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Show Mike Newlin starts toward his second thousand career points against Wyoming. He has accumulated 1,011 points so far. Officials again? Changes needed in rules BY TOM WHARTON Sports Writer Knocking basketball officials has been equated in the past with burning the American flag, ad vocating sex education classes and drawing mustaches on Spiro Agnow posters. So, before I criticize the officiating, offi-ciating, let me say that I'm a non-communist who loves his mother, apple pie and the American Am-erican way. The officiating in the Western Athletic Conference, as observed by sports announced Paul James, is different than the officiating in the east. According to James, WAC officials offi-cials call many more fouls and infractions in-fractions which tend to make the games less exciting. I agree. Officials called players to the charity stripe so many times in the Utah - New Mexico game that the Telerama that was being held in the Salt Palace was upstaged. Officials seemed to call fouls so close that the players were afraid to move. And then, in the obvious ease of a flagrant foul when Mike Newlin and a New Mexico player began to fight, case all together. I'm not advocating a free for all on the' basketball floor. All I'm saying is that, although a small bit of contact is technically technic-ally a foul, some slight contact should be ignored. Field goal shooting and not free throw shooting should determine de-termine who wins a basketball game and when 59 fouls are called in a game, as they were makes one want to go to a hockey hock-ey game where the action seldom sel-dom stops. Two things should be done to alleviate the foul problem in basketball. bas-ketball. One thing would be to adopt Olympic rules which give the team who is fouled the ball out of bounds until the bonus rule goes into effect. The second, and this would be the hardest to comply with, is a plea to the referees to only call the obvious fouls. By obvious foul, we mean a foul that can be seen and a foul which hinders the action. Too many fouls are called on players who just accidentally brush against each other. When this happens, the fans become bored and tempers on the court become short. Something should be done when 59 fouls or more are called call-ed in a single game. |