Sorry, and I am going to be blunt about this, but that attitude you are displaying is that of a loser, not a winner. Control what you can control. I guarantee you if you got each of the players to truly open up about the game they would all say "the officiating was frustrating and not good honestly, but in the end, we played like absolute crap on offense for a quarter of the game and couldn't string anything together. We also could have grabbed one more of those rebounds late that gave Ohio State extra possessions in which they scored on."
But go ahead and keep blaming the officials only for this loss. I will counter with what you said about Ohio State not playing that well either. You're right, they didn't, but then that's even more of an indictment on our guys. We were the more talented and better team, and probably beat them 7 or 8 times out of 10. So the fact Ohio State played pretty meh other than Wesson is even more frustrating we still lost. Had you told me we held them to 62 before the game, I would have said we win that game by at least 5 or 6. Control what you can control. I am out.
I never said that the officials were the ONLY reason we lost. I have stated several times that ISU played poorly. I wanted our team to play better, I yelled at them as much as I yelled at the refs. But, my attitude is that officials CAN have as much to do with a team losing a game as the team itself. Not that the officials are the only reason we lost. Get off your official soapbox long enough to see what I'm actually saying.
If two teams play like crap, then the one that scores more points should win, not the one that is given an advantage by bad officiating. I'll argue that the officials made some mistakes that killed any momentum we were gaining at certain points and allowed OSU to keep a slim lead that changed the way both teams played the game. You don't know what would happen (neither do I for that matter), but what if, by some miracle Lard (or someone else) would have gotten a thunderous rebound dunk on the possession where they called Shayok out on the end line (incorrectly) or Hali would have had ANOTHER break away dunk when he STOLE the ball with his HAND. Is it possible taking the lead at that point might sway the whole game? Might it give a boost to an ISU team that was lagging, get them excited, give them hope?
GRANTED a GREAT team does not need any of that, I'm sure, because they don't need emotion to play. They don't need any encouragement to overcome things and don't let little things like blown calls affect them. Unfortunately we weren't a great team and we simply weren't that tough.