The Blue Board

Nope. Any contact with the face is supposed to be an automatic flagrant 1, whether its intentional or not, or whether the defender was too close up or not.

That's about spot on, a team staying healthy is key to being a top dawg in hoops.

What game was it that Raymar took an elbow to the face, his tooth went flying out on camera and he got right back in the game?

Harbaugh has dominated wherever, whenever. He will get his rings, only a matter of time. He should have had one last year, unfortunately his PR couldn't hold onto a Punt not once, but twice.

I'll just have to say we'll have to agree to disagree.

My basis for argument on the other guys over Harbaugh is that it's hard to argue with success.

Did we get four free throws and the ball out of bounds?

Basketball is an incredibly difficult game to officiate. The speed, strength and agility these players have make for some incredibly fast paced action. When there is play under the basket you have all sorts of contact happening rapidly and a refs job is to determine if there is or isn't a foul. Sometimes in blocked shots it's impossible to tell if it's all ball or if there was contact because of the speed at which the play happens. It's pretty much a flawed game, you can't officiate it as well as a baseball game or a football game but it's still a very entertaining game to watch.

Well said. It's great to watch the last couple minutes. Like Indy Georgetown. Gets your heart pounding. Great athletes too. Love march.

Okay, go ahead and pretend like MSU wasn't going to update their scoreboards soon anyway. In fact, I'm pretty sure MSU put out the RFP before UM.

What about the expansion hotshot? Looks like UM must be copying MSU...

Don't swing you elbows and you don't have to worry about giving away free throws. You can't understand that?

Think about it for a minute. Basketball isn't like football, in basketball you are not allowed to move someone out of position. The whole concept of "clearing out" after you grab a rebound is wrong. Just because someone grabbed the ball doesn't mean they have free reign to start swinging elbows and moving people out of the way.

The points you two are trying to make are unrelated.

1. Obviously players are going to have to adapt, and refrain from clearing rebounds with their elbows, I don't think Steve is arguing that.

2. The rule is designed to prevent contact to players' head with the elbow, yet it does create an incentive for players to find a way to have their head make contact with an elbow from the other team. It effectively will cause at least as much head-elbow contact as it prevents.

3. It is textbook basketball to use your body to clear a rebound. Swinging elbows is not what is being discussed. However, when you gather a rebound, 99% of coaches will tell you to firmly grasp the ball with both palms, with your forearms extended out, and rotate at the waist back and forth until you have room to breath. Because the player is moving within their own space, this was thought to be appropriate. Now, however, it greatly reduces a player's ability to do this, especially when being guarded by shorter players.

I think this rule is fine, as long as they start calling the contact fouls on the defense. Currently, those generally aren't called right after a rebound is gathered, and it puts the player controlling the ball in a very bad position.

4. It should be noted that the player who Nix "elbowed" was actually whistled for a foul right before Nix "elbowed" him. The refs then reviewed the replay and elected to give Nix the flagrant 1 call, and negate the foul that happened before it (wrong application of the rule). Izzo recognized it was wrong, and walked away angrily, unemphatically (aka - with minimal arm movement, no body motion) slammed his clipboard on his chair. The refs were apparently upset by that and T'd him up (completely ridiculous). That gave them 4 foul shots and the ball when we were actually supposed to be looking at shots ourselves. When they inbounded the ball, we were immediately whistled for a terribly ticky-tack foul giving them 2 more shots.

While I think it's unfortunate that this rule will be occasionally misapplied and have several side effects that won't be addressed until next year (including punishing rebounders and rewarding floppers, aka, MSU v. WIS), I don't think MSU fans would be quite as worried about it if it hadn't been so grossly misapplied.

Thanks Jandy. I was thinking that it was some kind of idiotic super foul and I had turned it on right when the kid was shooting the first of 4 shots. I didn't hear the announcers say Izzo got a technical foul. I'm thinkng all night this rule would not allow me to watch basketball this season, because the free throws would drive me crazy. I thought damn, four free throws and the ball out of bounds. Then when Nix slapped at the ball and gave them two more, I said, to myself, back to storage wars, this is not good t.v. I love basketball when it's up and down and fast paced, but this rule will give the officials a huge amount of power over teams who rebound vs. teams who get there late and try to create fouls. It's going to suck for us part time watchers.

Remember the shot clock first being introduced? The rule was if you kicked the ball out, the shot clock went back to 35 for the offense. I'm thinking WTF? You play your ass off on defense for 30 seconds, a guy tries a bounce pass, you stick yoru leg out and you stop the ball from going into the lane for an easy layup, then you're penalized for excellence on defense by giving the offense a full shot clock.

I hope they look at this rule, and take the diapers off and let the kids play next year.

I think you are sorely underestimating the impact of injuries to a teams performance in basketball.

Not having Harris and Trice on the floor in this game was huge.