That and the intentional foul rule make college basketball incredibly frustrating. If you watch any of these games, you'll find 10+ plays per game where a player doesn't advance the ball for 5 seconds and is guarded. No call. If you watch any close games, you'll find tons of fouls in the closing seconds which were clearly intentional and by no means a play on the ball. No call. Not only are the rules stupid, but it's blatantly unfair when they are called (the GT game today, VCU-George Mason last week with an intentional foul to decide it) because they're called so seldomly. The NCAA needs to emphasize consistency... either make the call all the time, and emphasize the rulebook (like the NFL has done with some calls) or take them out of the rulebook. Because with the situation it is now, it's very unfair when the calls are made, and especially so when one official decides to take the game in his hands in the final minute.
Exactly, when refs take over games, its just not good for basketball overall. I'm not sure where the officials were from for that GT game, but I thought both ACC and Big East officials from the games I saw this year, did a good job. A-10 officials as always are terrible, Linda Bruno is an idiot.
C'mon Winthrop!! Beat Basketball Jesus, and my bracket might have some hope yet. But I'll gladly throw my bracket away if TAMU-CC beats Wisconsin.
I'm on the Winthrop watch also. I am surprising myself w/ how many upsets I picked. Literally half I think. The first time I filled out the brackets I ended up having two regions w/ no upsets. Then I thought I better pick some, and I clearly overcompensated. I've got Arkansas and Creighton coming up too. Maybe I'll get lucky and get most of the sweet 16.
I always felt Wisconsin was a little overrated, but no way could I pick them to lost this one. I'd love to see it anyways! 17-4! This March Madness on demand thing is awesome BTW.
well i think you have to be "closely guarded." like if a guy is dribbling and the defender is just standing there in his stance looking at the guy, that doesn't count. but if the defender is actively up on the guy trying to press him, then they start counting. and usually when the offensive player creates a little space with a juke they reset the count. it sort of looked like the gt guy did that, but they kept counting. either way, it's such a judgment call and such an overall nuisance to have to keep dribbling and juking or passing it off and getting it right back just to avoid 5 seconds (especially at the end of a half or game when someone is just waiting to take the last shot) that they should do away with it. i assume it's some sort of remnant of the no shot clock era so that one guy couldn't just dribble out an entire half by himself but it needs to be done away with. i guess you could call any rule, like 3 seconds in the paint, arbitrary but this one seems particularly so and has nothing to do with playing basketball. being close to someone for 5 seconds shouldn't mean anything if you don't actually force them into a mistake.
Wisconsin is only down 8 now 27-19. They are on a really on a roll now. scoring 12 pts in the last five minutes!
