April 4, 2004
Duke's out
How poetically apt that Duke's run in the men's NCAA basketball tournament should be cut short by whistle-happy refs who kept Shelden Williams and Shavlik Randoph on the bench with strange foul calls. Shades of what happened to Maryland in their abominable match-up with Duke in 2001, a point noted in this thread on Fark.com. Said Skydog:
There's just soooo much delicious irony seeing Dookies complain about the officiating.
Perhaps surprisingly, it's hard to take much cheer in Duke's misfortune, given the way the umps made the entire game vs. U-Conn into a choppy match. As Michael Wilbon, noted, "A Good Thing, Nearly Spoiled:"
The referees were responsible, directly, for [Emeka Okefor] playing only 22 minutes. U-Conn. suffered through bad calls early. Duke was saddled with its share of ridiculous foul calls late, all of it regrettable. The referees should never, ever, ever be The Story of a game this big. I hate writing about refs because by and large they do such good work. But the zebras cannot be ignored in the retelling and dissecting of this game.There was barely a possession in the second half without a whistle interrupting it. The officials called tacky, nothing little fouls. They whistled fouls that didn't exist, occasionally made calls that suggested total incompetence. They came very close to ruining the game. With eight minutes to go half the people in the Alamodome, some with no rooting interests in Duke or Connecticut whatsoever, began chanting, "Let them play. . . . Let them play!" David Hall, Olandis Poole and Ted Hillary apparently never heard the sentiment that zebras should be seen but not heard.
