Date: Fri 15-Mar-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: TOMW

Illustration: I

Quick Words:

Column-Referees-Newtown

Full Text:

Held Up At Whistlepoint/Column

After a close, big-game loss, society's conditioned response is to look for

scapegoats and rationalizations. The floor was dirty. The rims were bent. The

referees stunk.

Those are the kinds of things you hear after a big-game basketball loss.

On Monday night, Newtown travelled to a neutral (?) court, Naugatuck, to take

on Torrington in the quarterfinals of the CIAC Class L State Tournament. When

they got there the floor was dirty, the rims were bent, and the referees

stunk. And not just because Newtown lost.

It was the kind of game where if you had won, you wiped your brow and breathed

a sigh of relief. If you lost - as did the Indians - you experienced a

finality, an emptiness, a shocked feeling of utter disbelief.

When Newtown lost the South-West Conference Championship game to Kolbe

Cathedral back on March 1, there were no excuses. There was no finger

pointing. No complaining. The better team won the game and everybody knew it.

Newtown's only regret was that it didn't play well enough to pull off the

upset. Newtown's state tournament loss, though, the one that ended the year,

didn't end with the same kinds of feelings.

This game wasn't a simple matter of the best team wins. It was more a survival

of the fittest. It was a matter of which team could best overcome the

obstacles of outside influence; namely the dirty floors, bent rims, and

god-awful officiating. It was those three factors that determined who'd play

for a chance to go the state championship.

The floors, though they had been swept numerous times during the course of the

evening, were covered with such filth that the usual squeaking sound of

sneakers was replaced by the sound of a Mr Bojangles soft-shoe. Bodies flew to

the floor all night, due to the lack of traction, and the dust-covered

basketball was fumbled and bobbled about as though it were greased.

According the man in charge of the gymnasium floor, " It was the Newtown fans

and cheerleaders who brought the dirt in. "

Apparently the Torrington fans - and the Bullard Havens and Kennedy fans,

players, and coaches, who played the night's preliminary game - all checked

their shoes at the door.

Nevermind the fact that the two teams who won their quarterfinal games that

night (Kennedy and Torrington) are members of the Naugatuck Valley League and

play in the Naugatuck gymnasium at least once every season. The gym simply

wasn't fit to house a game of that magnitude.

Both rims were soft and loose and the one on the gym's far end was actually

bent to the point where the front was probably a full inch too low.

Who picked this gym?

Probably the same guy who hired the talking magpies, Heckle and Jeckle, to

officiate the contest.

Heckle, who cavorted around as though he were under the spotlight, seemed to

think that he was Bob Dylan and his whistle a harmonica.

Jeckle, who made one call all night and had it waived off, apparently just

forgot to turn his on.

The night's officiating would have rated a D-minus for any basketball game at

any level, but for a state quarterfinal it was purely a travesty.

A phantom third-foul call on NHS guard Mike Czaplicke forced the senior to sit

out the entire second quarter.

Newtown senior Mike Storms - the team's best rebounder - was strapped with his

third foul, a touch foul, at the halftime buzzer and was assessed his fifth on

an even worse call, fouling him out with more than five minutes left in the

basketball game.

And the final haymaker came with 32 seconds left and Newtown down by four,

when Heckle called Andrew Gellert with a push foul that led to a pair of free

throws and a six-point Torrington advantage.

Gellert, who had been standing stationary for so long on the play that a thin

layer of dust from the floor had actually settled on his shoulders, was bowled

over in what was an obvious offensive foul.

It had all come crashing down at that point.

The better team may still have won the basketball game. We'll never know. The

1996 CIAC Class L State Quarterfinal should have been played in a decent

gymnasium and officiated by competent officials. Instead, it was decided by

outside factors.

It's not an example of crying sour grapes.

It's more like obtaining the grapes and feeling the point of a pistol in the

small of your back as your mouth waters to eat one.

Newtown was robbed; held up . . . at whistle point.