Carol writes from the Star Tribune:
> For example, in Friday nights contest with Denver, which was a pretty clean
> game...there were 15 penalties on Minnesota and 12 penalties on Denver (all
> minors). In Saturday's rematch Minnesota received 19 penalties and Denver 16
> penalties. The Friday night game contained only SIX stretches of full-strength
> play lasting longer than one minute, with only two stretches as long as four
> minutes. On Saturday, there were eight stretches of more than a minute of
> full-strength play, but only one stretch of 4:22!!! This is ridiculous!
 
OK, let's look at the stretches of 5x5 play (ignoring 4x4 and 3x3) in the
games I mentioned before.
 
AH-MC: 10 > 1 minute, 3 > 4 minutes.  Longest 6:17.
AH-UML: 8 > 1 minute, 5 > 4 minutes.  Longest 12:04.
BC-SLU: 7 > 1 min, 5 > 4 min (2 > 10 min).  Longest 13:46.
Wis-SCSU #1: 7 > 1 min, 5 > 4 min.  Longest 12:22.
Wis-SCSU #2: 9 > 1 min, 4 > 4 min.  Longest 6:20.
NDame-USAFA #1: 11 > 1 min, 3 > 4 min.  Longest 5:24.
NDame-USAFA #2: 10 > 1 min, 6 > 4 min.  Longest ~8:00.
 
So, I simply took the full boxes for the 7 games I had available to me.
 
* All 7 had fewer penalties than either DU-Minnesota game.
* All 7 had more stretches of even play lasting for more than one minute.
* All 7 had more stretches of even play lasting for more than four minutes.
* All 7 had a longest even-up stretch time longer than that in Saturday's
    DU-Minnesota game.
 
I remain unconvinced.  Too bad the Star Tribune didn't print these numbers
too.  Maybe someone should call them up and tell them.
 
I understand you folks being concerned about what happened this weekend (and
with DU, last weekend too), but it does not seem to be a problem in the
rest of the country.  Maybe you should look for a different cause than the
NCAA this time (can't believe I'm saying this, but it does seem to be
true).  Or, have your people contact some of the other league official
supervisors and see what they are doing to prevent this from getting out
of hand.
 
 
- mike