Saturday, March 25, 2006
STRIPES
[cable guy just came by today, so this is my fresh postgame reaction from last night]
A couple weeks ago, I read an article about the Husky men's basketball team where some players suggested they were the Seahawks of college basketball, just kinda doing their thing way up in their corner of the country, just winning basketball games and stuff. Boy were they right.
Now I'm not one of those guys that said straight up that the fix was on in the Super Bowl, but I did think the officials in the Super Bowl played just as much a role in the Seahawks losing as the Seahawks themselves did, and that's something that should never happen. As for what happened to the Washington Huskies last night, I think this might have gone one step further. Not only were there so many ticky-tack fouls called on Washington, that technical foul on Brandon Roy (did Rudy Gay have his technical count as one of his five allotted fouls too?) absolutely strapped Washington to the point where I'm amazed they stayed in the game, and the fact they did is a credit to the resiliency of the Huskies in purple and gold and coach Lorenzo Romar. That said, the referees reduced this team and Romar down to a near-skeleton crew and situations like having Brandon Burmeister on the floor in crunch time (which led to an ill-fated three-point attempt from about 25 feet). The technical was the thing that set the tone for the entire rest of the second half (I think that occurred with just over 13 minutes left). Of course, and I don't think I can spout coherently about it, that non-call of the goaltend on Roy's shot that would have put Washington up by one in the final minutes was absolutely inexcusable.
Five -- FIVE -- of the Washington Huskies fouled out, and if you ask me, the forty-seven free throws shot by Connecticut in this game absolutely smacks of Charles Barkley's Phoenix Suns beating the path to the free-throw line (sixty-three) against the Sonics in Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals.
I seriously think the only thing I can get on Washington for is not burying Connecticut in the first half when Rudy Gay showed up for the game but wasn't really playing yet. Verne Lundquist and Bill Raftery were nicely using the term "laconic" to describe his habits in the first half.
One of my coworkers is a Duke fan, and I told him after the loss to LSU that at least they got beat by a good team playing a great game. I'd tell any fan of the Washington Huskies that their team showed up, played their hearts out, and had this game taken away from them. I already told my coworker, and I'd tell those with ties to Montlake this...
...at least your team didn't choke like Gonzaga. That's a piece for another time.
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