Fouls the main topic after Marquette-Seton Hall Big East Tournament game

Tom Gatto

Fouls the main topic after Marquette-Seton Hall Big East Tournament game image

The stats tell the big story of Seton Hall's 81-79 victory over Marquette in the Big East Tournament semifinals. They lay out a gory tale:

Three ejections.

Nine technical fouls.

Fifty-seven total fouls.

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Eighty-five free throws.

Tensions were so high during and after the game (including in the handshake line) that both schools took the rare step of keeping their locker rooms closed to reporters after the contest. Only the coaches and Seton Hall leading scorer Myles Powell spoke to the media.

Officials James Breeding, Tim Clark and Tim Clougherty doled out the fouls in a regulation game that took two hours and 50 minutes to play. They also had to deal with a second-half scuffle that resulted in Marquette players Sacar Anim and Theo John and Seton Hall player Sandro Mamukelashvili being tossed.

The rationale for the ejections is laid out at the 3-minute mark of the video below:

Powell thought he was ejected, too. He even ran into the tunnel at Madison Square Garden. He was summoned back after Breeding told the teams that Powell was still in the game. Confusion over the nature of a first-half foul caused the mixup.

Breeding addressed the situation with a pool reporter postgame:

Marquette coach Steve Wojciechowski "bit his tongue" when he was asked about the referees' work (per Matt Norlander of CBSSports.com).

"I don't judge officials. That's for you guys to decide," he said.

Wojciechowski also said he had "never had anything like that happen in a basketball game before. It's unexplainable. Unexplainable."

The conference had not released a statement as of early Saturday.

Tom Gatto

Tom Gatto Photo

Tom Gatto joined The Sporting News as a senior editor in 2000 after 12 years at The Herald-News in Passaic, N.J., where he served in a variety of roles including sports editor, and a brief spell at APBNews.com in New York, where he worked as a syndication editor. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of South Carolina.