The best sporting event of them all continues to be the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament. There have been a plethora of great games and some memorable upsets. Unfortunately one of the things most memorable about this tournament was the game between top seeded Gonzaga and a great Cinderella potential Northwestern that was likely decided by a couple of terrible referee’s calls that the NCAA itself admitted were wrong.
The Gonzaga player reached through the basket and the net to goal tend a Northwestern basket that should have been allowed. When the Northwestern coach protested that obvious missed call he was assessed a technical foul that gave Gonzaga two free throws and the ball out of bounds.
The game was decided eventually by a six-point Gonzaga win. If Northwestern was awarded the two points they did not get for the goal tending and Gonzaga did not get the two for the technical free throws and the two they scored after getting the ball out of bounds after the technical that game may have gone into overtime.
There have been numerous time-outs to look at something on film near the end of many games in this tournament. Why not one to get this mistake corrected? There are a lot of questions about that game. One has to wonder how with three officials on the floor one of them did not see the player reach through the basket to goal tend that shot?
Regardless, this has been a good tournament so far for the Arizona Wildcats. They will play Xavier on Thursday in the Elite Eight for a chance to play Gonzaga or West Virginia to go to the Final Four.
The PAC-12 Conference has done very well in this tournament. Arizona, Oregon, UCLA and Southern California were all undefeated going into Sunday’s games. USC had a tough game against Baylor, Oregon a tough one against Michigan and UCLA one coming up against the mighty Kentucky Wildcats.
The only top pick gone so far are the defending champion Villanova Wildcats. They lost to a very good Wisconsin Badger team that is also a championship contender.
Refereeing basketball is a tough job and even the best make mistakes. Hopefully, there will be some changes after this year so that wrong calls are not so obviously the determining factor in close games.
