Thurs. Feb. 28, 2019 Xavier at St. John's

[XUFan09]

Didn't see see this game, but usually when I watch SJU games I feel like they get away with a lot on the defensive end. They're always very aggressive getting up in the ball handler's face and reaching in on him. Maybe they just found a ref who wasn't in the mood to put up with that?

I think that refs all too often are too worried about "evening out the foul count" rather than just calling a foul a foul. When one team defends aggressively and the other passively, fouls/free throws probably won't (and shouldn't) be evenly distributed.

Yeah, the way SJU pressures on defense, they are definitely employing the "you can't call everything" strategy. And it's not necessarily a bad strategy. You can disrupt flow and can generate steals and blocks. The problem is, sometimes you will have a team of refs who basically say, "Yes, I can." So you have a team actually getting fouls called on their excessive pressure going up against a packline defense that is more positional than pressure defense (with personnel really good at not fouling). Yeah, you should have a disparity. The bad habit of refs evening out foul calls has got to the point that often fans expect it and get upset when it doesn't come to fruition. Just because refs have this habit, doesn't mean it's a good thing.

Rather than spouting off some conspiracy about refs, maybe some people should recognize that after 29 games of data, it is clear that SJU is bad about fouling and bad about drawing fouls. This isn't some trend that started in conference either. Also, Mullin was being incredibly difficult with the refs this game and was clearly trending toward a technical. The same pattern happened with Steele in a game earlier this year, and that pattern always developed with Mack a few times per year. You don't necessarily know when the technical will happen, but you can place a good bet that it will happen at some point during the game. The technical he was called for appeared to be nonsense, but he had lost all of his leash with these refs by that point.

[XUFan09]

St. John’s deserved to lose. Xavier deserved to win. So tired of the ref talk. The worst call all night was when Ponds blocked some guy on X cleanly in the corner, but St. John’s was already down by 14.

Clearly it was a block by Ponds on Castlin. But then Ponds should have been T'ed up for going above the shoulders on the X player. It was a tough, physical game and a battle in the paint.

It was similar to what Clark was called for earlier, an arm over the shoulder around the head hooking the player. I think the difference the refs made was that Ponds was making a play on the ball in Scruggs hands, so it was just a reach-in, but Clark was not making a play on the ball because it was on a rebound.

[stever20]

I'd also say in the NCAA tourney that the refs have to call the games tightly or they don't move on to the next rounds. They're forced to call it the way the NCAA wants.... Freedom of Movement, etc.