BALTIMORE, Maryland March 25, 2016 - Maryland and Kansas are in about as thrilling a college basketball game as you could hope to see. At the half, Kansas is up by two points. Sadly, the three guys officiating the game have no clue about what is going on. Three referees. Six eyes and probably hundreds of games officiated. Yet they miss a 'middle of the floor' double dribble by Maryland's Jake Layman, then make it far worse by calling a technical foul on Layman for trying to save a hellacious back injury by holding on to the rim for an extra second, something that is perfectly legal unless the officials are trying to rule that the player is showing off, something too ridiculous to think about on that play. Three referees. Six eyes. Not one got it right. You know and I know that two of the officials - unless they are handicapped in some unannounced way - saw the call correctly. So how screwed up are they to allow the horrible view stand? Explain that.
Then there is the play with Devonte Grahm, the one when he elbowed Maryland's best player, Melo Trimble, in the face. It was obvious and vicious and in the middle of the floor. None of the three refs even noticed the play - how can that be? - then looked at the replay and said play on. If no penalty is called on such an obvious and vicious hit, why have the rule? Are they inside of the head of the Kansas player and decided he didn't mean to do it? Isn't one of the purposes of the rule to curb vicious play? So it is OK to play with your elbows flying all over the place because the refs know what a nice person you are? The replay makes the play look very vicious. Trimble made one brief effort to poke the ball away from Grahm has he moved past Trimble on his way to the basket. But except for getting hit in the middle of his face with Grahm's elbow, the replays show Trimble made no contact with
Grahm. Suddenly, Grahm's elbow flies out and hits Trimble in the middle of the face. Trimble's head flies back and he slumps to the floor.
In the end, the officials do not need to apologize, except to the players. Maryland did not play well in the second half.
Kansas plays on, at least for one more game. Maryland goes home, and when they next take the floor, it will be without Layman and Sulaimon and who else?
This is about the worst officiated game I've seen this season. It would be extremely interesting to have a real sports journalist interview these guys to see how they have mangled so many calls.
The really awful officiating has continued in the second half. They are talking a lot about what Stone "almost" has done. They show a replay of Stone's miss. The replay shows the hard foul on Stone right after the shot, that wasn't called. Seconds later, the same Kansas player takes a dive and Stone is called, on a play where the contact was only about half of what they overlooked on the first play, the one where Stone was hacked but it wasn't called.
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