Refs Cause Trouble for Men's Basketball

ITHACA, N.Y.—For 40 excruciatingly tense minutes on Saturday night at Newman Arena, Harvard and Cornell battled each other—and the refereeing crew.

Both squads were visibly frustrated for much of the game with the officials, who seemed to be especially quick to blow their whistles.

The referees called 24 fouls against Cornell in the 79-77 Big Red victory, the most that the Big Red has committed all year, and 23 against Harvard, its second highest total on the season. Those fouls led to a combined 75 trips to the free-throw line for both teams. Harvard stayed in the game with its 27-of-29 shooting from the line, a startling 93.1 percent, while the Big Red shot 23-of-36 from the stripe, the most makes and attempts for a Harvard opponent this year.

“It’s happened in our two losses—it’s the one common denominator,” Harvard coach Frank Sullivan said. “We couldn’t keep Yale off the free-throw line—the same thing [happened] tonight with Cornell. Both benches were frustrated by the officiating. Both benches felt that there were a lot of whistles. I think the players had a difficult time adjusting to the game, and at the end of the day I thought there might have been some calling of fouls to make it even, if you will, so it was a very frustrating game for everybody in that respect.”

Harvard has been hurt more than other teams by tight officiating, mainly because the Crimson’s two big men, crucial to the successful operation of Harvard’s offense and defense, are especially prone to foul trouble. Captain Matt Stehle and senior center Brian Cusworth both fouled out late in the second half, crippling Harvard’s chances. In addition, freshman point guard Drew Housman got slapped with several reach-in calls and had to hit the bench after picking up his fifth with 2:07 remaining, forcing senior forward Mike Beal to move from his favored position as a slashing-and-rebounding small forward back to running the offense at the point.

“We knew they liked to block shots, so our key was to get it down low, give them a pump fake and go through them,” Cornell forward Jason Hartford said of Stehle and Cusworth. “That’s what we tried doing all night, [and it] paid off down the stretch.”

Even with the three foul-outs, coach Sullivan and the players were most upset with the call that gave the ball back to Cornell with 13 seconds to play. With Beal holding the ball for junior guard Jim Goffredo in the attempt to set up a last-second isolation, Big Red guard Graham Dow stepped up to contest the transaction. The ball was knocked out of bounds, with possession being granted to Cornell.

“[Dow] got his hand on the ball as it was coming and rode [Goffredo] out of bounds, so it should have been both out on them and a foul,” Beal said. “But we knew coming in that there was going to be bad officiating. That really annoys us, to have [the game] come down to that type of play, and to have it taken away from us. But that’s something we have to fight through.”

“The official that made the call certainly did a sprint 50 yards. I thought he was running out the door he was running so fast,” Sullivan said. “Usually, when people run away from the scene of the crime like that, something’s up.”

Harvard must quickly overcome the bitterness of Saturday’s wrenching defeat if it wants to salvage its season. Next weekend, perennial Ivy League powerhouses Princeton and Penn enter Lavietes Pavilion. The Crimson will likely have to sweep both games from their rivals to stay in contention with Penn, which has yet to lose in league play.

“We can go one of two ways,” Beal said. “Either we’re going to pull together, and win out the rest of the season and win the championship, which is what we’re going to do. Or we’re going to have the type of stuff that happened [in 2002-03], where people start pointing fingers. I already see that that’s not going to happen, because we’re taking responsibility for stuff that happened wrong, and absolving each other of any guilt.”

Whether the Crimson can absolve the referees for a call that may have cost the team a chance for its first 5-1 league start since 1997 is another question entirely.

—Staff writer Caleb W. Peiffer can be reached at cpeiffer@fas.harvard.edu.