[March 4, 2023] Indiana State (22-11) vs Bradley (24-8)

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Anyone familiar with former Sycamore Jayson Wells? Was that him at the end of our bench cheering us on and consoling players at the end? Does he serve in an official capacity? It sure looked like him.

Yes it’s him. He’s been very involved with the program prior to JS getting here and continuing once he got here. He’s written a couple books and I think is a motivational speaker of sorts. Good dude.
 

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I'm going to complain about something...
On 3 different occasions over the last two games the refs let us shoot a free throw and then took a long pause to look at monitors prior to the next free throw, unintentionally icing a rhythm process. On two other occasions the PA announcer was speaking while our players shot free throws. Kip was constantly telling our bench to sit, not once told Bradley to sit. And on at least 2 other occasions, the PA called us Drake. Oh, and we weren't allowed to finish Cannonball.
It didn't matter what we did this year, we were picked to finish 7th and we were treated like the 7th best team in the league all year. It was bull$#!t
 

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30+ years coaching, I've walked around that locker room of kids losing their last ballgame of the season...and especially those Seniors who might've played their last game they'll ever play. I hugged each one of them, told them I loved them, and then told them to always remember WHY it hurts so much...because of all of the relationships, hard work, effort and passion they put in to it every day...and when they look back at it down the road, it'll still hurt, but it'll be a good kind of hurt as well, because of all of those things and all of the good times they had during the process. I then would tell the underclassmen to remember what you see here. Only two times in those 30+ years, we WON the last game of the season.
 
I hate complaining about officials but this season was something else when it came to officiating, and it wasn't just our MVC games. Duquesne, USI, vs. SIU, vs. Bradley, @MSU, first half of Bradley at Arch Madness were complete screw jobs. Then add in some timely calls like @Belmont and yesterday and it's enough to question things.

Duke Deen literally shoves us down multiple times with arms extended. Voss gets a "T" after hitting his 3rd three in a row after he was FOULED on the shot. There was a 10 minute stretch of just watching McKnight and Avila get ABUSED down low in the first half. Pollard calls us for a 10 second violation AFTER Larry is on the other side of the 10 second line for a second. Ja'Shon Henry does a pull up on the rim (which I don't blame him for doing) but that was a Technical on Larry doing the same thing 2 weeks ago. It was just incredible treatment this season. Hickman starring down and stepping over people this weekend were all technicals on us this season.

If you put a video of our technicals this season it would probably make you sick. If we had 14 "T"s this season I'd figure maybe 3-4 were warranted and it seemed like everyone save for a couple, cost us games.

End of rant
 
My guess is Pollard and Kip had a bet on who could call a tech first. Pollard won.
 
I never truly believed that officiating was "fixed" but after watching some of the calls that Drake got late in their game @valpo and how they got a foul call on a 80 foot halftime desperation heave for a slap on the wrist. It makes you question if these officials have meetings about this stuff. MVC makes a lot more $$$$ when they have primetime games like Drake @ Bradley to end both the regular season and Arch Madness....
 

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I never truly believed that officiating was "fixed" but after watching some of the calls that Drake got late in their game @valpo and how they got a foul call on a 80 halftime desperation heave for a slap on the wrist. It makes you question if these officials have meetings about this stuff. MVC makes a lot more $$$$ when they have primetime games like Drake @ Bradley to end both the regular season and Arch Madness....
It would make sense for the MVC to have the team who could win the most games make the tournament. However, that qualifier is subjective. An argument could be made that Belmont, ISU, Bradley and Drake could win multiple games. That statement may draw the ire of SIU fans, but I just don't see enough from them past Domask, who I thought took a step back this year, and Jones. This may be a (again subjectively) weaker year in the MVC, but those teams were playing high quality basketball most of the year.
 
There were so many shit calls that affected the game and unbelievably frustrating to see 6 different times Pollard or Kissinger stopped play to talk to our guys. That didn’t happen once to a BU player. I was sitting in front of two MVC officials with badges on and pointed out in pregame that Kipp and Pollard each pulled Cam and Voss aside and they just had the biggest grins…

Nothing says impartiality like having pregame meetings with players. You've essentially verified bias (even if it is "subconscious") before the game tips. Unless the players seek YOU out to discuss things before, you have no business doing this as a referee.
 
When I saw who was working that game I KNEW that somehow, sometime we were going to get screwed.
 
I was standing up on the concourse walking area watching for the last I don’t know 4 minutes. One of my best friends that I’ve played ball with since we were little kids. After that second timeout that we were forced to call to avoid the 5 second call.

Voss came out of that timeout - went to half court - started stretching out (🤣) - I looked at my buddy and said “this ball is going to Voss and it’s going up, he ain’t doing all the theatrical stretching for nothing”… We went crazy. What a moment. Wish like hell it held up.
 

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This board is turning into the old Wichita State board.” We lost because of officials”. “We lost because of a conspiracy by the league office to keep us out”. I remember reading many of these same comments by Shocker fans when they would lose in St Louis. “The league hates us and will never let us win Arch Madness”. Etc etc.

Bottom line we came up short yesterday. It happens. In any game someone has to win and someone has to lose.

Had we lost the shootout to Belmont a round earlier (which we easily could have) would it have been the refs fault too?
 
This board is turning into the old Wichita State board.” We lost because of officials”. “We lost because of a conspiracy by the league office to keep us out”. I remember reading many of these same comments by Shocker fans when they would lose in St Louis. “The league hates us and will never let us win Arch Madness”. Etc etc.

Bottom line we came up short yesterday. It happens. In any game someone has to win and someone has to lose.

Had we lost the shootout to Belmont a round earlier (which we easily could have) would it have been the refs fault too?

The answer is it depends. It's one thing to call the game relatively down the middle. It's entirely another to butcher one team. I didn't think our game with Belmont had many questionable calls. If anything off the top of my head, I probably would have whistled Cam for that bull run down the lane but I also would have called Tyson for several over the backs. Outside of those things, nothing else sticks out to me and I watched the game back once.

It's another thing to let guys push people to floor. If those 3 Deen pushes are called, for example, he fouls out and completely changes how they can run their lineups and make O/D adjustments to protect other players. When the number of bad calls approaches double digits, it most certainly can be looked at as altering the outcome of the game. I can also recall 2-3 rebound attempts when our guy when flying horizontal. When you're jumping vertical to rebound or moving in the opposite direction of where you ended up when trying to box out, there is only one possible solution that gets you to that point. So what does their game look like yesterday without Deen and Henry? Leons likely gets his 5 as well because he wouldn't be able to have an O/D sub the last 8 minutes like he had. It's compounding.

This as someone who believes they absolutely made the right call on Julian and doesn't believe in the "swallow your whistle" mantra in the last several minutes of the game. Violations are violations and the game should be called in accordance to the rules. The fact that Pollard sought out players before the jump says he took previous encounters into consideration for his whistle yesterday. Likewise, that means he/others could easily have given Bradley players the benefit of the doubt or overlooked calls because of his preconceived biases. This shit absolutely needs to be highlight and eradicated from the game.

But at the end of the day, you're 100% right... we just didn't get it done.
 
Ju's mother said he is inconsolable and blames himself for the loss. He was going for a rebound and made an unintentional foul. That is basketball and it happens. Ju has nothing to be ashamed of. He was just playing at 100% as he always does. I'll probably get slammed for this but if you have to choose one player to blames the loss on it would be McCauley. Cam was wide open un der the basket but Voss saw himself as the hero. The three point attempt had an arch on it that took a couple of seconds off the clock. A straight shot to Cam could have won the game for us.
 
Ju's mother said he is inconsolable and blames himself for the loss. He was going for a rebound and made an unintentional foul. That is basketball and it happens. Ju has nothing to be ashamed of. He was just playing at 100% as he always does. I'll probably get slammed for this but if you have to choose one player to blames the loss on it would be McCauley. Cam was wide open un der the basket but Voss saw himself as the hero. The three point attempt had an arch on it that took a couple of seconds off the clock. A straight shot to Cam could have won the game for us.
Not slamming you at all, I just don’t think the blame should go to an individual. If Voss tried to pass it to Cam and it gets tipped out or Cam misses an alley oop, now what?

Every guy that played gave it their all and left it all out there. We should have never double teamed so many times to allow an open dunk lane though.
 
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