Georgia Basketball: Fouls May Keep Trey Thompkins, Bulldogs Out of March Madness

Right now, the vastly improved Georgia Bulldogs basketball team has a 16-7 record but is just 5-4 during SEC play. 

While the 2010-2011 season is going much more smoothly than the one in 2009-2010, the squad has by no means guaranteed themselves a spot in March Madness.

In fact, Trey Thompkins, Travis Leslie and the rest of the team are currently balancing rather precipitously on the bubble, especially after the loss to the Xavier Musketeers. 

If you take a look back at the losses, you'll see that fouls in particular have severely affected Georgia. I mean that in a couple of different ways, as you'll soon see. 

The first three losses for the Bulldogs were games where the team was simply outplayed, first by Notre Dame and then by Temple and Vanderbilt. It's worth noting that none of those are bad losses, especially as they were all played away from the Bulldogs' home at Stegeman Coliseum. 

But then the referees really stole a game away from Georgia. Playing against Tennessee, the Bulldogs were up 54-53 when Josh Bone made a runner in the lane after the shot clock had clearly expired to give the Volunteers a 55-54 advantage. 

Later on, the game was tied at 56 on the final possession. Tobias Harris was forced to take a contested three-pointer from the corner thanks to some brilliant defensive work. After an airball, Brian Williams reached over the back of Chris Barnes and knocked down a buzzer-beater for the win as he was falling backwards. 

It still astounds me that there was no foul called. To be fair, Georgia was on the good end of a bogus technical foul call earlier in the game, but the latter two bad calls by Ted Valentine's crew were just awful. It's worth noting that Valentine has made quite a few controversial calls over the course of his career. 

Fast-forward to overtime of the game against Florida. With just one second left on the clock, Erving Walker drilled a 30-footer to tie up the game and force a second overtime, one where a depleted, disheartened and exhausted Bulldogs squad would fall. 

Rewind roughly five seconds. Walker dribbled the ball all the way up the court without being fouled despite the insistence from head coach Mark Fox that he be stopped with a foul. It boggles my mind to think about why not one player on the Bulldogs team had the presence of mind to foul Walker and send him to the line for two shots. Even if he'd made both of them, the Gators would be one point short of a tie. 

Instead, Walker received the opportunity to shoot a Jimmer Fredette-like three-pointer, an opportunity that he seized without hesitation. Just a little push or hand check and the Bulldogs would have won the game.

That's inexcusable. 

After one more loss, this time to Kentucky, it's time to move on to the most recent game. 

One call that had the Bulldogs faithful particularly irate was a no-call when Gerald Robinson stole the ball and ran into the referee. The referee is considered a part of the court, so the fact that he was hit does not mean the play should have been stopped. Thus, the correct call was made when play was allowed to continue. But it did set an anti-referee tone among the crowd that would come into play later in the game. 

With 2:42 left in the final half, Trey Thompkins was pushed from behind and ended up sprawled out on the court, right in the path of Xavier guard Tu Holloway. Holloway tripped, and the foul was inexplicably called on Thompkins, fouling the Georgia star out of the game while his team trailed by just four points. 

It was just one of many disputed calls throughout the game. In fact, the Georgia crowd was so upset that the security at Stegeman Coliseum had to escort the referees off the court through a different tunnel than the one normally taken right through the heart of the student section. 

I've been to every single one of the home games Georgia has played this season. I'm not usually one to boo the refs, unless the call is particularly bad, in which case I get caught up in the moment. In fact, I've drawn some funny looks from my fellow spectators while calmly explaining that the "bad" call was actually a good one, even if it hurts our team. 

A lot of times, the friends I'm with will look at me to see whether or not I thought the play was worth complaining about before they join in with the rest of the suddenly boisterous crowd. 

Also, I'm one of those people who think that exaggerated heckling of a referee is a bad idea. It's counterproductive. Nothing is going to change. In fact, I challenge anyone to come up with a time when the crowd actually got a call changed.

Moreover, booing the refs may actually make them more likely to call iffy fouls against your team in an effort to pay back the crowd a little bit.

The men and women dressed in black and white stripes are supposed to stay unbiased, but remaining completely oblivious to the situation around you and being completely unaffected by it is a concept that is both idealistic and unrealistic. It's human nature to let the opinions of others influence your decisions, even minimally. 

Finally, I understand the difficulty of an official's job. But at the same time, they're paid to make the right calls and should be occasionally held accountable for making particularly blatant mistakes. 

Hopefully, some of these rather egregious mistakes won't keep the Dawgs out of March Madness when the tournament finally rolls around. 

But the thing is, while it may be true that fouls (whether the ones that the Bulldogs have committed, the calls/no-calls by the referees and the failures to foul when necessary) have significantly hindered Georgia's ability to put together a sparkling win-loss record at this point in the season, that can't be used as too big a crutch. 

Georgia is a good basketball team, albeit one that is not very deep. A team with two potential lottery picks in Thompkins and the high-flying sophomore, Travis Leslie, needs to be playing better. At some point, the team has to play well enough to avoid being in close situations where one call can change the outcome of a game. 

Ideally, these memories become motivation towards better play in the future.

Now that they're not cupped around my mouth helping to amplify the shouts directed at the referees, as they were last night while the Bulldogs played Xavier, my fingers are crossed, hoping that this will be the case.