4th Quarter Bad Calls and Partial Play Summary
59-48 at start of quarter.
Maryland starts to get loose with Charles continuing to hit from top of the key (nobody picking her up) but Bell starting to get tight (per my observation and the announcers).
9:30 First turnover, a steal from Bell, turning into a scrum then shot clock violation.
Maryland scores, 9 point game.
9:00 Bell for 2, 11 point game.
8:32 Charles hits 2, 9 point game.
8:13 Perez missed 3.
8:01 Jones elbows Pitts out of her position. Then (with Pitts already in contact thanks ito Jones taking over Pitts position but not having pushed her too far) catches the pass for an immediate foul call. Some people would say this is good basketball. Others would say it’s just Steph Jones pushing people around in the paint like her sister got away with for 4 years with impunity at Maryland.
7:57 Austin palms the ball, dribbling as high as her head in the low post. Is there such a thing as palming anymore? Anyway dribbling as high as her head, which may be legal, not sure. On second look, she definitely turned the ball over with her palm, before any contact by Bello. Eventually Bello grabs the ball as she shoots, and is called for a foul at that time. That block was clean (as announcers agreed). Probably body contact while she was palming the ball or dribbling over her head. Call it a late whistle maybe. Definitely something wrong with this call, should have been a Maryland turnover, instead Austin makes 1 of 2 free throws, 8 point game.
7:48 After miss, Maryland gets rebound, shoots, misses, ball out of bounds. Given to Minnesota, but might have been off Taiye. Hard to tell, really. I won’t count it as a bad call since it should have been Gopher ball in the first place.
7:28 Brunson tries to drive, gets called for a travel. I don’t think it’s a travel tho. She got off a poor, off-balance shot in time. If that was a travel, then what pray tell was Charles earlier Eurostep from the 3-point line?
7:14 Ball gets tipped a couple times, goes out of bounds off #1 Austin. Ball is wrongly given inbounds to Maryland. The referee making the bad call was about 6 feet away from the play and looking right at it at the time. This is probably one of the worst calls of the whole set. What, is the referee daydreaming or something? Did Freese give her a high sign that it was about time to throw another call in favor of the Terps? This’s one bad call by itself is nearly enough to cause the Maryland win from what otherwise would have been a Gopher win. Then add to that about 10 other equally bad calls in Maryland’s favor, and that seals the deal for a Maryland win.
7:12 With virtually no time off the clock, and with Maryland wrongly throwing the ball inbounds (they hit it out of bounds), Maryland throws a perfect lob pass to Jones who catches the pass while brushing up perhaps ever so slightly yet intentionally against Bello, who gets her 4th personal. One could easily call that good D on Taiye’s part. But politically speaking, it really is starting to seem that the refs are doing everything in their power to make the Gophers lose at this point. This counts as a foul for Bello, but should not have since it should not have been Maryland’s ball to throw in.
Granted, Bello should have kept her distance and just tried to poke it away, like out of bounds. But the damage was done already by the biased refs who gave a ball clearly tipped out of bounds by a Maryland player, to Maryland to throw in for what’s pretty much a guaranteed foul. Not to mention putting our star rebounder one foul away from fouling out, and forcing her to play timid for the next 7 minutes. Taiye should have 2 fouls at this point. Both this and the previous one should not exist. Because in each case, the refs missed Maryland turnovers immediately before, so those plays should not have even happened.
Also, Jones traveled when she caught the ball, but never mind since the refs had already decided to whistle Taiye. Actually, it was good D by Taiye, and Jones didn’t ram into her to extract the contact she was looking for, until after Jones traveled.
7:09 A scrum under the hoop. Charles gets rebound, jumps backwards into Pitts during the shot, foul on Pitts for being in the way of her back-jump (foul on Pitts for being shorter and not getting the rebound, really). If Taiye had been in (subbed by Lamke) then Taiye probably gets the rebound (but she’s benched due to two quick non-fouls). 4th foul on Pitts. Palma in for Pitts. Just like that, it’s Kaposi and Lamke in, whereas Pitts and Bello would have been in if the refs hadn’t called two quick bogus calls on Bello.
Maryland makes one of two free throws, now a 7 point game with 7 minutes left.
Next possession, Gophers get a shot clock violation. Not aware of it apparently. Block by Jones helped use up clock.
Next set, bad Maryland play, Bell gets 2 off fast break. 9 point game at 6:19.
6:05 Mikesell hits a quick 3 from the left wing. Kaposi leaves her wide open. 6 point game.
5:35 Lamke knocks down a short jumper. 8 point game.
5:24 Mikesell left all alone again for another 3. 5 point game.
Next play, Bell charged into double-team, loses ball, Maryland fails to score on fast break, we get rebound.
4:54 Bell seems injured. Bello in for Bell (with Lamke). After timeout it looks like Pitts has come in too.
4:33 Pitts scores on a reverse. 7 point game.
Charles left alone for easy two after nice feed. Gophers not playing D anymore. Gassed, I guess. 5 point game.
3:23 Bell checks back in.
1:58 Bell gets down the lane for a layup. 7 point game.
1:28 Intentional foul by Maryland to get their foul count heading toward 5, just in case.
1:20 Bell double teamed, mostly intentional Maryland foul given.
1:02 Nice play as Brunson breaks loose, but she misses, we miss the rebound. Still 7 point game. (During later game pause, announcers criticize Brunson for not burning up enough shot clock here.)
Then at 0:50 we get the infamous possession where we can’t get a rebound, and Maryland gets 3 chances to hit a bunny shot. The 3rd one is charm.
However, not before she elbows Bello. Of course one can say, let em play. Final minute of a hard fought game, gonna be some contact down low. I can roll with that one. However a special point of ref emphasis the last two years is that elbowing is completely forbidden. Automatic foul on person swinging their elbows. By that rule, if properly enforced (as it should have been), the foul should have been on Charles. The made shot don’t count.
Of course, how do you expect the refs to know that rule when they don’t even understand traveling or out of bounds. So whether you want to call the refs on that one - up to you.
Now 5 point game, and start of 9-0 Maryland scoring run.
Maryland presses the inbounds.
On the inbounds pass, Lewis intentionally trips over Pitts feet. She didn’t have to be guarding her that close. Normally when the defender guards too close and there’s contact, the foul is called on the defender.
I believe this intentional trip should have been a foul on Lewis. Pitts is maneuvering to catch the pass. She has a right to make a jump stop to catch the pass. She has no obligation whatsoever to make her jump stop more convenient to Lewis, the defender.
Lewis intentionally hooks Pitts leg, and goes flying to better sell it.
The refs improperly call the foul on Pitts, and she fouls out. This is a completely BS foul call. That was a defensive foul, on Lewis. No question about it. You can’t just go intentionally whack Pitts leg, and then beg for an offensive foul because - oh ouch, I got tripped up and fell in the process of whacking Pitts leg. Except in Maryland where the refs are bought and paid for.
This one was not quite as egregious as the earlier non-basketball-move baseball slide into Pitts legs (which merely put Pitts in the position to foul out later, namely now).
The announcers were quite inane about the whole thing.
I have no concrete evidence, but can’t help but wonder if this play was sent in directly from Freese. It accomplishes four things. It gets Pitts off the court. It prevents a potential score by the Gophers. It gives Maryland possession. It brings the slower Lamke in to defend Jones.
This bad call, in conjunction with all the other bad calls, essentially throws the game to Maryland.
Of course Minnesota would have to play fairly badly in the remaining 49 seconds to help seal the deal.
Next play, Jones easily leaves Lamke in the dust and scores an easy layup. Plus the and-1. It’s now a 2 point ball game. From 7 points down to 2 points down, all within 2 seconds of game clock burnup. How does one accomplish that exactly? You pay your refs good money.
At 0:26 Bell is fouled by Charles, not really intentionally, but we’re not in the bonus yet. This leads to the first of two horrible inbounds plays.
Lamke is fouled on the inbounds pass. The refs let it slide, no foul called. A scrum ensued. Brunson had it but Jones hacked it out of her hands (not sure if she hit ball or hand or both).
It ends in what should have been a jump ball. But no jump ball is called that I can see. No alternate possession. Refs literally let them wrestle for it. Strongest player, Jones, wins the wrestle. Ball awarded unilaterally to Maryland.
At 0:26 it’s Maryland ball out of bounds. They take timeout, advance the ball.
Kaposi in for Lamke. Charles blows by Kaposi like her tennis shoes are glued to the floor.
6 seconds left, tie game.
Out of bounds pass should have gone to the right corner, instead inbounds pass is deflected by their 6’5” Center, picked up by Charles.
This is where they needed a timeout, but didn’t have any since they had to burn one in Q2 for a Pitts foul that really was a bad call by the refs.
Charles blows by Lamke like her tennis shoes are glued to the floor, and makes the off balance lefty layup. Maryland wins by two.
Hero of the game for Maryland? Well of their players, obviously Charles. No Gopher bothered to defend her, pretty much all game, but especially down the stretch.
But the real Maryland heroes? The horribly bad referees, who gave the game to Maryland. The only thing the refs didn’t provide was the silver platter. But better than a silver platter, they fouled out Pitts on two horrible calls. Which proved to be more useful to Maryland then a silver platter.
With Pitts (wrongly) out, in the last 50 seconds the Gopher squad on court couldn’t shoot, couldn’t defend, and couldn’t inbound the ball.
The refs illegally fouling out Pitts was the key to exposing the Gophers Achilles Heel. Maryland did not defeat the Gophers. The referees defeated the Gophers.
If the referees hadn’t made (up to) about 20 officiating errors (more in favor of Maryland than in favor of Minnesota) the Gophers would have won. Actually, perhaps only 10 of these reffing errors could be labeled as seriously detrimental (to the Gophers) as well as undeniable by any reasonable observer. These 10 are the reffing errors primarily responsible for the loss. In fact, pick any 3 of the 10, and those 3 by themselves are sufficient to switch a Gopher win to a Maryland win.
4th Quarter Summary:
7-9 questionable calls favoring Maryland, depending on how you count them
0 questionable calls favoring Minnesota
