The one thing I will say (this isn't to put a damper on the game, it's just this game does speak to possibly a bigger and broader issue of how the playoffs work as is)...
If the OHSAA thinks 6-man crews for 224 games statewide is useful, yeah right. Both teams have reasonable complaints IMO on the officiating. It is what it is, you roll with it, yeah, and it didn't ultimately matter in this game, but this was not a shining example of why these games are on 6-man crews. This is not necessarily a personal criticism of the crew, but it was very apparent this was not an ideal fitting.
This game should've been a five man crew. The Field Judge position looks more and more like a hindrance when you don't have the high-level crew, and in this case it looked like a mess.
Phantom PI call on Trimble (this play happened in front of me and I still cannot figure out where the PI even got called on Trimble), followed up by an inexcusably awful MISSED PI call later on (and they screwed that one up bad, that play in question is textbook PI and one can't help but wonder if both the BJ & FJ either weren't paying attention or if they somehow thought 'uncatchable' was in the NFHS book.) HL not paying attention to action on the field half of the time. LJ was solid as was R and U, tho.
These refs know more about the rules than us schmucks on the internet, yes. Individually they may be fine refs, but this was not a crew that tied well-together. I realize that's baked into the playoffs, sure, but what is the point of having that ubiquity of refs (1 x 224) if you're just drawing down the number of guys who have more experience on responsibilities across the different 5 positions. I'd rather this have been a 5 man crew for simplicity sake. I understand that the OHSAA does eventually want to do 7-man, which is not a bad idea in that you can get better differentiation of responsibility across the 5 +2, but 6 isn't the answer. And 7-man shouldn't be until the later rounds, JMO.
