Crean's Technical

[TallTitan34]

Generally I don't support a coach running to the other side of the court but props to Crean for sticking up for his players.

If you go back and watch the tape of the game, Dom gets a big elbow in the face but no foul called about a minute before the arguement.  You can see Crean calmly talking to the refs about watching the elbows.

When the actual skirmish occurs Dom takes about 4 consecutive elbows to the face again with no call which set Crean off.

Props to him for defending his players and being smart on when to use a technical.

[Gwaki]

It also worked very well to get the student section, who was quiet for a while all fired up again.

[mcnaulty21]

It also worked very well to get the student section, who was quiet for a while all fired up again.

I know it got me riled up. I love to see him sticking up for his players.

[MR.HAYWARD]

well the dumb thing is why did they not even call the first one a foul i give a hand to tom.

[77ncaachamps]

Finally! I was reading various sports reviews and play-by-plays and couldn't find out who got T'd!

Tom shoulda pulled the Al in Maui!

[spiral97]

yeah.. all the refs had to do was call a single foul once on any one of those elbow throws.. that would set the tone in the game that it is not allowed and stemmed a lot of the emotion on the MU side.. but they let it build and fester.  I kept thinking that if they let one or two more major elbows to go uncalled (saw one more mild one in DJ's ribs) they'd probably have a real fight break out.  Personally I didn't care about the impact on the game (that was well in hand in my opinion); I was more worried about one of our players getting injured.  Kudos to Crean for protesting the way he did and somewhat effectively stopping things when he did (even at the cost of a few points).

I agree with the announcers that swinging arms is an instinctual way to try and get space to maneuver when a bit trapped but they seemed to be nearly purposely bending them out to make them sharp and draw contact.  There are other moves (legal and less dangerous) to create separation yet they went this route.. I really got the sense from that that the Sac. St. players are not well coached in the fundamentals of basketball and that is where I place most of the blame for what happened.

[Pardner]

DJ clamped their leading scorer Leath down (1-8) all day.  It was a heat of the battle thing.  The guy was getting frustrated.  Their coach grabbed TC after the game and you could tell he was apologizing.  DJ walked the line after the game and was giving their players hugs and hand shakes.  TC didn't want to talk about it after other than to call it some "drama"...TC smartly left the box to make a point or two, but, more so, to keep our players out of a scrum.  The refs reeled it in after that.  Smart move.  At least Sac. St. didn't roll over like a two bit tramp that another team we played recently did.

[ecompt]

Tom should have done that in Maui was Coach K was continually holding up the game so he could remind the refs to give his team every call. Even Bilas couldn't understand why the refs allow him to get away with that crap.