Connor McCaffery tweeted after the game that “all 3 refs should be embarrassed to continue falling for this (expletive) … do something about it @bigten — comical at this point.”
At least McCaffery was smart enough to delete his tweet. Or someone at Iowa was smart enough to instruct him to do so.
The same can’t be said for Iowa sixth-year senior guard Jordan Bohannon, who was bickering with a reporter who covers UW (not me) on Twitter the day after the Hawkeyes’ loss to the Badgers. Bohannon thought it was laughable that the reporter compared the Patrick McCaffery foul on Davison to a controversial foul call on D’Mitrik Trice against Bohannon that led to three critical points late in the host Hawkeyes’ 77-73 victory over UW in the 2020-21 regular-season finale.
From there, Bohannon dropped a bomb: “From the Big Ten head of officials, Brad Davidson (sic) has been a ‘Marked Guy in the league’ for the past three years.”
More than a week later, that post is still there to see for Bohannon’s 31,000-plus followers. And for Rick Boyages, the Big Ten vice president of men’s basketball and coordinator of men’s basketball officials, to see.
The two questions I immediately had after seeing Bohannon’s tweet: Is Boyages really telling people at Iowa, or elsewhere in the Big Ten, that Davison is a “marked guy in the league?” Because if that’s the case, it’s wholly inappropriate and something Warren needs to address.
The Big Ten denied Friday morning that Boyages had said that to Bohannon or anyone at Iowa.
So if those words didn’t come out of Boyages’ mouth, then why was Bohannon not suspended or publicly reprimanded for making that claim?
Either scenario damages the integrity of the Big Ten. When the conference suspended Davison in 2020, it cited the Big Ten Sportsmanship Policy, which in part states in its second sentence that “the Big Ten Conference expects all contests involving a member institution to be conducted without compromise to any fundamental element of sportsmanship. Such fundamental elements include integrity of the competition, civility toward all, and respect, particularly toward opponents and officials.”
Seems to me Connor McCaffery and Bohannon weren’t being all that civil with Davison or the three officials — Kelly Pfeifer, Don Daily and Brian Dorsey — who worked that game.
The same policy later states that while it “will apply most commonly to actions that occur within or around the competitive arena, the scope of its application is intentionally left unrestricted in order to accommodate any behavior, which may occur in any setting, deemed by the Commissioner to offend the underlying objective this policy seeks to achieve.”
