🏀 SEC Tourney Semi-Finals! Bama drops close game to Kentucky

[TerryP]

CAJ: "There are players in the NBA that couldn't have defended those shots any better."

Monk: #11 overall ranked player last year.
Adebayo: #9 overall ranked player last year.
Fox: #6 overall ranked player last year.

Bama took those guys best shot and lost by five.

 

[TheChief]

A lot of people have been down on our boys this year, mainly saying we're not a tournament team, which is bullshit. Our boys can play with anybody. Of course we've struggled, but we have the talent of a Top 32 team. You know what, Duke and Kentucky struggled at times this year too. No team is immune from the struggles.

I've said at times Bama doesn't look like a tournament team. I certainly don't feel that way right now. If Vanderbilt is in, the Tide beat them, finished higher in the SEC, and has a better winning percentage. If Vandy should be in, Bama should.

I say give AJ a lifetime contract and quit worrying about it. He'll do as well as anyone ever could at Alabama. They may never get to the Elite 8 again. Doesn't matter. If this Alabama team had one, only one, of Kentucky's shooters today, they would have won this game going away. What will be interesting will be seeing who doesn't start next year out of all the guys returning. Key, Ingram, and Hall - I'm thinking - will start. Sexton. The fifth?

Has anyone mentioned that the SEC has the worst officiating in the country? Oh yeah, my bad, it's obvious. Everyone mentions it. They are flat out awful.

 

[#80]

In the end, talent usually prevails

I've siad all season we just don't have enough talent to win at the highest level. But we are on the way !

 

[BamaFan334]

Well considering Kentucky is a Top 3 ranked recruiting class year in year out, we played them and most teams well this year. To me, it would be like Mississippi State against us in football in terms of talent, but playing us like Ole Miss has the past few years, tough.

 

[TerryP]

Has anyone mentioned that the SEC has the worst officiating in the country? Oh yeah, my bad, it's obvious. Everyone mentions it. They are flat out awful.

The Officials for last nights game were Doug Shows, Tony Greene, and Antinio Petty. If you happened to google Shows, as example, you'll find a lot of Kentucky threads complainging about his officiating. You'll also find them on ACC forums and Big East forums. The same can be said for Petty. Greene is pretty despised in Big12 country like he is in the SE. (It's almost like an Arkansas fan complaining about having Penn Wagers call a football game despite of the fact he's made a lot of bad calls that went their way.)

Point being ... it's not SEC officials; it's officials in NCAA D1 play. When Collins took over the NCAA's "lead ref" job in 2015 that was one of the changes he made. Conferences have "assigners" now-a-day who pick refs to call games. Some conferences have the same assigner.

All that said, a few years ago Statsheet did as best of an empirical ranking as possible with college refs. As I recall it ran from the '08 season up until the '13 season. The top two on the list of the worst refs for basketball? Shows and Petty.

 

[TheChief]

Excellent post, Terry.

Kentucky had valid opportunities to complain about officiating yesterday. I think the Tide had even more. It was probably unanimous that yesterday's game, though it was pretty darn good, would have been even better with competent officiating.

 

[TerryP]

@TheChief Non-SEC from a few days ago. I remembered seeing this when I read your posts but couldn't, for the life of me, remember what game it was. I caught a comment a little earlier about Chaney and ... well ...

 

[Max]

I saw someone suggest they should go to six fouls since they are being called so often. I started thinking about after the fifth foul it's two shots regardless of whether the team is in bonus or not.

Do they need another ref on the floor?

 

[18Champs]

Kentucky had valid opportunities to complain about officiating yesterday.

Found this surfing around over on Bamamag.

*

I happened across a couple of Kentucky basketball websites that have unbelievable levels of details about almost all refs who have ref'ed UK basketball games going back to 1905!

The Nationofblue.com site lists the refs for each game, such as our game with them yesterday: nationofblue.com/tonights-officials-for-kentucky-basketball-vs-alabama/. ;

That page has a link to another site that shows UK's win-loss records for referees going back over a century: bigbluehistory.net/bb/statistics/officials.html.

Click on a ref's name and you get a page listing every UK game they ref'ed, with details about the number of fouls called on each team, the number of free throws for each teams, any technical fouls and who they were on, the officiating crew, etc. Here is an example: bigbluehistory.net/bb/statistics/Officials/Doug_Shows.html. (I actually knew Doug Shows back in the 80's. He's not popular with Kentucky fans.)

They even have a chart showing their win-loss percentage with ref's who have worked at least 75 games: bigbluehistory.net/bb/officials.html.

Is it just me or does this level of obsession seem a little nutty to anybody else? I know we all have certain referees we hate because they have screwed us at times, but those guys seem to go overboard with it. Do they blame all their losses on referees or something? Maybe fouls are a bigger deal in basketball because they lead directly to points. Or maybe some Kentucky fans have nothing else to live for. Their obsession is almost creepy.

BTW, for the record, UK took 39 foul shots in the game yesterday, and Alabama took 20. The free throws they made more than made the difference in the final score. They can't complain about the refs yesterday!

 

[18Champs]

Now that I'm thinking about it, does any know what the fans were chanting at Key?

 

[UAgrad93]

I saw someone suggest they should go to six fouls since they are being called so often. I started thinking about after the fifth foul it's two shots regardless of whether the team is in bonus or not.

Do they need another ref on the floor?

They already run 3 man crews. To be honest, a 4th wouldn't be any better.

 

[TheChief]

Now that I'm thinking about it, does any know what the fans were chanting at Key?

Something about Clemson...

 

[footballer]

More refs = more fouls called

 

[bama alum]

Now that I'm thinking about it, does any know what the fans were chanting at Key?

Look at the tweet from Cecil I posted on p. 4 of this thread.

 

[bradenob]

I say give AJ a lifetime contract and quit worrying about it. He'll do as well as anyone ever could at Alabama. They may never get to the Elite 8 again. Doesn't matter. If this Alabama team had one, only one, of Kentucky's shooters today, they would have won this game going away. What will be interesting will be seeing who doesn't start next year out of all the guys returning. Key, Ingram, and Hall - I'm thinking - will start. Sexton. The fifth?.

Agreed. As my father, a big UK fan always says - "The fans would be so happy if we could just go 7-5 every year in football."

There is something to be said about a quality product. AJ can coach (see last year) and recruit (wait'll next year!). I've heard some 'bama fans complaining about him. Who will we get that's better??!! The talent is coming, and we will get back to the tourney, and even being competitive in it. To get to the sweet 16 2 out of every 4 years, with the rare Elite 8 appearance, and an exciting product to watch, would be WONDERFUL - it's all I could ask! Roll Tide!