The refs called ticky-tack fouls away from the basket, then let it get very rough underneath the basket, which is why the game seemed inconsistently called. Frankly, particularly in the second half, the refs let WVa get away with a TON of over-the-backs. They landed right on top of Colton a few times without getting foul calls. And what the hell was WVU doing to Colton on the offensive end, were they purposely bear-hugging and tackling him to put him on the line? I've never seen a game where one guy got tackled like Colton did more than once - and he got tackled three times, by two different guys (weren't two of them done by Mr. Noreen?). In order for that to happen, it's almost got to be planned either by the coach or the players. What the hell was that? Fortunately, the joke was on WVU, as Colton shot well from the line in the second half, and made those plays backfire.
As for the Gophers, yeah, they too got away with some rough play underneath. But the refs were pretty consistent about that both ways. I don't know what WVU fans weren't seeing, but they certainly were missing reality when they complained about Gopher players "climbing on our backs" but failed to see the same thing happening time and again on the other end, sometimes blatantly and violently.
There were only two stretches of the game where I felt either team got calls in their favor. There was about a 2 to 3 minute stretch of the first half when I felt the U got some nice calls their way. Then in the second half, WVU was just playing downright ugly, getting a lot of foul calls against them - yet they sure seemed deserved. Suddenly after about 5 minutes of that thuggery, it seemed that the refs just gave up for a while, as if to say "well, even though we should, we can't keep calling fouls on only this one team, can we? let's let some of these shenanigans go for a while." Non-coincidentally, during the next 3 to 4 minutes WVU made a nice little run based mostly on offensive rebounds (over the backs, mainly) and loose balls (a lot of running into U of M players). Now, don't get me wrong, that stuff happens in the flow of the game, and I'm not complaining that it happened (though at the time I told my wife that "looks like the refs are sick of calling fouls on WVU"). I was particularly ok because while this was going on, they were still giving the Gophers calls on the other end too (fully deserved, of course, as it seemed if WVU wasn't hanging on or running into someone, then they didn't know what they were supposed to do). The only thing that gets me is that the WVU fans feel like something was wrong. Just like the arrogant UNC fans from the night previous, they bitch and moan because some refs - while not calling the game 100% accurately - were unbiased toward their "favored" team. I tell you what, while the refs this weekend were not the greatest I've ever seen, they were some of the fairest that you'll see outside of the NCAA tournament, and they put the Big Ten home-biased crews to total shame.
