Th L.A. Times had a story on the situation and included this bit from Coach Wooden:
“I would have jerked [Morris] out of the game immediately,” legendary former UCLA coach John Wooden said Monday. “And after the game he’d have heard about it.
“You do have to keep in mind that these are kids and they are going to get over-excited at times and are still not completely mature. But that is no excuse for what happened.”
No excuses. Contrary to what my friend Peter in washington things, John Wooden is God. If he says there is no excuses, Peter…I’m sorry bro…but there are no excuses.
Here is what Washington Coach Lorenzo Romar had to say about the situation:
“It was a chaotic situation,” Romar said. “Tim told me after the game he just wanted to make sure the ball went off the UCLA player so we kept possession. I know Tim. He’s not that kind of player.”
Regardless, it doesn’t look like Morris is gonna get into any trouble:
On Monday, that judgment was refuted by Hank Nichols, the NCAA’s national coordinator of men’s basketball officials, and Bill McCabe, supervisor of basketball officials for the Pac-10, who both said officials had the option of calling a technical foul on Morris for committing an unsporting act.
“If you thought the kid did it on purpose, it would be considered an unsporting act,” Nichols said. “It’s a hard judgment to make. I’ve seen that play happen but not very often.
“It usually happens when a guy jumps, but it didn’t look like the UCLA guy jumped. But, yes, a technical could have been assessed against Washington.”
McCabe agreed that a technical foul could have been called, but he otherwise disagreed with Nichols’ assessment of what happened. He blamed the outcome on Aboya.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that Aboya jumped in front of the ball,” McCabe said Monday afternoon. “There’s no doubt in my mind that Aboya caused the contact.”
Dohn had more from McCabe:
“We’ve got the count on, and Aboya goes straight up, and he goes pretty high, and he comes straight back down and just as (Morris) is starting to in-bounds the ball, he jumps to the right and takes one in the face,” McCabe said. “If it’s intentional, it’s a technical foul. That’s unsporting. We don’t want that. We don’t want people bouncing the ball off people’s faces.”
McCabe said he spoke with the officials from the game, including Mark Reischling, who was responsible for the sideline.
“I think (Reischling) was caught off guard a little bit,” McCabe said. “It surprises you at that point. His first thought was, ‘That wasn’t intentional. He was trying to get rid of the ball on the five second count.’ That’s how he read the play. Right or wrong, that’s how he read the play.
“Mark just said, ‘I didn’t feel it was intentional.’ “
Unintentional my ass. I was able to get an exclusive angle and you can totally tell from the look on his face that it was intentional:
I don’t think you need any more evidence than that…
Here is the video if y’all haven’t seen it:
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