Official UNI vs. CU game thread.

[Purple Reign]

Funk sure would have looked good in purple and gold... WAY TO GO MAC!!!

Totally uncalled for. Move on!!


PR

[DRAKELAWPANTHER]

Unfortunately, I don't think we get to put little asterisks next to games we lost due to "bad officiating." And I'm pretty sure the NCAA committee won't consider that either...

There's no way around it: the goal-tend no-call at Ill. State was bad...and the officiating last night was REALLY bad. But good teams rise above those bad calls - and the simple fact is: bad officiating didn't get us down 20-4...

The reality is that (minus the Bracketbuster and Tourney), we've got to go 9-3 the rest of the way to be a "lock" for the Big Dance. The way we've looked this week, that doesn't seem very likely. A week ago, I didn't see how we could NOT reach 21 wins - oh how things have changed. Being 13-4 this year really makes our start last year look amazing...And in a lot of ways I still think this is a better team. I hope they pull it together FAST!!!!

[UNI MadCat]

I can't believe Ed Hightower is still allowed in the state of Iowa! He is the worst official I have ever seen. There were so many horrible calls that it is hard to put a finger on a specific one, but if I had to there was the out of bounds call when we were down 39-37 I believe. There guy drives the lane and we tip the ball into his knee and it clearly goes out of bounds off of him. On the ensuing position Funk drains a 3 and that really changed everything.

I love these posts. I'm pretty sure if you go to the message board of the losing team after every game EH does, you'll find this same thing. Here is my question -- if he is so terrible why is he, arguably, the most known official in college basketball that has reffed more final fours than anyone??

Let me ask you this -- did Hightower put a lid on the rim in the first half in order to hold us to 30% shooting???

EH is one of the best officials in the game, period. Find another excuse for this loss besides the refs --- PLEASE!!!

[DancerHall Cat]

Funk sure would have looked good in purple and gold... WAY TO GO MAC!!!

This is a joke. What is your beef with Mac? Funk went to a Catholic High School a couple of hours from Omaha and he committed at a time when Creighton was an obvious choice over UNI. Last week you accuse Mac of having an ego and now you come with this?

Its embarrassing that someone who is allowed to write a regular article on this board would spout off such a load of crap. We all get frustrated, but at the very least back up what you say instead of a lame one-liner attacking the old coach.

[UNI MadCat]

tough loss, maybe we aint as good as we thought we were. dropping 2 games we should won.

How do you figure? We were outplayed in both.

Even if you are looking at it on paper before the game, the CU match-up wasn't one where you'd immediately say, "we should win this one". A toss up, at best.

[joecooll6]

Funk is a stud. Three reasons why we lost.
3. Refs- This is never a sole reason to lose a game, its a small part of the reason, but they were horrible.
2. Poor shooting- That was just pathetic in the first half.
1. Nate Funk- Every time we got some momentum he would make a big shot.

[DancerHall Cat]

How do you figure? We were outplayed in both.

Even if you are looking at it on paper before the game, the CU match-up wasn't one where you'd immediately say, "we should win this one". A toss up, at best.

Assuming he meant looking at it before the game, I think its a decent point. We were 2-3 point favorites at Illinois State and we were favored by 3-3.5 points last night. Obviously not huge favorited, but we still gotta be able to win at least 1 of those games.

[Panther Cat]

[QUOTE=UNI MadCat;69540]if he is so terrible why is he, arguably, the most known official in college basketball
QUOTE]

If people remember and know the ref, that usually means they had way too big of impact on the game. The best reffed games are the ones where you don't even need to mention them afterwards. I honestly have hated this guy for a long time. He's bad, didn't cost us the game, but he's still bad.

[GoCats05]

Referees don't lose games, but they certainly change the momentum. The out of bounds call was certainly a momentum changer. Did anyone else notice Rick Hartzell during the game? You could tell he was hot. Especially when we had Creighton trapped in the corner right in front of him and the player was stepping on the line. I hope John Higgins gets well in a hurry!

[Born-a-Panther]

Referees don't lose games, but they certainly change the momentum. The out of bounds call was certainly a momentum changer. Did anyone else notice Rick Hartzell during the game? You could tell he was hot. Especially when we had Creighton trapped in the corner right in front of him and the player was stepping on the line. I hope John Higgins gets well in a hurry!

Hartzell's wife even got hot when that kid stepped on the line. She jumped out of her chair so fast, I thought she was going to force herself into labor.

[Panthers#1]

Yes the refs sucked but you can't blame them for everything. When we didn't show up in the first half, thats what hurt us. Another thing is that we had sloppy ball play. Whenever we needed a basket, it seemed we would turn the ball over or stand around so we had to put up a bad shot. In all areas, we sucked last night. If they are double teaming our posts, then our guards need to step up and make some buckets to take the pressure off of them. Something needs to change and fast.

[merkpanthers]

Stout didn't hedge a screen the entire night on Funk leaving Josten and Ahlegbe trailing over the top of screens. Also when Creighton called time out with like 9 seconds left in the shot clock, Funk comes back to in bound the ball. At that point I don't think he'd inbounded the ball the whole night? I turn to my buddy at the bar say, "Funk passes it in, gets the return pass takes two dribble and hits a 15 footer." I knew it was coming, yet the defender trailed him the whole way. Is there a lack of basketball IQ at times?

The officiating sucked both ways so most need to realize that the three officials did not make or break the game. I'm not specific on the 10 second violation as the ball had left the players hand as the shot clock hit 25 but they may have held CU 10 seconds in the back court but it took all of 2 1/2 seconds for Tolliver to stuff it home putting the exclamation point on a hard fought well deserved road win.

Also, don't you think that it's almost stupid to hate someone with a passion because they're good at their craft?

We hedged some of the screens that Creighton put on us, but Josten and Ahlegbe would have no chance at guarding Tolliver or Watts they would just take it straight to the hole and dunk it over them. We also went behind too many screens early in the game and gave them easy wide open looks. Yes we were trailing them so they got better looks I'll agree with that.

I never said that the officiating lost us the game. We got ourselves in a huge hole to start the game and I was proud that we fought back like we did, but if you are down by that much against any team in this league it's going to be one heck of a battle to get back into the game.

Funk and Tolliver are both very good players and when the pressure was on they hit big shots for Creighton. All that I was trying to say was that if we could stop one of them then we would have a great shot at beating them, but both of them dominated us like usual and we came out with a loss. I don't understand why we didn't try to full court press them earlier when we got down by so much to start the game. We needed something to spark us and that might have done it.

Jordan and Jones didn't play at all last night because we got in such a big hole to start the game. Brooks played the whole game last night because we could afford to take him out. Things would have been different if the game would have been close from the start. I agree that if we were going to play Jordan as much as we have that we should have redshirted him, but we can't change that now. We're just going to have to deal with it. I just hope that this week is behing everybody and that we can come out and play Panther basketball for the games that are coming up because we need to be at our A game at all times.

[Hime_Peterson]

To the poster wanting Egelseder to play Koch's minutes:

Egelseder has a nice future, but he is not quick enough to guard either Tolliver or Watts. Both are very mobile big men who play out to the three point line, and the big boy would have had trouble guarding them in the Creighton offense.

To the poster complaining about McDermott not getting Nate Funk:

UNI and Creighton offered both Funk and Ben Jacobson. They weren't going to go to the same place. Both programs should be happy with the player they got out of that deal.

[Panthers to the Bone]

To the poster wanting Egelseder to play Koch's minutes:

Egelseder has a nice future, but he is not quick enough to guard either Tolliver or Watts. Both are very mobile big men who play out to the three point line, and the big boy would have had trouble guarding them in the Creighton offense.

To the poster complaining about McDermott not getting Nate Funk:

UNI and Creighton offered both Funk and Ben Jacobson. They weren't going to go to the same place. Both programs should be happy with the player they got out of that deal.

I was going to post the exact same thing. Jordan is going to be a FANTASTIC player the next three years. It's difficult to have Jordan and Coleman on the floor at the same time, b/c neither can spread defenses. B/c of that, Jordan is a better fit when Stout or Koch are on the floor for offense. When Coleman is not on the floor, there isn't the emotion that he brings. When Stout isn't on the floor, UNI loses some veteran leadership and a post that can spread defenses. That's the dilema, IMO. On top of that, if Jordan were out there on defense, he isn't quick enough to guard Watts on the perimeter...and so he would have to guard Tolliver. Stout, too, isn't quick enough to guard Watts on the perimeter, so you saw Stout/Koch guarding Tolliver and Coleman chasing Watts. If Jordan is in there with Stout or Coleman, UNI either loses a threat to spread defenses to the 3 point line (if Stout isn't out there), or UNI loses a quicker post player to chase Watts (if Coleman isn't out there). If UNI has a lead, you can get both Coleman/Stout off the floor to rest them, but UNI didn't have that luxury.

And as for Funk...both Benny J and Funk had similar games, it was going to be difficult for UNI to get both. So, UNI got Benny and I think we all agree he was a great player for UNI. And Creighton got Funk...again, a great player for Creighton. Funk got hurt last year, and had to redshirt, so he was around for one more year.

[PantherUNI]

This seems to be a pattern with us. Every year we come out on fire, and then we piss it down our legs with stupid losses, although the refs were nothing to brag about last nite either. We were still in that game until we learned the refs couldn't count to ten. I'm just really scared for MO state. That could be an ugly game.