B1G Game 16: Gophers Visit Maryland (2-21-19)

I’m not really making the conclusion, I’m more in the category of asking the question. Of others who have access to replay.

In the 4th quarter, personal foul calls went 6 against Minnesota and 3 against Maryland (some of which were intentional in case they needed to put Minnesota on the line, which they didn’t). Was Charles yapping in the 4th quarter? She had nothin to yap about. On those 3 Maryland fouls, Minnesota had no free-throw shooting. But Maryland got to shoot 5, of which they made 3 free throws. Enough for the win, all else held equal. What about those two quick fouls assessed against Bello? Were those legit? Were they shooting fouls? They certainly helped put Maryland in the bonus.

In the 4th, Minnesota had 7 turnovers (to Maryland none). But Maryland only had 3 steals (to Minnesota none).

Does that mean there were 4 unforced turnovers by the Gophers? Or were any of these in-question 4 miscellaneous turnovers gifts by the referees? Well, the potentially bad call against Pitts is one candidate, since a foul on offense is a turnover. Any other turnover-inducing offensive calls on Minnesota that were questionable?

If someone taped it and thus has video evidence, and can suffer through the pain of re-watching the 4th quarter, I’ll live with their assessment.

The play-by-play answers some of your question. (For one thing, it appears the Gophers did not even get off a shot attempt in the last minute of play, after Brunson's missed layup):
http://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/playbyplay?gameId=401094694
 

The play-by-play answers some of your question. (For one thing, it appears the Gophers did not even get off a shot attempt in the last minute of play, after Brunson's missed layup):
http://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/playbyplay?gameId=401094694

What hurt us bad was our no-defensive-rebounding after the Brunson miss. Terps just kept offensive rebounding until they made the shot. Then, as already noted by several, the Pitts foul and turnover was dagger number one. Maryland gets a layup plus the point after (legit foul call on Perez? I don’t know, didn’t see it). Then dagger number 2 is the subsequent steal by Maryland - and that’s on us. That we let them score after, is also on us.

All that was enough for the tie. The inept inbounds play is also on us.

So it’s on us except for the 4 miscellaneous non-steal turnovers such as the Pitts foul and whatever the other 3 are; plus the question of whether the several quick foul assessments on Bello were legit. For these, we may need video to properly assess.
 
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The play-by-play answers some of your question. (For one thing, it appears the Gophers did not even get off a shot attempt in the last minute of play, after Brunson's missed layup):
http://www.espn.com/womens-college-basketball/playbyplay?gameId=401094694

Wow, that ESPN play-by-play is so poor and off during around the :50 sec mark, I don’t think they could keep up with all the action. They left off the foul to Bello, and the foul they labeled as Perez was actually Lamke. The Lamke foul was definitely legit. The Bello foul was debatable but not outrageous.
 

Of course not. People are showing disappointment because they wanted them to win a game that should have been won. It’s a lot harder losing this way than getting your butt kicked by 20.



To compare them to the Keystone Cops would have been insulting to the Keystone Cops.



I think they played themselves into shape, so it became less of a fatigue factor. Last season, Notre Dame was ravaged by injury. No true point guard. No Breanna Turner. Very short bench. All they accomplished was winning a national championship. So excuses are basically for losers.

Ummm... way to take only the context you wanted, Shades. I was very critical last night. The post you drew from was responding to someone else who posted that 'It's like we wanted them to lose' merely because many of us were critical. I defended our right to be critical, while still remaining supportive fans. And while we do have some exceptional talent... comparing us to a Notre Dame championship team is plain silly.

Embarrasing mistakes of execution and coaching, mental and physical. But lets hope they all learn from this and grow to handle the next close finish better in all aspects.
 

Ummm... way to take only the context you wanted, Shades. I was very critical last night. The post you drew from was responding to someone else who posted that 'It's like we wanted them to lose' merely because many of us were critical. I defended our right to be critical, while still remaining supportive fans.

I was reaffirming what you said (agreeing) on that point, not arguing against you. To say we wanted them to lose is ridiculous.

And while we do have some exceptional talent... comparing us to a Notre Dame championship team is plain silly.

I didn’t say we were Notre Dame. We don’t have experienced coaching like that or any McDonald’s All Americans. I’m just saying nobody gave them a shot to do much of anything, but they ended up winning it all. It’s next man up, no excuses. That’s how you gotta play if you want to win. The message to the Gophers shouldn’t be, well you had excuses.
 


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Just watched it again (highlights by Hoops above). No doubt Lindsay will replay this over and over to her team as to a teaching tool as to how to deal with the circumstances.
 

Of course not. People are showing disappointment because they wanted them to win a game that should have been won. It’s a lot harder losing this way than getting your butt kicked by 20.



To compare them to the Keystone Cops would have been insulting to the Keystone Cops.



I think they played themselves into shape, so it became less of a fatigue factor. Last season, Notre Dame was ravaged by injury. No true point guard. No Breanna Turner. Very short bench. All they accomplished was winning a national championship. So excuses are basically for losers.

I stand by what i said. All through both winning streaks, all I read was doubt. "Hope they can do this against blah blah blah"
When they won close games, 3 or 4 pages of comments.
They lose a heartbreaker- 9 pages.
Go ahead and be critical, I don't mind, but stay supportive.
This team is a diva hubbard away from a DEEP tourney run. They can beat Bigger teams, they can beat Shooting or driving teams. On neutral courts with neutral refs, they are extremely dangerous. All they need is to sneak in the tournament and face a slower high ranked team, and magic will happen.
But positivity is powerful, so stop being highly critical and support. They felt horrible about the loss. They dont need your energy to boot.
 

I stand by what i said. All through both winning streaks, all I read was doubt. "Hope they can do this against blah blah blah"
When they won close games, 3 or 4 pages of comments.
They lose a heartbreaker- 9 pages.
Go ahead and be critical, I don't mind, but stay supportive.
This team is a diva hubbard away from a DEEP tourney run. They can beat Bigger teams, they can beat Shooting or driving teams. On neutral courts with neutral refs, they are extremely dangerous. All they need is to sneak in the tournament and face a slower high ranked team, and magic will happen.
But positivity is powerful, so stop being highly critical and support. They felt horrible about the loss. They dont need your energy to boot.

Yes, ever since Ivey didn't get the coaching job that we have no idea if she'd have wanted, Shades has come off like he or she can't stand the Gopher women's program. But this is a public message board and Shades is entitled to post whatever Shades wants to. You are entitled to ignore it but not to lecture them about what they can post.
 



Yes, ever since Ivey didn't get the coaching job that we have no idea if she'd have wanted, Shades has come off like he or she can't stand the Gopher women's program. But this is a public message board and Shades is entitled to post whatever Shades wants to. You are entitled to ignore it but not to lecture them about what they can post.

After giving attribution to Bball 101, let me restate for emphasis the extremely important points made in the above post, lest they get lost in the discussion about who should or should not be permitted to post with varying degrees of criticism or positivity.

Here are the important points.

(1) This team is a diva hubbard away from a DEEP tourney run.

(2) They can beat Bigger teams.

(3) They can beat Shooting teams.

(4) They can beat Driving teams.

(5) On neutral courts with neutral refs, they are extremely dangerous.

(6) All they need is to sneak in the (NCAA) tournament and face a slower high-ranked team, and magic will happen.

Let me comment on just a couple of these, first on (6). The sense of this point is that if we were to make the NCAAs (say, by winning the B1G tourney - which I think is very doable, by the way) and barring some horrible first-round matchup, it would not surprise me one iota to see this team make it to the Sweet Sixteen - or even deeper. The modus operandi (per (6)) is that we upset a high-ranked team via our speed and agility; and from that point forward we inherit the seeding benefits of said high-ranked team.

Point (5) is pretty important, especially the need for neutral refs. Let’s face it, we beat one of the B1G’s top-two teams fair and square on their own home court the other day. That is, right up to the point where the non-neutral refs realized that it was time for them to do their non-neutral reffing thing.

I knew we could beat Maryland. I nearly posted that online on this board, but I thought it was a bad idea for us to get into the business of predicting games. What I forgot was, no matter how great a game we play, if the officials tilt the scales even a little bit, the resulting momentum shift along with possible fatigue, can take that won game right away from you.

I congratulate the Lady Gophers for beating Maryland through 3.916 quarters. That was a great achievement - a thing of beauty, actually.

I curse the non-neutral refs officiating the Maryland game.
 

I am really getting tired of Gopher fans (all sports) blaming every loss on the refs.
 

I am really getting tired of Gopher fans (all sports) blaming every loss on the refs.

I respect your opinion on that, but I don’t really see a trend of blaming refs for losses.

It happens to be true, though, that in spite of some performance letdowns by our players in the Maryland game, after a deep analysis I have shown that horrible refereeing accounts for about 99% of the Gopher defeat by Maryland. I did the analysis myself after putting the challenge out there but nobody took me up on it. I spent about 12 hours today analyzing the game video, looking at many plays 5 to 10 times.

The end result is a count of 21-24 questionable play calls by the refs favoring Maryland, and 2 questionable play calls favoring Minnesota.

Although I use the term “questionable” in reality more than half of these are unquestionably horrible calls.

I estimate that the bad reffing spotted Maryland for an extra 20 free points or so, effectively. The details will follow below.
 
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Grand Summary - Maryland Game Questionable Calls

1st Quarter Summary:
5 questionable calls favoring Maryland
1 questionable call favoring Minnesota


2nd Quarter Summary:
4-5 questionable calls favoring Maryland
0 questionable calls favoring Minnesota

3rd Quarter Summary:
5 questionable calls favoring Maryland
1 questionable call favoring Minnesota

4th Quarter Summary:
7-9 questionable calls favoring Maryland, depending on how you count them
0 questionable calls favoring Minnesota

More importantly, there were several very bad calls in the 4th quarter (plus a key bad call in the second quarter) that wrongfully turned possession over to Maryland, and wrongfully fouled out Pitts. The resulting loss of points from lost possessions was, by itself sufficient to turn a guaranteed Gopher win into a loss. Even more insidious was the fact that the wrongful loss of Pitts degraded our play so that we made mistakes that otherwise we may not have made.

These mistakes made it look to the casual observer that our poor 4th quarter play lost us the game.

In reality, it was the horrible officiating all game long that flipped a Gopher win into a Maryland win.

The bad officiating is inexcusable. We ought to be filing a formal complaint to the NCAA.
 
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1st Quarter Bad Calls

At 4:45 Bell shot made, the and 1 questionable. Bell’s follow thru shooting hand hits defender raised hand.

At 2:50 an air ball put back up by Steph Jones goes in in spite of block attempt by Pitts, who’s called for the foul, which was questionable. Looked clean, but refs generally call it a foul if the block happens while ball still in shooters hands. Like her sister, Steph is strong and can force it thru the block anyway. 3 point play and foul on Pitts (who is overmatched by Jones in any event).

1:18 Steph Jones dribbles out of bounds while defended by Pitts and Bello. Neither touched it, Jones just dribbled out of bounds, picking it up at the last sec as if to pass or shoot, but they give the ball to Maryland.

Immediately after or during that play (hard to tell when or what happened) Bello gets poked in the eye. For that she gets assessed a foul. I think the supposed foul (didn’t) happen right after the inbounds by Maryland (who shouldn’t have even had the ball, remember). There was no contact. Lindsay laughs, which means she thinks it’s ridiculous. After the bad call as Bello is lining up against Jones, Jones is pushing her a bit, and Taiye is giving the refs a WTF look. Whalen has had enough of Jones bullying and accepting gratis fouls, and puts Lamke in for Bello.

Near 1:01 Austin takes a stutter step while starting to dribble, should have been enuf for a travel, not called, but loses ball ending in jump ball - to Gophers by possession arrow.

0:51 After ignoring Austin’s true travel, they charge Pitts with a travel that was not one. Pitts has left foot established as pivot. She makes what the refs apparently got confused into thinking was 2 steps, but they were two sequential steps by her right foot - perfectly legal. She only has to initiate dribble before moving left pivot foot. Which she does. Confused ref gives her a travel for not starting dribble before second (legal) step of her non-pivot foot. Sour look on Pitts face says she knows she got ripped off by the refs.

1st Quarter Summary:
5 questionable calls favoring Maryland
1 questionable call favoring Minnesota
 

2nd Quarter Bad Calls

9:37 Lewis goes in for a layup, puts on the brakes in attempt to get Bell to rear-end her. Bell smartly jumps to the side. But then Lewis jumps into Bell’s chest while shooting, makes the shot and gets the and-1 called on Bell. Refs almost always allow this play, so it’s hard to complain, although some might. We’ll let this one slide.

7:24 Charles gets an easy put-back for 2 but the refs bump it to an and-1 for free just because there was a Gopher in the vicinity. No contact that I could see, no foul, not even a block attempt by either Pitts or Bello. Pitts is assessed the foul. She’s smiling, like she does when she’s just been ripped off by the refs. There’s a small possibility that Pitts grazed than back of Charles jersey, but I’d still say no body contact.

6:25 It’s worth giving the refs credit here for something done correctly. On missed Brunson free throw, Bellow runs around Jones and gets the rebound, and is promptly pushed out of bounds by Jones, who pushes a lot just like her sister Brionna did. Refs used to let Brionna get away with this all the time. It was always a major reason for Maryland winning - refs letting Brionna push at will (and of course since she knew there was no penalty for it, she pushed on every play). This one was pretty blatant as Taiye goes sailing out of bounds as a result, plus she was pushed while midair such that it easily could have been an injury to Taiye from a hard fall, so refs made the right call here.

5:41 Bello gets offensive rebound under our basket. Might be an easy putback but things are crowded down there, so Bello puts down the dribble first while deciding between a shot versus a kickout. Refs don’t allow her to decide. They call a travel. She landed on 2 feet and then put down the dribble, before moving either foot in my opinion. Travel called immediately, almost as if refs thought she had no right to dribble at all. Only thing I can think of is that refs think she did a tiny little hop. Probably no hop, but if so, it was only movement of one foot (leaving the other as pivot) before the release of the dribble, again completely legal. This is a pretty horrible call, especially in light of what the refs have let Maryland get away with in the travel department thus far in the game. It almost seems to me like the biased ref intended (in advance) to call a travel on Taiye whenever she got her next offensive rebound. It was that bad. However I can see where if you were a Maryland fan you might say, yup she traveled. Oh, Bello was also fouled, but that happened way after the ball was whistled dead, since the refs whistled Bello within a fraction of a second of her grabbing the rebound.

4:38 Jones does a walking screen for her point guard. It wasn’t very flagrant as far as moving screens go, so not called. But surprised our point-guard defender who tripped over Jones foot, sufficient for an easy layup by Maryland point guard. Commentators said some mumbo jumbo about Gophers not looking for that play since she’s a pass first PG, but they were looking for it just fine, thank you, we just got tripped, that’s all. The trip was not intentional tho.

4:19 Pitts drives to the hole. The call (per commentators) is off her foot and out of bounds. From the replay it looks to me that a Maryland player strips the ball and sends it careening out of bounds. Pitts does not kick it. Doesn’t look like it was stripped in a manner such that it went to Pitts foot first then out of bounds, because it would probably have had to hit her left foot, which was way behind where it bounced. However there is a small possibility that it hit her thigh. After several views, I just can’t make a clear call as to whether it hit Pitts on its way out. I’d say 75% probability it didn’t hit Pitts after the strip. But I’ll call that part a tie, tho.

However, it definitely looked like a hack, not a clean strip. In the replay you can clearly see that Destiny is hacked right across the forearm by Mikesell. It was a hack from behind, and in fact Mikesell couldn’t reach and never touched the basketball at all - she just got a good slam on Destiny’s forearm. So I’ll call it a hugely bad call favoring Maryland, since not only did the refs create a non-existent so-called Minnesota turnover out of thin air, but they reduced Mikesell’s foul count by one, while at the same time wrongly delaying the point at which Minnesota should have gotten the and-1 in 2Q. Clearly it was Destiny’s intention to shoot, but unclear whether free throws should have been given her under continuation. Perhaps she was not close enough to shooting form - although clearly minus the hack, the ball would have gone from left hand to right-hand easy layup within a small fraction of a second.

Also, this forced Whalen to burn a timeout. A burnt timeout plus a lost bumping of Maryland foul count, when what they should have gotten was either an easy two points from Pitts, or else a high probability of two points off free throws by Pitts, one of our two best free-throw shooters. If 2 points had been scored there by Destiny, that by itself would have been enough for the Gophers to have won the game (never mind the myriad of other bad calls). There would be no need for a timeout after that play if it had been called correctly.

Furthermore, note that that spent timeout was exactly the timeout that Whalen didn’t have when she needed it in the 4th quarter when she didn’t like what she saw on the inbounds play with 6 seconds left in the game. Recall, a poster questioned why she didn’t call a timeout when things were looking dicey during the 5 seconds; and the answer was, she didn’t have any.

In hindsight, this one particular bad call, and an extremely egregious one at that, cost us the game. At 4Q 6-second mark the out-if-bounds interception cost us the game; 4Q lack of timeout cost us the interception; this horrible call against Pitts cost us the timeout we later needed. All other facts being equal, this one horrible call cost us the game, by a simple chain of causality.

One other thing: What gave Mikesell the guts to attempt the hack? When I played hoops, I would have had a foul called on me 99% of the time for that (indeed, probably even if I did get a clean strip). But Mikesell had confidence to make the strip-like-looking hack, particularly because she knows the refs are bought and paid for. The announcers praised her for the play. Indeed they should, since that hack won the game for the Terps. That is, the referees won the game for the Terps via this horrific call (among many others).

1:34 Lewis drives the lane. She kinda charges into and bounces off Lamke, although it’s really more like she travels, carrying the ball to avoid Lamke. After whatever contact there is, she regrabs the ball and makes a vain attempt to hoist it in the general direction of the basket. Lamke was set to take a charge, but she skittles a bit sideways so probably doesn’t deserve a charge call. But could have been logged as a travel perhaps. Lewis was not in the act of shooting, but after the whistle, the refs do her a favor and give her shots. I’ll label this “maybe” a bad call just because I don’t think it was a shooting foul. But maybe not. This could be a judgement call for the refs. Two points for Maryland. Definitely, Lewis tactic was “let’s plow right into Lamke and rely on our homed-grown refs to give me the shots.

2nd Quarter Summary:
4-5 questionable calls in favor of Maryland
0 questionable calls in favor of Minnesota
 

3rd Quarter Bad Calls

At 9:16 Pitts shoots free throws. Maryland crowd does not like it, apparently wants a charge. But Jones was on the slide and not set. Good call.

At 8:49 Bello collects a foul. She didn’t get to the spot soon enough to get set,and that’s the correct call.

At 8:04 Bello makes the bunny shot. She was pushed and should have gotten the And-1 but didn’t get awarded it. Given the force of the push, lucky she made the shot.

5:11 Jones gets tied up with Pitts on a jump ball on a rebound. Legit jump ball, but Jones puts in a bit of intentional roughness and almost breaks Pitts arm. I guess one way to put your opponent’s primary shooter on the bench is to break their arm. Announcers cheer her aggressiveness.

5:04 Maryland picks off a pass and on a fast break. Minnesota defenders on either side, looks like zero contact to me. Announcers say “lots of contact.” They are full of it. Layup comes off from what is at minimum a giant Eurostep, more likely a travel. Layup missed, but refs award shooting foul to make up for that, assessing to Perez. I’m calling this legit since Perez reached, probably contact then.

4:40 Perez called for traveling, which is totally BS. Perez had her right foot established as pivot. She moved her left foot twice, which is legit. Whistled after 2nd move of left foot. After that she started her dribble, releasing her dribble before moving her pivot, as she should. But that was a full second after whistle blown. Hey ref, you’re allowed to move your non-pivot foot as many times as you like. That ref is not capable of officiating a grade-school game.

3:16 Bello gets clean defensive rebound and protects ball well. A Maryland player grabs her arm, and for that is awarded a jump ball. On alternating possession, goes to Maryland, who scores.

2:44 Watson called for foul against Bell away from the basket. She hit almost all ball on a tip attempt. I’d call this a ticky tacky foul. Credit a questionable foul call favoring Minnesota. Watson goes out with 4 fouls. #22 comes in with special instructions from Freese to try to foul Pitts out.

2:33 Pitts is just trotting along (without the ball), with #22 trotting alongside. All of a sudden, 22 does a baseball slide in front of Pitts, in so doing putting her foot right where Pitts is about to step. Pitts is blindsided since she is facing a possible pass. This was not a basketball move by 22. It was solely intended to get Pitts to step on her foot. Pitts picks up the foul, only her second at this point. Announcer says “that’s what you gotta do,” intending “stay in Pitts grill.”

1:42 Austin and Bello jointly tip ball out of bounds. Could have gone either way, but Minnesota gets the ball.

3rd Quarter Summary:
5 questionable calls favoring Maryland
1 questionable call favoring Minnesota
 

4th Quarter Bad Calls and Partial Play Summary

59-48 at start of quarter.

Maryland starts to get loose with Charles continuing to hit from top of the key (nobody picking her up) but Bell starting to get tight (per my observation and the announcers).

9:30 First turnover, a steal from Bell, turning into a scrum then shot clock violation.

Maryland scores, 9 point game.

9:00 Bell for 2, 11 point game.

8:32 Charles hits 2, 9 point game.

8:13 Perez missed 3.

8:01 Jones elbows Pitts out of her position. Then (with Pitts already in contact thanks ito Jones taking over Pitts position but not having pushed her too far) catches the pass for an immediate foul call. Some people would say this is good basketball. Others would say it’s just Steph Jones pushing people around in the paint like her sister got away with for 4 years with impunity at Maryland.

7:57 Austin palms the ball, dribbling as high as her head in the low post. Is there such a thing as palming anymore? Anyway dribbling as high as her head, which may be legal, not sure. On second look, she definitely turned the ball over with her palm, before any contact by Bello. Eventually Bello grabs the ball as she shoots, and is called for a foul at that time. That block was clean (as announcers agreed). Probably body contact while she was palming the ball or dribbling over her head. Call it a late whistle maybe. Definitely something wrong with this call, should have been a Maryland turnover, instead Austin makes 1 of 2 free throws, 8 point game.

7:48 After miss, Maryland gets rebound, shoots, misses, ball out of bounds. Given to Minnesota, but might have been off Taiye. Hard to tell, really. I won’t count it as a bad call since it should have been Gopher ball in the first place.

7:28 Brunson tries to drive, gets called for a travel. I don’t think it’s a travel tho. She got off a poor, off-balance shot in time. If that was a travel, then what pray tell was Charles earlier Eurostep from the 3-point line?

7:14 Ball gets tipped a couple times, goes out of bounds off #1 Austin. Ball is wrongly given inbounds to Maryland. The referee making the bad call was about 6 feet away from the play and looking right at it at the time. This is probably one of the worst calls of the whole set. What, is the referee daydreaming or something? Did Freese give her a high sign that it was about time to throw another call in favor of the Terps? This’s one bad call by itself is nearly enough to cause the Maryland win from what otherwise would have been a Gopher win. Then add to that about 10 other equally bad calls in Maryland’s favor, and that seals the deal for a Maryland win.

7:12 With virtually no time off the clock, and with Maryland wrongly throwing the ball inbounds (they hit it out of bounds), Maryland throws a perfect lob pass to Jones who catches the pass while brushing up perhaps ever so slightly yet intentionally against Bello, who gets her 4th personal. One could easily call that good D on Taiye’s part. But politically speaking, it really is starting to seem that the refs are doing everything in their power to make the Gophers lose at this point. This counts as a foul for Bello, but should not have since it should not have been Maryland’s ball to throw in.

Granted, Bello should have kept her distance and just tried to poke it away, like out of bounds. But the damage was done already by the biased refs who gave a ball clearly tipped out of bounds by a Maryland player, to Maryland to throw in for what’s pretty much a guaranteed foul. Not to mention putting our star rebounder one foul away from fouling out, and forcing her to play timid for the next 7 minutes. Taiye should have 2 fouls at this point. Both this and the previous one should not exist. Because in each case, the refs missed Maryland turnovers immediately before, so those plays should not have even happened.

Also, Jones traveled when she caught the ball, but never mind since the refs had already decided to whistle Taiye. Actually, it was good D by Taiye, and Jones didn’t ram into her to extract the contact she was looking for, until after Jones traveled.

7:09 A scrum under the hoop. Charles gets rebound, jumps backwards into Pitts during the shot, foul on Pitts for being in the way of her back-jump (foul on Pitts for being shorter and not getting the rebound, really). If Taiye had been in (subbed by Lamke) then Taiye probably gets the rebound (but she’s benched due to two quick non-fouls). 4th foul on Pitts. Palma in for Pitts. Just like that, it’s Kaposi and Lamke in, whereas Pitts and Bello would have been in if the refs hadn’t called two quick bogus calls on Bello.

Maryland makes one of two free throws, now a 7 point game with 7 minutes left.

Next possession, Gophers get a shot clock violation. Not aware of it apparently. Block by Jones helped use up clock.

Next set, bad Maryland play, Bell gets 2 off fast break. 9 point game at 6:19.

6:05 Mikesell hits a quick 3 from the left wing. Kaposi leaves her wide open. 6 point game.

5:35 Lamke knocks down a short jumper. 8 point game.

5:24 Mikesell left all alone again for another 3. 5 point game.

Next play, Bell charged into double-team, loses ball, Maryland fails to score on fast break, we get rebound.

4:54 Bell seems injured. Bello in for Bell (with Lamke). After timeout it looks like Pitts has come in too.

4:33 Pitts scores on a reverse. 7 point game.

Charles left alone for easy two after nice feed. Gophers not playing D anymore. Gassed, I guess. 5 point game.

3:23 Bell checks back in.

1:58 Bell gets down the lane for a layup. 7 point game.

1:28 Intentional foul by Maryland to get their foul count heading toward 5, just in case.

1:20 Bell double teamed, mostly intentional Maryland foul given.

1:02 Nice play as Brunson breaks loose, but she misses, we miss the rebound. Still 7 point game. (During later game pause, announcers criticize Brunson for not burning up enough shot clock here.)

Then at 0:50 we get the infamous possession where we can’t get a rebound, and Maryland gets 3 chances to hit a bunny shot. The 3rd one is charm.

However, not before she elbows Bello. Of course one can say, let em play. Final minute of a hard fought game, gonna be some contact down low. I can roll with that one. However a special point of ref emphasis the last two years is that elbowing is completely forbidden. Automatic foul on person swinging their elbows. By that rule, if properly enforced (as it should have been), the foul should have been on Charles. The made shot don’t count.

Of course, how do you expect the refs to know that rule when they don’t even understand traveling or out of bounds. So whether you want to call the refs on that one - up to you.

Now 5 point game, and start of 9-0 Maryland scoring run.

Maryland presses the inbounds.

On the inbounds pass, Lewis intentionally trips over Pitts feet. She didn’t have to be guarding her that close. Normally when the defender guards too close and there’s contact, the foul is called on the defender.

I believe this intentional trip should have been a foul on Lewis. Pitts is maneuvering to catch the pass. She has a right to make a jump stop to catch the pass. She has no obligation whatsoever to make her jump stop more convenient to Lewis, the defender.

Lewis intentionally hooks Pitts leg, and goes flying to better sell it.

The refs improperly call the foul on Pitts, and she fouls out. This is a completely BS foul call. That was a defensive foul, on Lewis. No question about it. You can’t just go intentionally whack Pitts leg, and then beg for an offensive foul because - oh ouch, I got tripped up and fell in the process of whacking Pitts leg. Except in Maryland where the refs are bought and paid for.

This one was not quite as egregious as the earlier non-basketball-move baseball slide into Pitts legs (which merely put Pitts in the position to foul out later, namely now).

The announcers were quite inane about the whole thing.

I have no concrete evidence, but can’t help but wonder if this play was sent in directly from Freese. It accomplishes four things. It gets Pitts off the court. It prevents a potential score by the Gophers. It gives Maryland possession. It brings the slower Lamke in to defend Jones.

This bad call, in conjunction with all the other bad calls, essentially throws the game to Maryland.

Of course Minnesota would have to play fairly badly in the remaining 49 seconds to help seal the deal.

Next play, Jones easily leaves Lamke in the dust and scores an easy layup. Plus the and-1. It’s now a 2 point ball game. From 7 points down to 2 points down, all within 2 seconds of game clock burnup. How does one accomplish that exactly? You pay your refs good money.

At 0:26 Bell is fouled by Charles, not really intentionally, but we’re not in the bonus yet. This leads to the first of two horrible inbounds plays.

Lamke is fouled on the inbounds pass. The refs let it slide, no foul called. A scrum ensued. Brunson had it but Jones hacked it out of her hands (not sure if she hit ball or hand or both).

It ends in what should have been a jump ball. But no jump ball is called that I can see. No alternate possession. Refs literally let them wrestle for it. Strongest player, Jones, wins the wrestle. Ball awarded unilaterally to Maryland.

At 0:26 it’s Maryland ball out of bounds. They take timeout, advance the ball.

Kaposi in for Lamke. Charles blows by Kaposi like her tennis shoes are glued to the floor.

6 seconds left, tie game.

Out of bounds pass should have gone to the right corner, instead inbounds pass is deflected by their 6’5” Center, picked up by Charles.

This is where they needed a timeout, but didn’t have any since they had to burn one in Q2 for a Pitts foul that really was a bad call by the refs.

Charles blows by Lamke like her tennis shoes are glued to the floor, and makes the off balance lefty layup. Maryland wins by two.

Hero of the game for Maryland? Well of their players, obviously Charles. No Gopher bothered to defend her, pretty much all game, but especially down the stretch.

But the real Maryland heroes? The horribly bad referees, who gave the game to Maryland. The only thing the refs didn’t provide was the silver platter. But better than a silver platter, they fouled out Pitts on two horrible calls. Which proved to be more useful to Maryland then a silver platter.

With Pitts (wrongly) out, in the last 50 seconds the Gopher squad on court couldn’t shoot, couldn’t defend, and couldn’t inbound the ball.

The refs illegally fouling out Pitts was the key to exposing the Gophers Achilles Heel. Maryland did not defeat the Gophers. The referees defeated the Gophers.

If the referees hadn’t made (up to) about 20 officiating errors (more in favor of Maryland than in favor of Minnesota) the Gophers would have won. Actually, perhaps only 10 of these reffing errors could be labeled as seriously detrimental (to the Gophers) as well as undeniable by any reasonable observer. These 10 are the reffing errors primarily responsible for the loss. In fact, pick any 3 of the 10, and those 3 by themselves are sufficient to switch a Gopher win to a Maryland win.

4th Quarter Summary:
7-9 questionable calls favoring Maryland, depending on how you count them
0 questionable calls favoring Minnesota
 
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Are all BTN games available on You Tube after the game, or do you need a subscription to You Tube. I’m going to miss seeing the games and would like to watch a replay.

It appears that many of the B1G women’s games end up on YouTube. Eventually. Don’t hold your breath- May take a day to make it out there.

Also, just going on what I saw, I’ve seen no formal policy statement. Also not sure if BTN or BTN Plus or both.

You’re best off going into YouTube itself and searching from there. Plain Google search turns up too many extraneous results.

Be tricky about your search string. Include the word womens or women’s in search or it will give you mostly men’s games (of which there are more recorded).

Include the date or year or season years unless you want to watch old games. The specific search I gave to find this one was ...

Maryland vs Minnesota women’s basketball 2019

No need to subscribe to YouTube. It does offer some sort of for-pay membership that has extra features. But there is nothing like a paywall on YouTube.

Also note that some individuals record and post games to YouTube with regularity but variable video quality. The same general search will pick these up too.
 
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It appears that many of the B1G women’s games end up on YouTube. Eventually. Don’t hold your breath- May take a day to make it out there.

Also, just going on what I saw, I’ve seen no formal policy statement. Also not sure if BTN or BTN Plus or both.

You’re best off going into YouTube itself and searching from there. Plain Google search turns up too many extraneous results.

Be tricky about your search string. Include the word womens or women’s in search or it will give you mostly men’s games (of which there are more recorded).

Include the date or year or season years unless you want to watch old games. The specific search I gave to find this one was ...

Maryland vs Minnesota women’s basketball 2019

No need to subscribe to YouTube. It does offer some sort of for-pay membership that has extra features. But there is nothing like a paywall on YouTube.

Also note that some individuals record and post games to YouTube with regularity but variable video quality. The same general search will pick these up too.

thanks...
 




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