Semifinals wrapupWritten by: Todd RosiakNew York -- Judging by the response I've gotten over the six seasons I've covered MU, not many Golden Eagles fans like official Tim Higgins.
There's probably a new level of vitriol being aimed his way after the imprint he left on Friday night's 68-61 loss to Pittsburgh in the semifinals of the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden.
It was Higgins that whistled Jerel McNeal for a pair of charges in the first half, the second of which was McNeal's third foul and sent him to the bench for the remaining 4 minutes 17 seconds.
Charging calls are usually bang-bang, and players should realize from the outset that officials are almost always itching to blow their whistles in that situation anyway. But the second one, in particular, was questionable from where I was sitting.
So with their only scoring option at that point on the bench, and MU struggling offensively anyway, things went from bad to worse in a hurry as the Golden Eagles headed into halftime trailing, 35-22, after going without a field goal over the final 9:29.
The three fouls also robbed McNeal in the second half of the defensive aggressiveness he thrives on. I asked coach Tom Crean if he gave any thought to pulling McNeal for the remainder of the first half after he picked up his second foul on the charge.
"Yeah, but at that point the momentum was so far away from us, that if you take off a player that can do what he does offensively and defensively, there was no way we want to go into halftime down 20," he said. "And he's playing too well, and he's smart. He's going to play through the risk a little bit. We have to understand that.
"I gave it a little thought. Certainly if we could have even nipped it a little closer, we would have gotten him out a little more, but there was not much we could do about that. We need to win the game and we have to have him on the floor."
It didn't take McNeal long to pick up his fourth foul, as Higgins whistled him for a blocking call on the baseline as he was defending Sam Young, who to that point had scored 12 points.
From my vantage point, the blocking call was bad simply from the standpoint that it really didn't affect the burly Young all that much, and he wasn't driving to the basket anyway. Nevertheless, back to the bench McNeal went with 16:07 remaining in the game.
Then, at the media time out at the 11:50 mark, Crean was T'd up by another official, Pat Driscoll, before he huddled up with his players. Crean seemed shocked at the time, and appeared to be asking Driscoll what he did.
Pittsburgh's Ronald Ramon wound up hitting 1 of 2 free throws as a result, so the damage was fairly minimal.
Then, less than two minutes later, Higgins struck again.
This time, it appeared as though he ejected McNeal from the game as McNeal was seated on the bench. Higgins stopped play, walked over to the scorer's table, then walked down the sideline and stopped in front of McNeal and twice gestured with his arm as though he was kicking him out.
McNeal and Crean appeared stunned. Then Higgins, perhaps realizing the storm of controversy that doubtless would have surrounded such a move, appeared to change his mind and allowed McNeal to stay, instead warning the bench area to keep quiet.
When asked about the situation afterward, Crean not surprisingly would go nowhere near it.
"You'll have to ask (Higgins), seriously," he said. "I'm not going to comment on that. I'm not going there. I'm not going to be...I'm not playing things out that way. You'd have to ask him. I'm not trying to be smart."
Unfortunately, due to deadline constraints, I was unable to track down Higgins to get his side of the story.
-- Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon said afterward he made his team well aware of McNeal's penchant for driving.
"I liked the way that we got him," Dixon said. "We took some charges, and that was something we emphasized going into this game. That was big. We thought he's a driver, he's a guy that gets to the basket. We've got to get our body in front of him, and we've got to be there. That's how we got a couple of them. We had to earn it."
-- Clearly, another horrible shooting night for MU. Only McNeal (7 for 12) and Dan Fitzgerald (1 for 1) hit at least half their shots.
Otherwise, it was ugly: Lazar Hayward 3 for 10. Dominic James 3 for 16. Wesley Matthews 2 for 7. David Cubillan 1 for 7. The 31.1% shooting wasn't a season low, though; that was set against Louisville on Jan. 17, when the Golden Eagles hit just 30.4% of their shots.
"It was not a great offensive performance," Crean said. "Some of it was us, certainly some of it was them. But we felt like we were going to come back."
-- Cubillan is struggling mightily with his shot.
In fact, the three he made against Pittsburgh was his first made field goal of any kind since March 1 in the OT loss to Georgetown. That's a streak of five games in which he missed all eight shots he took, six of which were from three-point range.
Throw in Friday's outing, and he's 1 for 15 overall and 1 for 11 in his last six games.
-- Dwight Burke grabbed a personal-high 10 rebounds in 23 minutes. That was his second-longest stint of the season; he played 24 minutes against Utah Valley State on Nov. 12.
-- James had another stretch where he was fabulous late in the game, as he scored all eight of his points in the final 7:40. His alley-oop dunk was a thing of beauty, and he showed good awareness and hustle by grabbing the rebound of his miss on another oop attempt and laying it back in.
"He attacked better, no question about that," said Crean. "That's where he's at his strongest. He needs to keep understanding that. Once he finally figures that our once and for all, he's going to be by far one of the most elite guards in America.
"When he settles, when he dribbles rather than drives, he's guardable. When he attacks, it's very hard to guard him. And it creates a lot of things for our team. He did some outstanding things with that in the second half."
-- It looked early on like Pittsburgh was going to go at McNeal with the bigger Young the same way Syracuse went at him with Donte' Greene last weekend.
And while the 6-6, 215-pound Young scored on a postup to open the game, he did much of his damage on drives and second efforts once McNeal was on the bench in foul trouble.
"We made some big mistakes on him early on a couple of their sets," Crean said. "There's no excuse for that. We know their team, they know us. There were a couple of times we weren't as alert as we needed to be in the first half. So that put us on an island a little bit.
"But we had a game plan for him. For the most part we followed it. But he earned his baskets. He played outstanding. Obviously, there are a lot of things when a guy gets that many points you'd like to do over again. We try to do our best in a 1-on-1 situation, but it's very hard to guard him 1-on-1."
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