NOTE: My apologies for Monday's technical difficulties. I had to deal with the sudden shut-down of a hosting service. I think I got all my files transferred, but for those readers who bookmark Grizzly Journal, you might have to re-establish the link. My thanks to those readers who alerted me to the problem. If you notice any other problems, I appreciate you letting me know. – GJ
There’s controversy erupting out of Potacello after Montana’s 72-63 OT win over the Idaho State Bengals Sunday, all of which is still on tape via the Altitude Sports Television coverage of the event.
The question is not whether Jordan Hasquet signaled for an illegal timeout (Montana had no timeouts remaining) with 1.2 seconds remaining on the clock: he did. It also looked to me like Hasquet took an extra step.
Instead, the question is whether any time remained when official Eric Curry acknowledged Hasquet’s request with a whistle and a raised arm.
Apparently so. The Big Sky Conference web site just posted a story announcing the suspension of game officials Curry, Bob Scofield and Scott Harris for “misapplication of rules,” with regard to that last-second call.
Big Sky Conference Assistant Commissioner Jon Kasper (Media Relations) was in attendance at Sunday’s game and participated in a halftime interview on Altitude. He was most likely close to the controversy.
Missoulian Sports Editor Bob Meseroll touches briefly on the incident in his Monday morning story (no link available).
Comments by the Altitude Sports play-by-play and color crew are instructive in retrospect as well.
But the best post-game discussion of the event comes from Idaho State Journal sportswriter Kellis Robinett on his blog account, entitled: The Hasquet Pardon: Montana 72, Idaho State 63.
What I found most fascinating about Robinett’s blog entry, however, was the audio interview he conducted with O’brien after the game. It’s at the top of Robinett’s entry and is well worth listening to in its entirety.
O’brien’s comments sum up a concise, but revealing overview of college basketball philosophy by a coach who in two years at ISU has developed a reputation for his candor. O’brien hints, but doesn’t directly say, that his team missed a chance to lock-up a win earlier in regulation.
Interestingly, the questions about Big Sky officiating asked by Robinett are quite similar to questions I raised earlier this year. I’ve long believed that the ‘style’ of officiating in the Big Sky Conference needs to be addressed. I became more convinced of that belief earlier in the season when I observed consistently high quality officiating at the Washington State Cougar Classic Invitational. It has do do with letting players play the game.
It was no small irony to me than several of the officials who worked the Cougar Classic also call Big Sky games. The style of officiating at the Cougar Classic (more open, more physical, less ticky-tacky) contrasted sharply with countless games I’ve witnessed in Big Sky action.
Too often, I’ve seen Big Sky officials (for both men and women’s games) completely disrupt the natural flow of games with heavy handed (or often puzzling) interpretations of fouls. Of course, that was not the focus of Sunday’s call.
Nonetheless, ISU fans won’t have any success convincing Montana fans that Curry (who I believe is one of a handful of the best veteran Big Sky officials) was ‘favoring’ the Griz. That’s because Curry was one of the three-official crew in Missoula on Feb. 16 when Northern Arizona beat the Griz 80-76 in a game where 51 whistled-fouls and several other critical calls affected the flow of the game – to Montana’s disadvantage – and much to the heated displeasure of Montana fans.
Though Montana Coach Wayne Tinkle did not make any comments critical of officials after his team’s loss, there was no mistaking his displeasure with the officiating when, after the game, Tinkle said: “There wasn’t much flow to the game there, was there? It seemed like any way we got momentum going, somehow it was taken away from us. I’ll say it like that.”
