[More Cowbell]

This game seemed to be a tale of two halves as far as the officiating goes. In the first half, the refs seemed to blow a whistle every time down the floor, with lots of fouls against both teams. I think Pikeville had two players with 3 fouls at the break, and Valley had one, while each team had several more with 2 personals. Pikeville also lived at the foul line, shooting 20 free throws in the first half. Basically, the tight officiating kept the game from getting into any kind of a flow, and gave the advantage to Pikeville.

Then in the second half, it was just the opposite. Perhaps trying to prevent each team from having multiple players foul out, the refs decided to swallow the whistle and let the game go. This played more into SV's hands, but they probably allowed a little too much contact, as it sounded like things got pretty heated in the second half. Hard fouls, flared tempers, technicals, and objects being thrown on the court were the end result.

I guess I just wanted to make two points:

1) The officating tonight seemed very poor. From one extreme to the other, the refs couldn't make up their mind how the game was going to be called.

2) This game just proves that how a game is called really can affect the outcome. An extremely tight whistle really takes a lot of the bite out of SV's pressure defense, and could give another 15th region team a chance to knock off the Wildcats. Conversely, a loosely called game allows SV to take chances on defense while being aggressive on offense, and will most likely end up as a Valley win against most teams across the state.