Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Stolen Game

I have a hard time blaming anyone but myself and my team for losing games. I especially don't like to blame referrees. They have a tough job and I don't make it any easier on them. Thursday, I can truly say that the refs stole the game from my team. We lost by 4 points. We made some mistakes down the stretch. But, when I asked a ref in the second quarter why she wasn't calling the other team for certain fouls, her response was that both teams were doing it. The problem was, at that point in the game the foul-count was 8-2 against us. In the 3rd quarter, they didn't call a single foul against the team we were playing and called 6 against us. The final count for the second half was 11-4. To put this in perspective, let me throw out a few figures from the game. The other team's leading scorer (14 points) had 4 fouls. The other team's post player had no fouls. One of my starters fouled out. We shot less than half as many free throws as they did. I had one girl get pushed down on her face right in front of the ref in the last 2 minutes of the game and he didn't call anything. I just about lost my mind!!

In my heart of hearts, we won that game. The score just didn't show it. The more disappointing thing is that, in my girls' hearts, all our hard work and progress over the last four weeks was voided by that 4-point loss. I just pray that they can bring it together and try to get a win in our last game tomorrow.

No comments: