I Agree With UNC Fans That the Refs Missed Fouls...Committed by Bacot

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I don't complain about officiating when my team loses.  It comes off as sour grapes.  Like this absolute loser of a fan from Miami that wrote this blog where he could not stop crying after the Miami Hurricanes lost to the Pitt Panthers on Saturday:



Or the hundreds of tweets worth of sour grapes from UNC fans last night after Pitt beat the Tar Heels in their own building.  All stemming from the last play of the game where it appeared Caleb Love may have been fouled by Nike Sibande.  Even former Tar Heel Tyler Hansbrough got in on the whining.


First of all, it was the Tar Heels' own dumb fault for driving down the court and calling a timeout with 0.6 seconds on the clock instead of trying to get a driving basket to end the game.  It was a brutally dumb timeout.  Secondly, as you can see from several angles here, time had fully run out before Sibande was even close to making contact with Love.



Clearly the clock has run out before Sibande is even within a ruler of Caleb Love.  Again, probably shouldn't have called a timeout with just 0.6 seconds on the clock, but what do I know, I'm just a casual observer.  

And while I won't complain about officiating when my team loses, because it's a bad look, I will complain when my team wins.  And I actually completely agree with Tar Heel fans.  The officiating crew of last night's game missed fouls all night last night.  

There were about a dozen of them committed by Armando Bacot that were not called.

All season, and all game last night, the ACC Network cannot stop talking about how well Bacot gets separation from his defenders.  I now know first-hand how he does it.  He uses both of his arms to shove opposing defenders in the back.  Or throws both elbows on rebounds.  It's absolutely absurd how much contact Bacot is allowed to make without it being called a foul.  

However, god forbid you breathe in Bacot's direction when he is driving.  Fede Federiko, who played outstanding against the big man last night, was called for a foul late on a Bacot dunk.  Every angle of the replay showed six inches of space between any body part of Fede's and any body part of Bacot.  

And I know, this is ACC Basketball, right?  After 10 years, I've gotten used to the "North of the Mason Dixon" treatment as a Pitt fan.  You have to protect the integrity of UNC and Duke.  We all saw the 80 or so fouls that Pitt was called on in the 2nd half during their matchup against the Blue Devils.  

But like I said, I'm not a sour grapes guy.  Duke beat Pitt fair(ish) and square.  Just like Pitt beat UNC fair and square despite the dozens of times Bacot was allowed to shove Panthers out of his way when "getting position".  

So we have some common ground Tar Heel fans!  The refs did miss fouls last night.  Just not the one you've been whining about for 15 hours now.