Big East Ref Show Tour Makes a Stop in Milwaukee

College basketball games are supposed to take about two hours roughly to finish. 45 minutes or so for the first half and another 45 minutes for the second with minutes for halftime. Georgetown and Marquette took two hours and 25 minutes to finish on Thursday night. The game featured 51 fouls including two horrid technicals but in the end, we need a winner which was Marquette, 75-73.  Golden Eagles had big games from Davante Gardner, Jake Thomas and Marquette is not dead yet.

But back to the #REFSHOW that took place in Milwaukee on Thursday night. Wonder if the ticket stubs had 'Come see the Refs featuring Georgetown-Marquette!'  Personally if I am a Georgetown fan, I would be more pissed than I am this morning. Not just because the Hoyas fell in a must-win game, but due to the officials fouling out two big men with two others playing with four fouls as Nate Lubick and Moses Ayegba left before the 10 minute mark of the second half. Georgetown received the worst end of the stick when it came to the officials and if I am the Hoyas, I would be livid at the officiating.

Big East needs to send out a memo if this how the officials are going to ref the games moving forward. A must-win game became unwatchable rather quickly and that's a shame. Hopefully, they can find a balance where there are some calls here and there, maybe some questionable ones, but let's have a flow to this game versus every time down a whistle appears. Related, I went three paragraphs without complaining about how Marquette missed eleven free throws that nearly cost them the game shows how bad both ways these officials were for the full 40 minutes.


With the officials fouling the Georgetown big men out, Davante Gardner saw blood in the water like an oversized shark. He ended the game with 26 points and seven rebounds. Bradley Hayes is seven foot, but Gardner made him look like a dwarf out there dominating in the lane. To Marquette's credit, they kept feeding the beast in the second half and did not waver from it minus a couple shots from Todd Mayo that would make Russell Westbrook blush. When Gardner is at his best, we see the wide array of post moves he has to offer plus he draws fouls which he did going to the line 12 times. In the last two games, Gardner is averaging 24 points, hopefully this is a sign of a big late season push from the Marquette big man.

If you read this blog, I heavily criticized Jake Thomas throughout the year with wondering why he played and why others guys were not playing. But in the last couple games, Thomas has been great. He had a career-high 22 points making six of nine from 3-point range last night. He hit all shots in rhythm plus Thomas looked confident as ever to nail down these big threes. Nothing better than to see him turn around season. I am more than happy to eat crow with Thomas. While 22 points should not be the expectation, let's hope he starts becoming a 10 to 15 points a game threat in these final games of the season.

There are couple other news and notes from this one. Juan Anderson had four points which is above his average, but he seemed more confident than he has in the past couple of games. Because of Thomas and Gardner's play, we will sort of forget how Jamil Wilson only had three points and Mayo only had six points. Even though he did not score, I liked a lot of what I saw from John Dawson in this one. Finally, 20 assists for Marquette will likely win them ball games. The ball movement was as good as I have seen it from this squad.

Marquette is still not dead for NCAA Tournament talk. They are like a zombie where Marquette keeps wavering around yet no one can seem to kill them. Golden Eagles take on their final marquee game of the season in a road trip against eighth-ranked Villanova. This is a great chance for the Golden Eagles to become more than just a zombie.

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The Tap Ten: 2013 College Basketball Stories

This is the beginning of our 2013 end of the year lists for sports.  I know we will do one for MLB, CFB, CBB, NBA, PGA and NFL. I probably will do a top 20 list of overall moments and if we get real frisky, maybe top 20 figures in sports giving away our first annual Tapper of the Year or something dumb like that. Also as always, these are my lists and I can imagine you have a different one, cool story. 

10.) Wisconsin becomes a top five team -  I still cannot believe this is a real thing. Wisconsin is playing well as they head into the Big Ten season. People are excited, but we have not hit extreme levels where the causal Badgers fans come out to play. If I ever bring back my true Badger basketball dislike, this has to happen because I will get annoyed checking Facebook. There is not a better year for Wisconsin to get to the Final Four, a place they have not been since 2000.

9.) P.J. Hairston's dismissal from North Carolina - This year for Tar Heels will be a bevy of 'what if's' as they lost their top scorer and rebounder as he took gifts that the NCAA deemed impermissible. North Carolina has not missed a beat against ranked teams, and they are a nightmare when playing unranked teams. There are definitely situations when watching North Carolina where you can definitely say this team needs Hairston in the worst way.

8.)  Rules change in college basketball - I could not have been more against this at the end of the 2012-2013. I had enough with Jay Bilas playing the preacher of college basketball. Seriously, I wondered whether Bilas should get a Pope hat given how many times he complained about this shit.  But Bilas turned out to be right for the most part. There is much more scoring in college basketball, and only a couple games are going in two hours and 30 minute range. Everyone is quiet about it now but just wait until a critical conference game is decided by something like this and people will freak out again.

7.) Best One-And-Done Class ever? - Right now, 2007-2008's class of one-and-done has the title of the best class since the rule change (Derrick Rose, Kevin Love, Russell Westbrook), but this group is figuring to make a run at this with Jabari Parker, the emerging Joel Embiid, Andrew Wiggins, Aaron Gordon and others. The best part about this class is all of these games become must-see television. If Kansas is on, I am watching. Same goes for Duke and probably Arizona but not really for Gordon yet although the Cats are fantastic.

6.) Kevin Ware's gruesome injury - Never before have I seen a moment in a game where no one on Twitter or Facebook wants to show the injury. Whenever someone blows out a knee or ankle, there are like 10 or 15 tweets about it happening along with some pictures, maybe video. Ware's injury did not have the same sort of thing as everybody talked about how brutal it looked on first glance. The Louisville guard recovered from the injury and he is playing this season which is what everyone wanted when the injury first happened in March.

5.) DUNK CITY 4 EVER - I had these guys as low as eight, but that seems inaccurate. This was a prop-up, fake life college that everyone got behind after they beat Georgetown and San Diego State. They were the story of the first weekend of March Madness, and everyone loved the way they played basketball. It got Andy Einfeld a new job at USC, and they will probably always be remembered in montages. Who can forget somebody created a half-decent parody about 'Dunk City' by using Tyga's 'Rack City' beat. Never forget these boys.



4.) Louisville wins their first National Championship in the Pitino Era - With Louisville being one of Marquette's biggest rival, it is never good to see them take home the title, but they played well throughout the year including their run during March Madness. Honestly, the biggest takeaway from their National Championship for me is I never have to watch Peyton Siva again in a Louisville uniform and that's a joy. Siva always bothered me with the way he played and I cannot explain why. While I miss Marquette-Louisville will not play each other, the way it is going this year I am #blessed for it.

3.) Mike Rice's bullying brought to light - I watched a couple Rutgers games throughout the year with them playing Marquette at least once in conference play, and I noticed Rice would be angry yet I never thought the levels it reached with Rice before his ousting. The audio that came out about Rice was beyond just being a hardass coach rather Rice could not have been more of a dick. People were scared of Rice, and he had the power when he did not deserve it. The fact he wants to coach in college basketball again is a straight up joke.

2.) Clutch Vander Blue leads Marquette to the Elite Eight - I really wish I could be talking about how Vander Blue is carrying this year's version of Marquette team and might be looking at being a top 20 pick. But instead, Blue tried to ride the wave of big tournament performances to enter the NBA Draft which did not work out for him and now Vander is in Israel.  Blue made a game-winning layup against St. John's to finish the season and win the Big East championship. Marquette has an incredible comeback against Davidson and then Blue comes up big again in the following game playing Butler with 19 second-half points. It was a joy to watch all the game-winners and why not watch them all again?!?!





1.) The final old Big East season - Yes there is still a Big East, but it will never be the Big East we have seen in the last seven years and beyond. As a Marquette fan, I liked that I actually cared about Georgetown-Syracuse rivalry as well as others in the conference. I find it fitting that Louisville, a Big East team, took home the National Championship in the final year of the Big East. I still think there will be nothing like Big East basketball ever again, but I am excited to see how the new age Big East will continue some of the traditions without some of the teams.

Charlie.