The Cats shot poorly against Elon, that's why they lost the game. Having got that out of the way, I'm very concerned with the quality of officiating in the SoCon.
The Catamounts did battle back in the second half of the game, from a 16 point deficit, cutting that Elon lead down to just three points. From that point on, fouls at crucial points put Elon on the charity stripe, helping them overcome the surging Catamounts.
Again, fouls are not sole the reason the Cats lost the game, but they were more than just a minor contributor to the loss. The Cats were called for a total of 16 personal fouls, which is not excessive. But these fouls were mostly called against WCU players fouling Elon players in the act of shooting, thus sending the Phoenix to the charity stripe for 23 attempts to score. They did make 13 points at the line. However, only 7 fouls were called on Elon during the entire game, and none of them were called against an Elon player fouling a Catamount player in the act of shooting.
So, for the entire game, according to the game officials, the Phoenix did not commit any personal fouls against the Catamounts while ANY Western player was in the act of shooting ANY of their 62 field goal attempts.
Seems strange to me.
Do you recall any games where one team is not called for ANY fouls against their opponent while the opponent was in the act of scoring for an entire game? I don't think I have.
Once again, the quality of SoCon officials is called into question, and certainly this should be of concern to the Southern Conference Commissioner.
What do you think?
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2 comments:
I was at the game, and yes, the officiating was a bit lopsided for the home team (no surprise there), but the officials didn't turn the ball over for The Cats or miss lay ins and put backs for us, or fail to block out on the offensive boards. We just played a terrible game. Elon actually had plays and WCU played schoolyard ball - first one across half court to dribble around and launch an ill advised shot. That said, we did hustle for about 10 minutes in second half to climb back in, but a little too late.
I agree that had the game been called fairly, this would have been a different outcome. They wanted the players to become frustrated because every time they did anything, a foul was called on them, and there were not any calls that favored WCU. The officiating is always suspect at Elon!
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