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Message: [QUOTE="veivoli, post: 5300901, member: 14073"] To address the original question, my view is - maybe. When I sat my referees' written exam in the mid 70s (I retired from playing, coaching, and refereeing in the late 80s) the rule book (this was FIBA rules) was quite a slim volume and we still regarded basketball as a non-contact sport. Putting aside the changes that allow three step and more lay-ups, don't punish double dribble, and so on, it appears that the rules are much more complex than they were then. For example, we only had to deal with normal fouls, shooting fouls, technical fouls, intentional fouls, and disqualifying fouls, not the plethora of variations I see now. And what on earth is meant by the defence for dirty play: "It was a basketball play"? Dirty play is dirty play and should be punished! Having said that , two players going for a loose ball can have quite violent contact without it being a foul. If a player driving to the rim dropped their shoulder into a defender they got called for a charge, rather than the foul being called on the defender. And so on. To my mind too much contact is allowed nowadays, leading to the the fiasco we're currently seeing in the WNBA, and I'm not just talking about the victim who is getting all the publicity. Add to this the number of referees needed to cover all levels of the sport and it stands to reason, to me at least, that the standard will be reduced. However the best of the best are the ones who should be officiating the D1 competitions at the college level. In rugby union, our national sport, referees at the highest level are assessed by a panel and won't be assigned games if their performance doesn't meet standards. I used to chuckle at tournaments - the referees would sit together and would be watching the referees as much as the basketball. :cool: Oh, and we were taught that you concentrated your vision to particular areas. With two referees the lead referee concentrated on the shoulders down, and we were taught not to lift our heads to follow the ball, while the trail referee concentrated on the waist up. Given the number of missed calls I wonder if today's referees have similar responsibilities? Perhaps someone with more recent experience can elucidate. On the specific example quoted above, Lili did commit a foul - and I'm an ardent UConn supporter. Similarly, Carol's much-vaunted winning shot at the end of the match a couple of years ago should have been disallowed as she pushed the defender off with her left arm. Two different incidents with two different results. Let the abuse commence! Referees will never be perfect, but they should be consistent. Allow me to tell a story against myself: I was the lead referee, standing behind the baseline under the basket. A defender swung her arm, missed the ball, and hit a player on the other team, right in front of me. I blew my whistle, raised my fist to signal the foul, and my mind went completely blank. The player who committed the foul looked at me, saw my brain freeze, put her hand up and said quietly "it was me." I made a point of thanking her as we walked off at half time! [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach