As he nears the end of his seventh season with questions about his job security looming, Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner has begun publicly sharing that pressure with ACC officials calling his team’s games.
Monday, on the ACC teleconference, Pastner and other coaches were asked for their thoughts about mechanisms for media to be able to question the league’s referees after games to explain disputed calls.
“The pressure should be on officials to get almost everything right,” Pastner said. “Yeah, there’s going to be human error, but just like the coaches and like the players – they’re held to a standard that they’ve got to almost get everything right – I think officials have to be held to that standard, too.”
Pastner went on to say that officials need to be accorded respect. At his news conference Tuesday in advance of the Yellow Jackets’ Wednesday home game against Virginia Tech, he recognized the difficulty of their task and praised Bryan Kersey, the conference’s supervisor of officials for men’s basketball. But it didn’t stop him from continuing to offer his thoughts about officiating.
Asked about Tech being last in the ACC in free-throw differential in league games – the Jackets are minus-101, the widest disparity positive or negative – Pastner said that “it’s very hard for me to understand. I’m not saying anything about the officials whatsoever, it’s just hard for me to understand. Whether it’s us – are we not driving enough? I do agree there’s times where we foul and officials have made the right calls.”
He then brought up rule 10.1.4 in the NCAA rulebook that states that a defender keeping a hand or forearm on a player with the ball constitutes a foul. Pastner said that he even yells out the code “10-1-4!” during games when he believes that a foul should be called against Tech opponents.
“I think that’s the thing to be looked at the most – are we getting enough 10.1.4 (calls) our way when we’re driving to the rim?” he said. “I don’t know. You can agree to disagree.”
It can be reasonably assumed that he didn’t bring it up because he thought the Jackets were getting a fair shake with the rule. In years past, Pastner has been reluctant to be critical of officiating, often praising the quality of the officials calling Tech’s games and acknowledging the difficulty of the job. In games, also, he has been loathe to protest calls that go against the Jackets, and he has often been seen smiling as he made his case with referees.
Whether it’s the frustration of the Jackets’ recent nine-game losing streak or the growing possibility that his job is on the line, Pastner has been more animated in his dealings with officials and less reserved in his comments about them. After the 71-70 loss at Wake Forest on Saturday, when the Demon Deacons took 24 free throws to Tech’s eight, he said without prompting that he was not going to comment on the officiating because of an e-mail that the league’s coaches and athletic directors had received from ACC commissioner Jim Phillips directing them to refrain from commenting on the officiating. He referred back to the e-mail three more times, his unspoken commentary quite clear.
Pastner’s heightened state is understandable. As he makes the case to demonstrate that his team is making progress, a win against Wake Forest Saturday – a road win against a team competing for an NCAA Tournament berth – would have been compelling evidence. But the Jackets came up one point short in a game where the winning team took 16 more free throws than the losing team and in which a few questionable calls late in the game went in favor of Wake Forest.
Monday, as he recommended that officials should bear the same pressure “to get almost everything right” that players and coaches do, he spoke of how grateful he is to be able to coach in the ACC, and also of the influence that college basketball officials have in making 50/50 calls.
Their calls, he said, can “change fortunes, can change players, can change coaches, can change programs.” It didn’t take a mind reader to know at least one coach and program he was making reference to.
Should Tech finish last in free-throw differential in the conference, the Jackets will have done so for the second year in a row. That standing can be looked at in at least two different ways. The disparity could be the result of the Jackets’ deficiencies both in having the size and offensive skill to draw fouls on offense and the quickness and size on defense to avoid fouling. Pastner did acknowledge that his team needs to defend better without fouling. Or, it is evidence of repeated short straws that Tech has drawn that have played a role in the Jackets being 7-28 in ACC play in the past two seasons.
Either way, it has put Tech and Pastner in a place where questions about his future have run rampant and that he addressed Tuesday. Pastner professed his love for Tech, saying he was in awe of the institute and that he hoped to be here for the next 25 years or as long as athletic director J Batt and school President Ángel Cabrera permit him to continue.
“I know this season we haven’t had the results we all want to have and our guys are fighting like crazy to get as many wins as we can and all we can focus on is that,” he said. “And in the end, obviously, Mr. Batt and President Cabrera are the bosses. But, we want to win games and we had a chance there (against Wake Forest) and those things can be gut-wrenching when you lose a game like that. There’s no question it’s gut-wrenching, but you’ve got to pick yourself up and get ready to go on Wednesday and keep fighting and trying to get some wins and do the best you can.”
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