The Bitter End

Players back on the court. More booing. More new swear words. Timeout Miami to set the defense. 20 seconds pass. Players come out, and even louder booing this time. Inbounds to Mathies, who dribbles to midcourt and is mugged. No call. Past halfcourt, goes to shoot, and is tackled by Diaz. TACKLED. No call. Horn sounds. Chicken coop refs sprint to the locker room amid boos, thrown objects and are chased there by none other than Dana Altman, mild mannered coach of the Jays, and Brian Fish, assistant coach.

Jimmy Motz appears to chuck the ball in the direction of the officials. The Miami coaches are herding their players towards the locker room out of harms way and accidentally run over one of the Jays Dancers. The PA Announcer is pleading "Fans, Please Stop Throwing Objects Onto the Court!" to no avail. I'm out of letter combinations on making up new swear words and am moving on to Spanish. The Qwestapo is doing nothing to stop the madness, letting it go, because deep down they probably wish they could auditorially confront the refs themselves.

Now the place is in shambles. The officials reportedly have a confrontation with Athletic Director Bruce Rasmussen in the tunnel (according to Travis Justice on KM3). Jimmy Motz kicks a thrown object back into the stands and is calmed down by a coach.

And then its over. The whole thing lasts maybe 20 seconds. Calm is restored, the next fan who throws stuff on the court is booed, and as the Jays run into the locker room, they get a rousing standing ovation from the crowd.

Eugene Crawford, Lamont Simpson, and Ron Tyburski were the refs tonight. They deserved every boo they got. They deserved every obscenity yelled their way. They deserved to be verbally threatened. They did not deserve any kind of physical assault via thrown objects.

They did not deserve to have things thrown at them. But I understand why people did it. I didn't and wouldn't. But I understand it. When you do as bad a job as they did in the last 2.6 seconds, you deserve to get yelled at.

Two vignettes from Eugene's night:

At the under-four timeout, Eugene Crawford spent a good minute talking quite amiably with Miami's head coach. My buddy said to me, "Looks like the ref and the coach are pretty friendly, doesn't it?" Odd, huh?

Then after the Watts charge, Altman gave it to Crawford pretty good. Throwing his fists into the air and yelling at him, behaving very un-Altman-esque. Crawford spent the entire timeout glaring icily at Altman and the CU bench. As a poster on the Bluejay Cafe noted, "I turned to my son and said, 'There is no way that guy will give us a call on our last shot.'" And despite heavy contact, no call.

These refs, they're human and they had a bad night. I hope that's all it was. I better not find out otherwise or I'll have to start inventing swear words again.

So that's what happened. How do I feel about it? Like the Jays were robbed. Ripped off. For the entire game, the refs let the teams play. They call virtually nothing -- evidenced by the fact the game was at the under-four timeout at 8:30. And then with the clock under three seconds in a tie game, they all of a sudden call a blocking foul? After the play is already over? You can't be serious. That's bush league. You don't make that call with 2 seconds left in a tie game. You just don't do it. Particularly when you've let them play all night. And the worst of it is, the whistle didn't blow until after the shot was missed. I'm not going to say it because I don't believe in conspiracies and X-files and all these things, but that looked awfully mysterious to me.

However, if you're going to make the questionable call for Miami, you have to call the foul against them on the next play. Consistency is all I ask for. Either consistently bad or good, but at least you know what to expect.

I don't think either play should have been a foul. Let the game go overtime and the players can decide it on the court. All good refs will tell you that they would never let their call decide a game. Horrible refs like Eugene Crawford make that call and decide the game. That's why Eugene is working an NIT game in an Omaha blizzard instead of the NCAA Tournament.

I remember a game in February of 2002 where Mike "Ratface" Sanzere made a similar call against us in a game vs. Southern Illinois. He's still blacklisted by Jays fans. I think he's got company after tonight.

As I think about it and watch the replays, my reaction is this: Watts was shuffling his feet, so technically you could call the blocking foul. If you want to. But having known several referees in my life, they all say the same thing: don't make a questionable call at the end of a game that will decide it. And they did that tonight.

If they let it go, the Jays get the rebound, clock runs out and we go OT. No one is unhappy with that. But it wasn't to be.

Congratulations to Miami. They played extremely well tonight and pulled out a hard-fought victory. Go beat Michigan on Wednesday. You deserve it.

From a Miami fan on the Bluejay Cafe: "As a Miami fan I don't really want to get credit for a win like that. You guys deserved it, don't know what else to say. Good Luck next season Blue Jays...We've gotten robbed all season by ACC refs so I feel your pain, but that was horrible. Seriously I've never not really been this upset after my team won... the Miami (radio) announcer said that it looked like Miami fouled Creighton after the clock hit zero on the last shot. Our own radio crew called the refs out for the last couple seconds, so the refs must have blown the calls pretty badly."

All kinds of classy discussion between Miami fans and Creighton fans tonight. One of the classiest fan bases I've seen this season, for sure. In the end, I suppose it makes it easier to stomach that if it can't be the Jays, at least a good group of fans are moving on.

So that's it. The end of the road. A bitter defeat, seemingly robbed by an unprofessional referee crew.

Blaming the refs in the immediate aftermath is just venting. Its now 12:13 AM Tuesday morning, and that's over with. Time to move on and take the high road. Bring on next year.

Stop back tomorrow for a more coherent recap. I'll be here.