CRAWFORD | Walz rips officiating after Louisville falls to Syracuse on late foul call

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Officiating is a difficult business. I’ve done it. As a young person, before I started newspaper work, I strung together odd jobs, including as youth league and American Legion umpire.

I’ve seen about everything, and experienced some pretty bad behavior by coaches, players, even fans. Once, my umpiring partner ended a game prematurely because he wasn’t going to listen to any more of it.

So, before anyone accuses me of bashing officials, I think someone needs to speak in their defense. It’s a thankless job, even when you do it well. And when you don’t – and there were times I didn’t – it’s not pretty.

Which brings us to the end of the University of Louisville women’s basketball team's 73-72 loss at Syracuse on Sunday.

Syracuse had the ball in the closing seconds, with Louisville leading 72-71. Dyaisha Fair, one of the best offensive players in the ACC, had the ball 35 feet from the basket with less than five seconds left. Louisville had two fouls to give. Olivia Cochran of Louisville, as Fair drove, reached out to make contact to give a foul that would stop the clock and force a Syracuse inbounds play.

You see it at the end of every game when a team needs to foul. Two hands extended, maybe a semi-wrap up, and a whistle. Almost every game.

Except this time, when the whistle blew, the official raised both arms, crossed, to signal an intentional foul. And that was the game. Fair made two free throws, then Syracuse got the ball and dribbled out the clock.

The rule book is pretty clear on intentional fouls. But the game of basketball, over several decades, has been even more clear. That foul, by rule, is intentional. But unless it’s excessively rough, it’s a common foul.

This was a divergence. A game-deciding divergence. Louisville coach Jeff Walz had other words for it.

“It was a God-awful call,” Walz said. “It was terrible officiating. They should be embarrassed. But you know, I'll get my fine. I'm sure I'll get a letter of reprimand. But at this point, somebody has to start holding the officials accountable. That call was the worst call I've seen in my 29 years of coaching. If we’re going to start calling that, every foul at the end of a game when a team has to foul, it’s intentional. Every foul is. We all know it is. But to call it in a one-point game with 2.5 seconds left, it’s just awful. It's atrocious. It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing for our league. But we'll never hear anything about it because it's such a sacred society that we can't ever reprimand publicly an official, God forbid. But we'll reprimand coaches and players will be called out. But there's three people out there, God forbid, if we came out and we actually said a league made a statement that it was a blown call, a bad call. We won't do that.”

Walz wasn’t arguing that the foul wasn't given intentionally. He acknowledged that it was intentional. But as he said, decades of end-game fouls have gone by to the point where that’s how they are given. Players see them on TV growing up, they themselves are fouled, often with more contact than Cochran gave Fair, at the end of games, and it’s a common foul.

It's not the rule. It’s the selective application of the rule that Walz objected to.

“It’s bad officiating. That’s what it is,” Walz said. “Every foul at the end of the game, kids run up, they put two arms around somebody, because it’s an intentional foul. You’re trying to foul. We were trying to foul. An intentional foul, to me, is I take you out. You’re going for a layup and I undercut you. I follow through on a block and hit you across the face. Of course it’s an intentional foul – because we’re trying to foul. So every foul is an intentional foul then? At the end of the game, then, we just need to do every foul is two shots, because every one’s intentional. There was nothing done of bodily harm that would hurt somebody. She was just fouling her. But it’s OK. We should expect it. I’ve been doing it for 29 years. There’s nothing that surprises me.”

Though incensed at the end game call which didn’t’ even give his team a chance to recover – after it had led for a full 38 minutes and 19 seconds of game time – Walz also said his team was to blame for not taking advantage of chances to extend its lead late. The Cardinals led by 10 early in the third quarter and by nine with 5:38 to play, but made just two of their final nine shots from the field.

Syracuse blocked 12 Louisville shots, including three late when the Cardinals could have built on a short lead.

“We’ve got to get smarter,” Walz said. “We keep telling our kids, if there’s two 6-4 kids in there guarding you, dribble it out, don’t try to shoot through them. But we do that over and over, just begging for a foul. You know, we caused this. Hey, that call was God awful, terrible. I mean, screw job. Horrendous. Whatever you want to say, go ahead and put my name beside it. But we also put ourselves in that position. We executed a couple of times in crunch time. Did some sideline out of bounds with 5 seconds on the shot clock. Boom. (Olivia) makes a beautiful bucket. And then we can’t get a stop or a rebound. So we are at fault also. It’s just so sad that a ballgame had to end the way it ended.”

Fair finished with 29 points, including 10 in the fourth quarter, to lead Syracuse. Louisville got another outstanding performance from Nyla Harris, who finished with 22 points and 11 rebounds. Kiki Jefferson added 11 points, but also had eight turnovers. Syracuse ended up winning the rebounding battle 41-40.

Walz, after the game, told his players all that. He also told them this.

“I told them flat-out we got screwed,” Walz said. “It was a terrible call at the end of the game. Horrendous. But we did a lot of it to ourselves. . . . I just told them I thought we did some selfish things today that I hadn't seen in the past. We took some really bad shots. You know, for Kiki to turn the ball over eight times, it’s just unacceptable and she knows it. And then we have to make open shots. We miss shots. So it is what it is. I mean, golly, you’ve just got to move on. We’ve got a game now on Thursday and you're on up to Boston College to play a game. I mean, this is one where, sure, we know we didn't play great that fourth quarter, missed some shots, turned it over and took some poor shots. But it got taken from us, you know at least the chance to play it out there. They may have made a shot, but at least make them make a shot, because that was horrendous.”

Walz has not been shy in the past about speaking his mind, so this is not a new theme, though his frustration on Sunday was evident. He has served NCAA Tournament suspensions and paid fines for his comments. He’s also advocated forcefully for the women’s game.

I don’t like writing about officiating. For every call I can find that hurts a team, I can find another that helps them. For every botched end-game situation, I can find one during the game that was just as big. At the same time, the women’s game – like lower level men’s college basketball – will show you some things you have to see to believe. And end-game calls, fair or not, have the added effect of being a direct factor in the final moments of an outcome. A foul not called on a layup. A flag not thrown at the end of a game.

I would expect little to come from this call – except some kind of sanction for Walz. The letter of the rule may back the official. But many years of basketball evidence – you could make a tape with hours of the same foul being committed not being punished as intentional – say some clarity is needed.

Women’s basketball is growing in popularity and scrutiny. The officiating will have to keep up.

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