I watched the game live and watched half of it again today, and Mitchell gets away with an incredible amount of contact without being called for a foul. Now granted some of his thefts and pressure is legit and impressive, but my gosh! If any of our players pressured like that they'd foul out by halftime.
I can't remember at what point in the first half, I think within the last 5 minutes they finally called on on him that was highly egregious.
And don't get me started about all the grabbing and impedence off the ball against both Karaban and Ball. What the h*ll has happened in the Big East with freedom of movement. Isn't there someway the UConn athletic department can petition the BE commisser and/or office, sending them a slew of tape on all this off the ball contact so that the BE leadership can inform the refs to look for and call fouls on this type of physicality? I think it would be in the best interest for the conference to empower the more skill teams such as UConn to succeed rather than being beaten by lesser teams who are just grabbing all the time.
As for bad noncall incorrectly called fouls last night we certainly had our share. There were quite a few we got away with that I thought were obvious. Though without looking closely and counting all of them for both teams, I'd still think it was tilted in Marquette's favor.
I don't usually complain about getting hosed by the refs, but this season has been a strange one. There's no doubt that this UConn team clearly struggles to defend without fouling. Most occur due to defenders struggling to keep their man front driving right by them, poor help D execution resulting in off the ball defenders scrambling when D gets blown up and a good amount when they fail to secure the defensive rebounds where they give up 2nd and 3rd opportunities. My guess is if you foul a lot, like a dog with Pavlov's law, the refs react in conditionally response and can't stop blowing the whistle. I swear I keep on hearing the whistle blowing even after they go to commercials.
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On the positive note on our defense, I thought they improved a lot with switching more than we've seen all season and hedging at the right times as well. Not sure if the frequent switching is a new wrinkle or was due to Marquette not having quality Bigs to worry so much with mismatched. One thing that bodes well for even switching sometimes on screens with our bigs is Johnson is long and pretty quick for a big, and Reed, while bigger and not as long, moves pretty well for a player his size. His problem lies more with recognition and technique than physical ability. Sometimes he's just a fraction too slow in closing out and retreating back to his man or late in recognizing to shade off his man to help stave off dribble penetration when a teammate has lost their angle. He's new to this type of D and seems to be slowly getting better with his help D.
That's a lot in that response but I hope it was worth reading.
