SDJay wrote:I watched Pitino's post game presser. The reporters really tried to goad him in to ranting about the refs, and he wasn't having it. I was impressed with his take. Essentially, he said (paraphrasing) " We needed to make better plays at the end to win". They wouldn't let it go. He chastised them for continuing to ask about the officials.
I came away impressed with his composure and take. Apparently, he's done this before....
I typed really fast to get this posted before the site crashes again.
He's a smart guy and he's not in the HOF because he doesn't know how to work the media, the refs, and the conference. By the time the press conference happened, he got what he wanted already, and he wasn't going to complain
I thought the first half was OK, even if being called in a way that was beneficial for them:
- 3 PF's for us and 5 PF's for St. Johns
- our fouls this year range from 16 to 4 in a game, and theirs coming in ranged from 30 (no typo!) to 9 with most competitive games in the 20+ range
While the refs weren't calling much, the game hadn't really turned into a rugby scrum at that point
Second half I thought was Pitino seeing that we were shredding their defense and just not hitting shots in the first half. So he ratcheted up the physicality to 11. And for the most part it worked, the game became an even bigger slog and until we responded and got to the point where the refs called enough to get us to the line, it worked perfectly for him
What did that do for him - it allowed his defense to limit our ball movement and kept us from getting into a rhythm where we might hit some shots, and while the refs called a lot of fouls in the second half, it was beneficial to Pitino because they were committing more fouls than were being called. As is, the number called against them wasn't in their top 5 games this year. A closer reckoning based on how they played the 2nd half would have been close to the West VA game where they had 30 fouls called on them
A lot of teams are going to do that to us in the BE (as we've already seen), so good we see could overcome it yesterday and get the win.
for the BE, this is a bad trend as officials from elsewhere are just as likely to call 30 on them and take them completely out of the game if they play that way - watch any B12 or ACC game and see how those games are called. SJU would have fouled out multiple guys yesterday if called like their games