Doug Sirmons was in the game as one of the refs, and he’s the biggest “look at me” ref in D1 men’s right now. #1 by far.
Yes, I’ve been reffing in games where the foul count is lopsided (for whatever reason) and to get the game back to reality, you don’t go looking for fouls but rather you look for what is illegal vs. legal. In my opinion, the 1st half was called pretty well because they were just letting them play; however, when you decide to just let them play, it will inevitably bring out frustrations by one or more players because they fully believe they are getting fouled and you’re not calling it. The longer this goes, the more the game escalates and you as the ref have to get ahold of the game because that’s your job. The best way to do that? Call more fouls, which then goes against what you allowed the 1st half.
My issue with the Florida folks on this board (and to an extent the Texas people) is there’s never a “hey, the other team was called for a foul and yeah we get to shoot FTs, but that really wasn’t a foul. We got away with that” from those fans. Florida fans were bitching here when it was a quick 5-0 foul count in the 2nd half but when Houston got called for nearly 11 straight fouls, it was crickets.
The above is also one of the reasons I retired early from officiating. One of my pet peeves with co-officials was the inability to admit you were wrong. Instead, too many refs tried to justify why they were correct. Absolutely hated that.