Kevin Ollie got ejected in UConn’s loss to No. 18 Louisville on Saturday night, and while it’s hard to justify a coach getting tossed in a game that his team still has a chance to win, it’s hard to criticize Ollie for being upset about the call.
I just don’t see a way that Blackshear did not foul Giffey. Blackshear didn’t go straight up in the air, meaning that while Giffey leaned into him a bit, Blackshear broke verticality, not Giffey. If you want to argue that the foul was on the floor or that Giffey embellished the contact, that’s fine. You may be right.
But there’s no way that you can say there wasn’t contact. And if there was contact, it’s a foul.
That’s only half the issue, however.
Mike Stuart, the ref that threw Ollie out, needs to be more patient. Ollie’s team is losing at home in a game that would drop them three games out of first place in the conference. He was on the wrong end of a blown call. His reaction, streaking down the sidelines to challenge the ref, merited a tech regardless of why he was reacting that way. But to ring him up a second time and throw him out of the game was too much.