We Witnessed One of the Worst Calls in College Basketball to End the Wisconsin/WKU Game

I bitch a lot about college officiating and I’ve yet to find a reason not to. These officials are a joke and last night it cost Western Kentucky the chance to go to overtime against Wisconsin in a very winnable game. As Joe set the scene above, it’s a tie game with :02 left and Wisconsin having to go the length of the court. Now, unless the Badgers got Chris Chiozza on the roster, this isn’t happening.

Now, why is this a bad call? First, Davison isn’t set and he’s still moving to get in position to set the screen. If anything that’s an illegal screen. Second, he’s out of bounds thus making him an illegal player. I know Wisconsin fans will argue that he’s not, but watch as he sets, his foot slides and is hitting the line. Any sort of touch of the line makes you out of bounds. You can’t call a blocking foul on a guy who has a foot on the line. Finally – and most important –  you don’t end a game on this. This is some garbage that average high school teams run and if anything Wisconsin should be a little embarrassed here to even attempt to run this play.

Now, I’ll give Davison credit. He sells the hit pretty good. Does his role to draw the foul. But, the ref is literally right there. How do you miss any of this? How do you make this call? I’m not even arguing that you swallow the whistle the last minute of the game or anything like that because I believe if it’s a foul in the first 5 minutes it should be a foul in the last 5 minutes. The problem is this isn’t a foul. It’s not even close to a foul.

These refs need to be fired to the moon. I’ve often said the NCAA needs to make officials full time and really go through a process of getting guys who not only can get into position but can get up and down the court well enough to call a game correctly. Refs have become an old boys club and we’re seeing it pay off in the negative. Too often games are decided by wrong calls and officiating has been atrocious for a few years now. Make it a full time gig. Try to recruit as many former players as possible who aren’t playing professionally to get them to officiate games. Have them go through classes in the offseason to get better. Anything to avoid this call.