Pac-12 Basketball Officiating Roundtable

What is your biggest gripe with the refs in our league, and do you have any concrete examples of those gripes?

David Gerhardt, Ralphie Report: Colorado were warned about Pac 12 Officiating as a whole upon joining the Conference, but besides our regular season victory over the Ducks, I can't remember any cases of egregious Officiating miscues (at least ones that went against us...). In that Oregon game, a foul was called in the waning moments of the game that allowed us to hit the game winning free throws. Replay showed there was contact on the play, but it could just as easily not been a foul. It was a situation where one fanbase was going to be unhappy either way.

But I wouldn't say it was a bad call. There was contact. And if it hadn't been called, I would have been unhappy, but recognized that the refs just let them play.

So honestly, I don't remember any cases of the officiating being awful, at least involving the Buffs.

Jack Follman: In general I think that college basketball officiating isn't very good, or at least just inconsistent.

I think Pac-12 officials tend to call too many fouls and then get caught up in trying to make up for the calls that they missed on. I can't think of any specific examples this year, but I do feel that when I watch a lot of Pac-12 games the officials will miss a couple of calls and then you can totally see it coming that the other team will then get a couple of calls right afterwards and it affects the pace of the game.

Because of the tight officiating, I feel that a lot of teams don't pressure the ball enough and it really hurts them out of conference and in the tournament because they don't get the calls they are used to getting. If the officials called games a little more loosely, I feel it could be great for the conference in the long run.

Adam Butler, pachoops: There's no doubt a stigma to Pac-12 officiating. Soft, inconsistent, ticky tack, or just bad. But I think you're going to hear a solid complaint from any grouping of fans surrounding any activity of stripes. My biggest complaint has been - and I'm unsure if they do this as regularly in other conferences - has been this new found infatuation with going to the monitors. Part of the beauty of basketball is its fluidity - a reason people hate the end of a college game where there's consistent fouling and free throws and it can take forever. Going to the monitors sucks the life out of the game and it's a trend that needs to stop or at least be curbed.

Additionally, there is no way that there were that many charges committed this season. No way. I drew six charges and committed eleven from my couch! The circel has done nothing but heighten awareness that charges exist and therefore, if you fall down in front of a driving defender and you're outside of the halo, you're offensively uncontrollable.

But I think I've digressed. The Pac-12 offiicals are who they are, for better or worse, and as bad as they may be, they are the Pac-12 refs. I don't think it costs the conference that much when playing elsewhere, but that's just based on the eyeball test. Statistically speaking, the average Pac-12 ref called fewer fouls per game (33.1) than the average Big East official (33.8). OK, so that's a nominal difference, perhaps negligible, but the stoppage of play isn't all that much different. Alas, with my fan hat on, few officials are going to get it right. While donning my objective sombrero, however, I don't think that Pac-12 stigma is as bad as we think.