Longhorned wrote:But this is exactly why the Ed Rush situation was such a scandal. It feeds the false perception that the referees aren't objective, and that's about the last thing you need in spectator sports. The fact that it isn't true that the officials are biased against Arizona isn't enough. Arizona fans know that Byrne felt slighted by the conference decision against Miller. That mess will take a long time to overcome, and it's hard to see how Larry Scott is making any real effort to overcome the perception by controlling the message and showing up at Arizona games like he does other conference games, particularly when it involves milestones. As if the conference administration has no leadership role to play in any of this. Personally, I don't think the league and the officials are out to get Arizona, but there's more to it than that.
Was going to bring up the bolded. The bias may or may not be there, but are people really going to stone someone for thinking it's there with the whole Rush incident and looking at the totality of everything else besides that? And it was only handled when a particular sports writer made a big deal about it and ESPN and all the other news outlets caught on? What does that tell the average person? Larry didn't want that stink on the conference? Or he knew about it or had some influence?
And I also thought certain people in the conference were tired of Miller's "complaining" about the officiating in the conference before that? And wasn't Miller's direct words, "F---k this conference" after the UCLA tourney loss? Not the officials, not rush, THE CONFERENCE. I mean, maybe I am wrong here and have my own biases, but are there any other conferences out there who don't love that one program in their conference that is the breadwinner of the conference? The team that consistently pulls everyone else when they are struggling, the team that is the face of that conference, the team that benefits the other teams because of their success? I'm not expecting hand jobs or anything, but our program has been completely ignored multiple times by Larry. It's flat out disrespectful and to me, it appears things are at minimum awkward.
And in the Miller era alone, how many times have we significantly won the going to the line battle vs being on the other end, or the fouls called in general? I noticed last year, we were on the winning end of that more than prior years. But that is expected. We have the most elite, athletic, and well coached athletes in the conference. We got to the line A LOT last year, and there is a reason why. We are superior offensively. We are also superior defensively to any other team in the conference, and a lot of our foes spend time dribbling in circles, tossing meaningless passes around the perimeter, and chucking up prayers because of that, things that all should not be conducive to drawing fouls. It isn't like our team presses, is taught to reach and be super aggressive to force turnovers, our bigs arent taught to leave their feet on the interior in an effort to put up godly shotblocking numbers. That is a battle we should be winning almost every game if things are truly being even, and many games by a very significant margin. Whether it is bias, or a case of the refs feeling bad and trying to even things out, who knows.
Cats are deep.