Higgins

[shoxlax]

In case anyone was wondering, he has done six of our games this year.

I know he has a good reputation, but frankly I don't like the way his crews call our games. Do they pair him with weak partners?

Anyway here is his stats:

http://statsheet.com/mcb/referees/john-higgins

[pinstripers]

my KSU friends on facebook WENT OFF last night when they saw he was going to be working that game

[SubGod22]

He has no say in who his partners will be. And every crew is only as good as the weakest link. And he is not the weakest link in any of our games.

[newshock1234]

Why dont they work the same crew like they do in football?

[SubGod22]

Honestly, I think you learn more and become a better official working with lots of different people. Plus, conferences can check out new/young officials by putting them with more veteran guys. And working with the same two people all the time could potentially make people too comfortable. Then there's always the it's easier to schedule one official to avoid certain teams (if there are issues) than to remove an entire crew. And then what happens if there's an injury or something? If you only use crews, you're calling up someone who hasn't worked at all to fill in that spot as opposed to calling one of your officials to replace a guy on a particular game. And then maybe someone else on the next and so on.

I'd never even thought about using crews in basketball as nobody I know does that at any level. Outside of maybe MAYB or something.

[im4wsu]

Wasn't Higgins the official that was involves in both occurrances of the double foul calls in the block/charge situations, with Higgins having the charge call against the Shockers in each instance. I'm not certain I'd ever seen that situation occur, and to have it occur twice within about a month and involve the same official makes me wonder just a bit.

[SubGod22]

I don't recall which two officials were involved in the first blarge call. He was involved on the second one and the replay shows that his call was correct. But as I said when discussed in the game thread, I can see why the other official called it the other way. From his POV, it probably looked like White was set. But Higgins had a better angle and could see White still sliding.

I never did see good angles on the first one involving Cotton. There were a lot of bodies in the lane and never saw a clean shot of that one.

[shoxlax]

Here is some more fodder for all of us conspiracy theorists: Higgins is from Omaha.

If you look at the stats, Higgins and his minions call more fouls in our games on average than the rest of the league. Not by much (three or four more fouls per game) but still a statistical difference.

Now how that is relevant to anything, I have no idea. But I thought it was interesting.

[110%]

Higgins being from Omaha just means he is from Omaha. The guy likes to ref and makes a pretty good second income from it. He isnt going to jeopardize that and I really dont think he will play the favorites game. As far as why he may get as many of our games as he does is probably his location, Wichita is an easy drive and he likes working here. He likes the crowd and he likes the arena.

[110%]

Maybe the reason there are a few more fouls called is because our Shockers get after it on defense which will lead to some calls. A few more fouls is worth seeing our guys lock down another team.

[pinstripers]

Higgins is a jackass

[110%]

I wouldnt say a jackass...more like confident just like HCGM

[im4wsu]

Higgins and crew have reffed (or effed, if you prefer) 6 Shocker games this year. They have called 105 fouls on WSU and 94 on opponents (52.8%).

The refs who worked with him have reffed 12 WSU games with other partners. They had whistled WSU 223 times and the opponents only 187 times (54.4%)

Refs other than Higgins and the refs Higgins was paired with for WSU games, have appeared 46 times (61.3%) and called 815 fouls on WSU and 878 on opponents (48.1%)

In games (11 games, 33 appearances) where neither Higgins nor any of his partners in WSU games have worked, the calls have been 402 against WSU and 446 against opponents (47.4%)

Sample size is admittedly small, but the trend seems to be there that Higgins and those he has been partnered with for WSU games call a significantly higher percentage of fouls on WSU (53.8%) than all other referees (47.4%). If scoring were distributed in the same distribution, this would equate to 6.4 points per game.

[SubGod22]

Based on those percentages, the guys who work with Higgins call fewer fould (based on percentage) against WSU when working with Higgins and more when they work without him. So you could argue that Higgins has a positive effect (for WSU) when he works with those guys and that if he were replaced with someone else, the percentage against WSU would go up.

Am I reading your numbers correctly?

[im4wsu]

Based on those percentages, the guys who work with Higgins call fewer fould (based on percentage) against WSU when working with Higgins and more when they work without him. So you could argue that Higgins has a positive effect (for WSU) when he works with those guys and that if he were replaced with someone else, the percentage against WSU would go up.

Am I reading your numbers correctly?

That's what it looks like to me,too.

Hall worked one game with Stuart and Janssen where the fouls were 24-14. Removing that one game (three times) reduces the 223-187 to 151-145. Janssen also worked another game where the fould were 20-12. He might be the bigger culprit. His game with Higgins was 13-19, fwiw.