Great game with a great finish. UNC sour grapes are off the charts around here. As if Paige's off-hand, off balance, double clutch three to tie was a sure thing. The beauty of Nova's winning shot was the well designed play getting him wide open for a clean look. With close to 5 seconds on the clock I would have gone to the paint for a higher percentage shot with possibility of drawing a foul or even tip in on a miss. Even a wide open three is maybe a 40% probability - you would think you get over 50% closer to the hoop.
And if Roy Williams is oblivious to the BS non-classes UNC has perpetrated for so long I am the man on the moon. Sound like a Penn State homer defending JoePa.
Without the 8 straight fouls in the first half coupled with the 4 point swing on the last possession of the first half with the no call on Jackson's layup, Marcus Paige maybe doesn't have to take that shot and we're probably not having this discussion. Carolina could have gone into the locker room up nine or more had it not been for some of those questionable fouls that lead to loss of possession and 1 and 1 opportunities for Nova. Whole different ball game going into the second half with Carolina having momentum and a larger lead, but, we'll never know.
Queue the "refs don't determine the outcome of the game" line of thinking (which is fine, if you think that way, it is opinion, after all). However, I happen to believe refs influence the outcome of a game all the time, especially in basketball. They establish the level of physicality that's permitted early on, which is fine. However, when one team gets to be physical and the other accumulates 8 straight ticky tack fouls, some of which were absolutely atrocious, that disparity impacts the game significantly. I've held these opinions during ND Football games, as well. I can't recall specific games, but when a football game produces 11 flags for one team, and 2 on the other, the disparity definitely impacts the game, in my opinion. There's holding, grabbing, interfering on every play if they really wanted to call it. The fact that there's a difference of say 9 flags, to me, indicates a significant favoring of one team. No one plays a clean game without an offensive or defensive holding. (On the other hand, flags for ND Football and refereeing deficiencies for UNC Hoops have influenced outcomes of games before in my team's favor, and I've admitted that.) So, in basketball, when one team accumulates 8 in a row and 0 on the other squad, the playing time for significant players is affected as well as the flow of the game and aggressiveness. I've always hated the "blaming the refs is an excuse" argument. Teams can definitely blame the refs. They should, in my opinion, when it's obvious. It is what it is, you don't get a do-over, so you obviously suck it up and move on eventually, but ignoring the fact that refs influence the game is dismissing a huge characteristic of that game that affected why it turned out the way it did. In a 3 point basketball game, like this championship game, the 4 point swing alone would have changed the result, not to mention the possessions taken away. So, yeah I suppose it could be someone's opinion that it's sour grapes. For me, it's pointing out something that affected the outcome. Both are opinions.
As far as Ol Roy and his obliviousness to the BS non-classes, neither of us know for sure, so it's best to just wait until the facts and rulings are released before we can say we know what happened. The information that's been made public so far has not mentioned Roy Williams once in terms of wrong doing, so until that is disproven, that'll have to be what I base my opinion on for now. Should assumptions based on other people's actions be where you draw your opinions, you're obviously welcome to do so. I've put a pin in thinking about that for a while, so I hope the findings shed light on the truth, whatever that might be, and then we can draw conclusive opinions on what he did or did not know.
Sorry for the rant. Just had to get it out. I'm just 100% against the "sour grapes" and "refs didn't cost you the game" line of thinking. Freaking hate it.
