seconds left, Arkansas up one, was a flagrant, giving Arkansas two free throws, then the ball, game over.
While some, including me, thought a courtside replay never should have been needed to reveal the flagrant foul — Rodriguez fouled, even appearing to shove Barford from behind while making no play on the ball — others were sure the replay would exonerate Rodriguez of flagrancy in the first degree.
When it didn’t, many, including CBS/Turner analyst Chris Webber and local wishers and hopers, went bonkers: the Pirates — and shame on me for this — were robbed!
Regardless, how many who hollered about this perceived injustice previously professed to love replay rules “because it’s all about getting it right”? Heck, this call had a better chance to go Seton Hall’s way — a mere foul — had there been no replay!
And so, with advanced technology now applied to making protracted second-opinion decisions, basketball is another game self-sentenced to drowning in populist but unrealistic “let’s-make-perfect.” After all, without replay rules — new ones coming all the time — none of us would have remained fans of basketball, football or baseball.
2. Saturday, with Northwestern making a late move against Gonzaga, what was deemed a clean block of a Northwestern shot sent its coach, Chris Collins — as play went the other way — bolting on to the court, hysterically claiming Gonzaga had blocked the shot from inside the hoop, thus defensive interference should’ve given his team two points.
Collins, lucky not to have been tossed, was hit with a technical.
A CBS replay showed Collins to be correct; the shot was blocked from inside the rim.
“He is 1,000 percent correct!” shouted analyst Steve Lappas. But Lappas didn’t add what was needed: Being right isn’t a license to commit in-game anarchy.
As Lappas, a former coach, well knows, a coach, especially with subjective senses applied, will detect several bad calls and bad non-calls per game. Thus, that Collins became completely unhinged became the larger of the sins.
Worse, Collins sat smugly in the postgame news conference as someone off-camera read aloud the NCAA’s statement: a.) the non-call was wrong, but, b.) Col- lins nevertheless earned that technical foul, as Collins sat making childish, self-satisfied faces as if a.) justified b.), while never apologizing for b.).
And so another opportunity to teach a lesson in dignity and class to student-athletes — young college men — was lost on one of their most important teachers.