Game 9 - Florida State @ Mercer - Nov. 21, 2009

Tony Greene worked his 9th game of the 2009-2010 basketball season this afternoon in Macon, GA. The ACC's Florida State Seminoles traveled to Macon to play the Mercer Bears of the Atlantic Sun Conference. There was an obvious talent differential in this game, with Florida State just being much larger, much faster, and much more talented than Mercer.

ITGOTT couldn't find a betting line on the Mercer-Florida State game anywhere, so a review of Tony Greene's officiating in that light is sort of pointless.

However, there were two officiating trends that ITGOTT noticed, both of which are possible strategies used by an official "on the take."

If The Team You Are Helping Has Bigger Players, Let The Game Be More Physical

This was certainly the case today, as Florida State was just MUCH larger than Mercer. Early on, the play was very, very physical, and Florida State was blocking shot after Mercer shot inside the three-point arc. Pretty quickly, a 6-4 Mercer lead turned into a 21-7 Florida State advantage, and the Seminoles had a commanding lead early. In addition, the physical play allowed by the officials seemed to rattle Mercer, and they were unable to hit many shots at all; the TV commentators repeatedly claimed that "the size of Florida State is intimidating." Had the play been called tight, for example, early on, clearly Mercer would have been favored, but this was not the case.

If You Are Favoring A Heavy Road Favorite, Don't Let The Home Team's Fans Get Into The Game And Motivate Their Team

Mercer has a history of upsetting major conference teams, and this was perhaps their most obvious chance to do that in recent memory. An NCAA-tournament team in Florida State comes to Mercer's little on-campus gym on Homecoming weekend... the game had been sold out for a while... just a LITTLE run by the Mercer Bears could have resulted in a flood of emotion from the partisan crowd. Instead, there was no emotion at all from the crowd, and the Florida State rout was on. Florida State eventually won 89-50.