Well, at least Matt Howard
By Jimmy Lemke
I was taking a look at Butler’s numbers over the first couple weeks of the season, and I noticed how much Matt Howard has been hampered by fouls. When your best player has that kind of trouble, it often spells doom for you. Instead, the Bulldogs have only lost twice, to Minnesota and Clemson this past week.
Howard’s foul problems aren’t a surprise to me. I’m a Milwaukee fan after all, and like most Wright State, Cleve
land State, Valparaiso, and Detroit fans, I believe that the Bulldogs, and more specifically Howard, get preferential treatment from Horizon League officials. Hell, the Klotsche Krazies have a catchy tune to go along with it, titled “The Butler Flop” (t-shirts coming).
Howard digging in for the long haul
So, I’ve decided to put it to the test. Howard’s junior year is only six games in, but that’s a healthy non-conference chunk. How do Howard’s fouls with Horizon League officials stack up versus games with other conference crews?
Well, in six games this season, Howard has fouled less than four times only once. The Davidson game tallied three fouls for No. 54, yet it wasn’t a Horizon League crew. Since then? The only game Howard HASN’T fouled out of was yesterday’s heartbreaker against Clemson, in which he had four.
How has he been in past years non-conference? I’m interested only in games that didn’t feature Horizon League ref crews, but will list them all and separate conference crew-reffed games. Let’s take a look at them by season:
2008-09: 3, 3, 0, 1, 3, 4, 3, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5. The games that featured Horizon League officials? You guessed it: 0, 1, and 2. Those games, against D-II IU-South Bend, Northwestern, and Florida Gulf Coast each featured Horizon League officiating.
2007-08: 1, 4, 5, 3, 5, 5, 3, 4, 3, 2, 2, 5. That first game was officiated by Lamar Simpson and Mike Sanzere, both common Horizon League referees. I’m not familiar with Glenn Mayborg, but that might be because he does his job that well. After all, the best referees are the ones you don’t notice. Maybe Bruce Benedict should take heed on that one. The two games where he only had two fouls were not called by Horizon League officials, which bucks the trend somewhat.
Seems to me like Horizon League refs give Howard the benefit of the doubt in most situations. Does that mean he never gets called in conference games? Absolutely not; after all, this isn’t the NBA, we play real basketball.
As far as fouling out is concerned, there is no contest. Despite playing 40 Horizon League games to 32 non-conference games over the past two seasons and six games so far in 2009-10, Howard has fouled out 10 times in non-conference match-ups compared to only four times in Horizon League games.
Nobody is paying off the referees. Nobody has a gun to their head. I don’t believe that the Horizon League is telling referees to favor the flagship program. That’s just ridiculous.
But you can’t deny the numbers. Matt Howard’s early season foul troubles aren’t the exception to the rule, but far from it.
