Touching once more on the officiating,
schedules, trophies, and post-season awards
by rick olivares
I have a couple of thoughts that came
to me before and after Game Two of the UAAP Men’s Basketball Finals.
The
first is the officiating. A UAAP
board member told me that in a couple of years the league will have its own
referees.
I wonder if this is wise. If anything
this underscores a never-ending problem with the NSA. As it is, you have
several groups of referees. These referees are managed/co-owned/financed by
people in basketball. All who have ties to certain schools and so on.
In a perfect world, these referees
should all be under the aegis of the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas. If you go
from one league to another the quality of play and officiating is vastly
different.
I recall during one FIBA tournament
abroad, I asked an official why these international referees call a foul on one
play but do not in another. I got the same answer and that the level of play is
different from one country to another. We have enough problems as it is that we
do not need to go to another’s backyard.
Ideally there should be a collective
style on officiating.
Take a look at Game Two of the Final
Four series between Letran and San Sebastian. The Stags’ Ronald Pascual took a
three-point attempt in which Kevin Alas fouled him. Some will say, “Ah, that’s
mild my NCAA standards.” But in the same play, the shot airballed and Baste’s
Dexter Maiquez pushed the Knight’s Jam Cortes and that was called a foul. See
what I mean?
Ah, that’s the NCAA, you say. Well,
it’s even worse in the UAAP. At least in the NCAA it’s accepted that it’s
physical in the UAAP who knows what is a foul today as opposed to tomorrow?
Do they even review game tape so they
know what they called? I’ve sat in a few sessions with the commissioner and the
referees and all they do is talk about what calls they made. How do they know
they got it right or wrong? Video must certainly be used. As for the coaching
challenges, if a coach loses his challenge he should be docked a time out so
they will not use this as a tactic to delay the game or for an unofficial
timeout.
Maybe the odds should be announced
before every game so we know if people are trying to influence a game.
The SBP should gets its act together
and put all these officiating groups under one umbrella. Political will.
And I still stand by my earlier
opinion about the league getting a full time commissioner and a technical
committee that isn’t composed of board members.
The
second is the schedule. Can we all
go to the previous formula of playing another team based on the standings of
the previous round? And if a team plays on Thursday his next game should be
Sunday and not Saturday.
All this monkeying around with the
schedule leads to conspiracy theories. Before schools knew your either played
once or twice a week. The worst was one had only a day’s rest before taking the
court again. In recent years, well, there are three games in a week, no games
for a week, then back to the meat grinder right before the playoffs.
The old formula is equitable and fair.
As it is, I smell fish.
My
third thought would be the trophies. I
have written about that through the years and as it is, UAAP trophies come in
all shapes and sizes depending on the sport and who is the host school.
When you look at sports outside our
borders there’s the famous Larry O’Brien trophy, the old Big Ears of the UEFA
Champions League, the Stanley Cup, the Heisman trophy, the World Cup trophy,
and the tennis grand slam trophies (plates)!
Here in the Philippines, the PBA used
to hand out massive monoliths for trophies before coming to their senses. In
the UAAP the last several years, one year it looked like Ateneo won an Araw
Award then a Archery trophy to a facsimile of the Stanley Cup to the Holy
Grail. Hey, Indy! The Holy Grail
is right in Loyola Heights!
Do we even know what the general
championship trophy looks like?
My point exactly.
Maybe it’s time to commission a design
for one trophy to rule and bind them.
And
lastly, there’s the exclusive use of statistics to determine who the Most
Valuable Player or the Mythical Five.
Suppose the centers from different schools ruled the stats do you have a
Mythical Five of five centers? The five should come from being the best in
their position. Clearly, Kiefer Ravena should have been in the Mythical Five
and named the Finals MVP.
The equitable thing would be to get
votes from media, the stats panel, the referees, the coaches, and technical
officials.
End Part 2
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