This is the time of year when we almost have been trained by sports to expect the unexpected. Like the Indiana weather, March basketball can be very unpredictable and often sends good teams home and everyone shaking their heads. Some stuff happened this past week that went next-level mad. Saturday in Michigan City, senior Kyle Mangas posted one of the best games ever in Warsaw boys basketball history, and the best statistically in Warsaw tournament history. His 47 points against East Chicago Central had only been equaled or topped three other times in a century of Warsaw basketball. He scored the first 16 Tiger points, passed his 21.5 point-per-game average in the middle of the second quarter, and set a new personal career high by the middle of the third quarter. He was ‘bad’ in the best possible way. Remember that sportsmanship thing we talked about last week? Well, in this game, if sportsmanship was a human being it would have thrown up in its mouth a little bit. Not only was the game more like a wrestling match than a basketball game, but the way the end of the second semifinal went down is going to be the subject of much discussion for a long, long time. With the Tigers and Cardinals tied at 59 with 2.8 seconds left in the second overtime. Warsaw lined up for a long pass down the court. Asher Blum threw a high pass that faded to his right. Mangas, like he did when he was a wide receiver for Phil Jensen’s football team two years ago, adjusted his route to go get the ball. Two defenders were there, and while one went for the ball the other grabbed Mangas around the waste. This is not my opinion, this is fact … and there are plenty of pictures and video of it to leave no doubt. It was a foul, and it was called a foul. Mangas calmly walked to the line and punched home points 46 and 47 and put Warsaw ahead by two. East Chicago Central failed on the final possession and Warsaw survived. East Chicago fans showered the court with water bottles and popcorn boxes and whatever was handy to show their disgust at the way the game ended. But it got worse – much worse. In his postgame interview, Cardinals Coach Pete Trgovich let loose on a tirade that had most of the Midwest buzzing and social media churning. Trgovich, who is white, claimed very clearly and without ambiguity that the reason his team lost was because the three referees working the game were white, the opposing team was white, and his team was not. He accused the IHSAA of intentionally considering the race of the officials who had been stationed at the Michigan City Regional to work the game they were playing in the last two seasons. And he just kept going on, and on, and on. It was disgusting, embarrassing, and factually incorrect. Every word he said was included in an online article by the local newspaper writer in that area, whose link to that story must have been copied and pasted onto about 5,000 social media posts in a span of three hours. It also was shared by email to IHSAA commissioner Bobby Cox. I know he saw it, because I sent it to him myself. I was pretty sure he would want to know. I was right. I heard from people at other regional sites that the IHSAA personnel stationed at those sites had been made aware of it. And the fallout that began to land on the northwest part of the state was quite predictable – Trgovic resigned Tuesday. It was the only logical outcome. Anyone who watches the game with any objectivity, either on the WHME Ch. 46 rebroadcast or on YouTube, cannot look at the way the game was officiated and think that Warsaw was the beneficiary of any help from the officials’ calls. In emotional tournament games, calls are missed more often because the emotions of the moment often overtake the 16, 17 and 18-year-old kids who are playing for their “tournament lives” and make them play with less sharpness. That leads to more tension, more frustration, more sloppy play and more missed calls. It’s hard to ref games like that, especially when it seems like one team would rather fight than defend. But like the sectional in Elkhart, so much of what happened could have been controlled, if not prevented entirely. For the second weekend in a row, items were thrown onto the court in protest of a call that went against their side. For the second weekend in a row, police rushed to the scene. For the second weekend in a row, nothing meaningful happened. The coach’s comments were just so far out of line that no one could believe they were really said. But they were. And the reporter who wrote the original story also printed the name of the officials in his article, which was slanted so hard it almost slid into Lake Michigan. I have had a lot of time to think about that part of the story, and I am torn. The names of the officials were printed in the game program, and I think they should be. They are accountable for their performance. But in this case, the author’s intention was to incite his readers, who were ready to march somewhere and do something to express their anger. That’s when the media stops covering the story and becomes part of the story, and that’s not journalism. The article was taken down, edited to delete the racial accusations, and re-posted. Of course, this is 2017 and the author also put a slow-motion video close-up of the fateful foul call. It shows the defenders arm wrapped around Mangas just like all of the others, but he points to it and says “see, where is the foul?” Where is the foul? It’s RIGHT THERE! The response: “as the ref, you can’t call that … you have to let the players decide.” The players always decide the outcome of the game. If the ECC player doesn’t grab Mangas it would have taken a miracle for him to catch it and score. That would have sent the game to a third overtime. If no foul is called there, Mangas is prevented from his right to catch the ball and score, and thus, the officials determine the outcome of the game by not calling what was clearly a foul. And as for the racial aspect of it, fans from that section of Indiana were quite pleased and not surprised by the fact that Warsaw lost in the night game against Merrillville. Why? Not because the Pirates were the better team, but because of James Payne. Who? James Payne. The lead referee in the championship game. An African-American. They have been telling me on social media that Warsaw lost because an African American ref was working the game. Let me just say that Mr. Payne has officiated Warsaw’s games before, home and away, and I think he is a fine official who earned the right to be the lead official in a big game like that and he did a pretty good job. Nothing that happened in the game would lead you to believe anything else. It was a really well-played, intense game and the officiating was up to the task. So when people suggest that race must have played a part in the semifinal game but ‘justice’ was served in the night game, it has unintended consequence. See, if you play that out – that Warsaw couldn’t win that game because of the color of an official who worked the game – it says two things: • Merrillville couldn’t beat Warsaw if all three officials were white. • James Payne is more interested in helping teams whose roster is made of up primarily of African-American players than doing a fair job for all of the players. Neither of those things are true ... not even close, and they are offensive to James, to Warsaw and to reality. The IHSAA made a phone call to East Chicago Monday, and they will be paying a visit there next week. And sportsmanship loses … again.
