60

via media.kansan.com

Hmmm...let's play "guess what the above number means"! Combined points of Warren, Crocker and Davis? No, try again. Maybe, the gametime temperature? Nope, not even close. Wow, umm, maybe the combined age of our starting guards? Absolutely not.

Do you want to know what 60 means? You'll be amazed. Trust me.

It was the number of fouls in the game! 60 fouls?!? You surely have to be kidding, you may be asking yourself. I really honestly wish I was. I really do. But, I'm completely serious. Look it up. The officials called 60 fouls! How is that even possible? The entire second half was played on the free throw line. We didn't even lose a basketball game. We lost a free throw shooting contest.

The old addage is that: "You shouldn't be able to notice the refs."

Anyone with a pulse noticed the refs Monday Night in the Lloyd Noble Center. I've never heard that many boos rain down from the seats at the LNC. Not only that, but the bad calls continued under 3 minutes in the 2nd half, but the boos stopped. I think that the fans simply lost their voices from booing. (More after the break...)

It is a disservice to the game of basketball to call that many fouls. It is no longer a basketball game. It is the worst form of basketball and I absolutely hate it. More than anything, it's a disservice to these student athletes who bust their butts to play at an elite level on the court, and then are relegated to just shooting free throws.

Oh, and by the way, 71 free throws were shot, 41 of them by Kansas. And in case any of you were wondering, the NCAA record for fouls called in a game was 84 on January 26, 1953 between Arizona and Northern Arizona. So we were only 24 fouls shy. Pretty alarming if you ask me.

But more than that made me angry. Here's my gripe list:

• Ryan Wright needs to stop getting pushed around. He wound up playing much smaller than he actually is. He got out-rebounded and outmuscled by Aldrich all night. Not only that but he made Shaq look like Kobe shooting free throws. He missed all 5 of his free throws. Actually he missed his only shot attempt to, so basically he missed every shot that he took. Every time he caught the ball he dropped it.
  
• I'm sorry to bring up the officials again, but we made a great second half run. And then every time we hit a momentum-changing shot, they called a foul on us! It was insane. It was also ridiculous how many times they got away with a shove or a foul and we got called for something ticky tack. For the second straight game, this was a major issue.
• Do the basketball gods hate us? First our women's team lost by 1 lousy point. Granted, they lost to a solid team on the road. But this was a game to guarantee a share of the Big 12 title. Not only that, but Whitney Hand is now out for 4 weeks. She is the big 3 point threat for our women. And then the Aggies rushed the court. Really? In a 10 vs. 2 women's basketball matchup? Anyways, top that off with two games lost by our men's basketball team with questionable officiating and without our best player - likely #1 overall NBA draft choice and player of the year. What a bad stretch of luck in basketball. I hope we are getting this out of the way before the tournaments.
• We turned the ball over 15 times! That's absolutely unacceptable.
• We had 5 offensive rebounds. That's it. Most of them came during our run in the 2nd half.
• First AJ Abrams. Now Sherron Collins. How many times are we going to run into a player that hits a ridiculous string of shots with defenders in his face?
• Austin Johnson played like crap. He had 2 points, 2 turnovers and 0 assists. NO ASSISTS. He vanished from the game. He wasn't in at the end despite only having 2 fouls. To top it off he was 1 of 5 from the field.

OK, that's it. Positives:

• Cade Davis. Hit some huge threes and had a monster block.  Cade Davis can block?
• Juan Pattillo. He stepped it up. You might get on his case for missing a couple of dunks, but there was a lot of contact (let's not get me rolling on the bad officiating again). He had 15 points 6 rebounds and 2 blocks.
• Willie Warren. He played really well in the first 10 minutes. Then he vanished for awhile. He fell victim to a couple of absolutely  terrible calls. He wound up fouling out, but should have never come close. Surprise surprise, we made a run at the end, but couldn't close the deal with our two star players basically out of the game.

Let's hope that in Lubbock on Saturday we can get some competent officials, that Blake will be back, and we'll get back on track. If there's any positives I can take from this, we will have absolutely no buzz now, and could even wind up as a 2 or 3 seed depending on how all of our games shake out. That's not terrible, actually. Teams with a lot of hype going into the tournament usually don't win it all.

Unfortunately, our group of guys didn't get a W without Blake. That's something I think we really needed as a confidence booster.

I'll sum it up with just saying that it really sucks that you sit there, and watch these games, and you have to put up with terrible officiating and know that without that, and with Blake in the game, you could win these games. (In fact, I think we could have won the Texas game if Crocker hit the 3 at the end, and I think we could have won this game if not for the officials, both without Blake).

Can't wait to see the postgame quotes. If there's anything interesting, I'll try to post it.

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