Tim Peterson
By Tim Peterson
Rants and raves for this holiday season.
I got out to see some high school basketball this past week. And you thought football officials were bad?
Note to CIF basketball referees. If you hear somebody berate you and use profanity but you don’t know where it’s coming from don’t immediately hit the team with a technical that is in the vicinity. This is exactly what happened at the Temple City-Norco game Tuesday night.
With less than a minute left in the game and the score tied, a Norco player drove the lane and was fouled. The call could have gone either way but the official blew the whistle. Temple City Head Coach Eric Chin got up to complain as boos erupted from the crowd. Chin stated his case and it began to quiet down. As the official began to walk away a fan sitting directly behind the Temple City bench yelled that the call was “brutal” and emphasized his point with a well placed F-bomb to describe brutal. The referee turned and pointed towards the TC bench and said emphatically “Technical on the bench!”
Chin and assistant Rich Hollinger now were back on the court arguing that the outburst didn’t come from the bench. Despite their protests the official insisted that it was a bench technical. Chin, in his frustration got hit with another technical and when Hollinger didn’t immediately leave the floor he got hit with a third.
Both free throws for the original foul were good and with the three technical fouls resulting in six more Norco ran off eight straight points from the charity stripe. Yeah, it was charity all right.
A 62-62 game was now 70-62 Norco with 32 seconds left. Merry Christmas Norco! Here’s an early gift. The Rams had erased a 14 point deficit in the fourth quarter but that all disappeared on one play.
It appeared he knew he botched it when he hightailed it out of the gym as soon as the clock hit zeroes.
What if it was a Norco fan sitting behind the TC bench to sabotage the Rams? That could be a strategy for all teams going forward. Have one of your own people sit behind the opposing team’s bench and sound off on questionable calls. Bingo…instant points.
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Every time we post a football coach being hired is all of the negative feedback really necessary? What could possibly be negative about Margarito Beltran going to Bell Gardens? Believe me, our readers found plenty of things. I say great hire BG! Let’s just congratulate the Lancers and move on.
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You know there are too many College Football Bowl games when only 21,000 (announced) show up show up to the Poinsettia Bowl and 14,000 at the Hawaii Bowl. The number of bowl games needs to be revisited.
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Can anybody beat Golden State? Maybe we can have a Lakers fan in disguise sit behind the Warriors bench.
Happy Holidays!
That’s my principle.
Tim can be reached at tim@midvalleysports.com or on Twitter @tspeterson40.
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