Like most of you, I witnessed what seemed in the moment to be an absolute heist of a loss for the Wisconsin Badgers in Bloomington in their 78-77 loss to the Indiana Hoosiers on Saturday afternoon.
And
I freaked out accordingly.
At the end of both regulation and overtime, there were calls from a Michael Reed, Michael Irving, and Larry Scirotto crew that objectively seemed against Wisconsin, and it’s indisputable that Indiana would have suffered a tough home loss without a number of these whistles going the Hoosiers’ way, especially late.
The two calls that ended up being the flashpoints were: (1) a charge on Nick Boyd with 15.1 left in overtime after he’d been fouled at least twice dribbling with the ball, including by the Hoosier defender at the time of the whistle, and (2) a blocking violation whistled on John Blackwell when an apparently out of control Lamar Wilkerson went down in the lane with 2.8 seconds remaining (his free throws won the game for IU).
In real time, both calls appeared to be horrific and/or unusual and sent Wisconsin fans into a rage over a win that seemed to be stolen away.
With some time to reflect, here’s where I am.
The officiating in this contest definitely favored Indiana, especially in clutch moments. There were at least 10 occasions where a soft or apparently incorrect call went against Wisconsin. In a one-point overtime loss, it’s very hard to argue that this didn’t matter in the outcome. And typical Big Ten Home Cooking, which the Badgers themselves have benefited from many times, can’t fully explain things here.
For example, the charge whistled on Boyd with Indiana’s Conor Enright fused to him like a Siamese Twin is called a block on the defender 90+ percent of the time. It was a legitimately bad call in a big moment. The Blackwell foul is more nuanced, after another angle surfaced that showed him stepping on Wilkerson’s foot. The problem is that wasn’t why the foul was called. It was a simple blocking call on Blackwell, so in a sense, the refs were retroactively bailed out. It probably should have been a foul on Blackwell, but not for the reason the whistle blew.
Greg Gard and the Badgers were 100% correct to have felt cheated. Gard tersely noted in his postgame presser that, “I’ve never seen anything like that.” But it’s my responsibility to point out that the Badgers allowed a good team playing at home to race to a 14-point lead, as well as score oodles of points in the paint.
So, a good portion of the blame for this loss must rest at Wisconsin’s own feet. Playing really well for large stretches in the second half, especially on defense, isn’t a free pass for yet another subpar start by Gard’s squad. This simply must get fixed and quickly, given the gauntlet of top Big Ten teams the Badgers are about to face, starting at No. 8 Illinois Tuesday night.
If I’m Greg Gard, my advice to the team is to flush and move on from Bloomington and focus on playing a full game with no slow starts against Illinois. That’s the game that matters now, not Indiana.
