There have been a couple of posts about whistle swallowing and in vs out of conference officials. we have a hoops team in our conference that plays what some older easterners call "Riley Ball" where the team does a lot of hacking and pushing. This has two effects 1) The officials get used to seeing that behavior during the course of the game. 2) The coach has developed a talent of complaining about the un-evenness of the foul calls. These two factors may help that team in a late game critical situation. It is interesting to watch the level of fouls decrease even though the play does not change. One evening we had a new (to us) ref who wasn't buying the "Riley Ball" plan and when the coach started griping, the ref told him, "Well, then, adjust to how i'm calling the game" and that was that. To some extent ice hockey is similar and it takes a while for the players and officials to adjust, the players to how the game is being called, and the officials to how the game is being played. charlie shub University of Colorado at Colorado Springs [log in to unmask] -or- [log in to unmask] -or- [log in to unmask] (719) 262-3492 (fax) 262-3369 http://www.cs.uccs.edu/~cdash HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.