NCAA Men's Final: Referees

Welcome to the Truda Report everybody.  As you all know, the North Carolina Tar Heels beat the Gonzaga Bulldogs 71-65 in the March Madness Final.  Joel Berry led the Tar Heels with 22 points, 6 assists, and 3 rebounds in a performance that won him Most Outstanding Player.  Gonzaga was carried by Nigel Williams-Goss who ended with 15 points, 9 rebounds, and 6 assists.  At the very end of the game Goss tweaked his ankle for the second time in three days, pretty much ending all hopes of winning the title. 

The real story of the day though was the foul trouble both teams were put into.  All three of Gonzaga's 7-footers either fouled out or ended one foul short of fouling out.  On the UNC side, Kennedy Meeks and Isaiah Hicks both ended with 4 fouls limiting their playing time as well.  Overall, 44 fouls were called, meaning that on average about 1 foul was called per minute.  That is an obscene number of fouls, and social media was buzzing with talk about how slow the game was.  After sitting on the thought for almost 2 days now, I have come to the conclusion that the referees deserve a grade of a B for their officiating job.  Both UNC and Gonzaga are physical teams who relied on play inside the paint, and the referees did a great job of keeping the game civil. If they were to let the game play on more, it would have made it difficult to call close fouls late in the game because of the blurry line they would have created. By calling the game like every other one this year, they made everyone on both teams aware that they had to play under control, and neither teams big men did that very well.  Also, in all of Gonzaga's games this year a high number of fouls were called due to their physical style of play, so this was nothing new.

​To be fair though, the refs did screw up big time during the final few minutes of the game when Kennedy Meeks attempted to save the ball from going out of bounds.  Mess' hand was out of bounds when he saved the ball, so the ball should have gone to Gonzaga giving them a much better chance of cutting the lead. Instead UNC got the ball, scored, forced a Gonzaga turnover, and then scored the game icing break away dunk.

​Overall though, I think that the thrashing of the referees has gone too far and they did their job the way it was supposed to be done.  If they had been more lenient there would have definitely been more controversial calls than actually occurred Monday night. 

Thanks for reading everybody.  To give me your opinion or to suggest a topic either follow me on Instagram @thetrudareport or email me at [email protected]