Anyone else starting to sense a pattern here? Another Western U.S. Visitor rolled into MacEwan Gym last weekend, only to get bowled over by the Energy, who went 7–1 in their eight-game homestand.

 

If you’ve been coming to the games, you’ll notice another piece to this pattern. The opposition has been, well, a little bit modest in terms of its personnel. Bellingham made the trip to Edmonton without Ryan Diggs; Snohomish sent an undersized roster in for its weekend series and absent from the Oregon Waves was the injured David Lucas and point guard God Shammgod, who missed out on an Edmonton visit for the second time in as many years.

 

That’s not to diminish the wins that the Energy are racking up. The players that show up on the other side of the bench are out of the Energy’s hands. And to their credit, they’re handling the opposition accordingly, winning their games at home by an average of 23.4 points per game.

 

 

I got an oddly-timed email from Energy season-ticket holder Jim Jennings before Friday’s game, complaining about the refs’ performance over the last four weeks.

 

 

 

 

Then, sure enough in last Friday’s game, Scruggs picked up another technical foul. You’ll remember that last week I wrote about Johnny Hardwick’s bizarre tech in the Snohomish series. It was a strange call but the ref was right in whistling the big man for the T.


Scruggs’ tech, though...I don’t know. Like Mr. Jennings said in the email, Scruggs may be the most mild-mannered member of the team. The emotion he shows on the court—reacting to missed shots or calls that go against him—are from what I’ve seen over the last two seasons, inward reactions.

 

Scruggs was whistled for his tech in the third quarter of Friday’s game when he reacted to a foul call against him that he didn’t like. The reaction was a disgusted-looking clap of his hands, from the top of his head down to his hips. Throw in a pivot away from the ref who made the call, and it was enough for the ref on the opposite side of the court to call the T.

 

A ref can call a technical for being shown up by a player, and the ref who whistled Scruggs for the foul explained to Paul Sir on the sidelines that it was the full motion of the clap that drew the whistle. A strange call, for sure and one that at least in my mind, was worth letting slide.


Brace yourself for this next sentence, because I never thought I’d write it, but...

 

I agreed with the refs’ technical foul on Andrew Parker for hanging on the rim against Snohomish. That’s the only hanging-on-the-rim technical I’ve seen called in the Chill/Energy run and if you’re going to call one, that’s the one I’d pick. The refs have turned a blind eye to a lot of rim hanging over the last two seasons. But you can’t hang onto the rim and blow a kiss to the crowd after you dunk it. You just can’t. They let that slide and I actually am covering NBA Jam. A line had to be drawn somewhere.

 

The refs have caught some flack during the first eight home games of the season, from fans and the players/coaches on the court. But you can ask any basketball fan from any part of the world, watching any level of basketball being played and they’ll tell you why the refs they’re watching are the worst in the world. And it’s no different on the court. I’ve heard harsh criticism of the refs from both benches in the last month. At the same time, after their win over the Energy on May 16, Bellingham assistant coach Mike Elsner told me the Edmonton ref crew was the best he’d seen all season.

 

The crew we’ve seen over the last month, which consists of six refs that rotate game-by-game every weekend, has had its good and bad moments. For the most part, I have no major issues with how they’ve called games in the IBL. If anything, I’d like to see them bring some of the lenience they’ve shown in the IBL back to the CIS games they’ll work this fall.