Tennessee basketball: Vols errors brought out referee Anthony Jordan controversy

Tennessee basketball made numerous errors in its loss to the LSU Tigers on Saturday, which made the referee Anthony Jordan scandal relevant.

The controversy is out there and blatant. Tennessee basketball’s 82-80 road loss to the LSU Tigers had a referee, Anthony Jordan, who is from Louisiana and took a picture of himself with an LSU shirt in 2014 and posted it on Facebook saying “Geaux Tigers.”

Following that, Jordan was the culprit of lots of controversial calls in the game. While the other two officials combined to make 42 foul calls, Jordan made 44 on his own, and 29 of them were on the Vols. That includes the final call on the other side of the court that set up LSU’s game winning free throws to win.

Then you have the fact that the refs didn’t check to add the proper amount of time on the clock after those free throws and three blatantly missed fouls on Grant Williams under the basket, and it’s understandable why Rick Barnes reached out to the SEC about the issue. It’s also understandable, as it came out, why the SEC reprimanded Jordan.

Here’s the thing, though: all of this was made by the Vols’ mistakes. If Tennessee basketball doesn’t mess up a few fundamental things, none of this would have mattered, and they still would have won the game.

Anthony Jordan is not the reason that Lamonte Turner tried to push the ball with the game tied late and forced a three-pointer with seconds left in overtime, resulting in the play that resulted in the late foul call, instead of calling timeout and holding for the last shot. He’s also not the reason that Turner, one of the team’s best shooters, missed two technical free throws in regulation.

If Turner hits one of those free throws, the game is over in regulation. In overtime, all this controversy is forgotten if he does not make the ridiculous decision to force up a three-pointer at that moment.

It’s also worth noting that UT had a major advantage in this game without Tremont Waters playing for the Tigers. That combined with the early start, which favored the Vols since LSU was on Central Time Zone, should have been enough for them to pull out a close win anyway.

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Simply put, there are too many things that happened in this game in which the blame falls squarely on the Vols for losing. However, at the same time, it is also true that Jordan was horrendous in the game and deserves every bit of blame he gets for the officiating. So here comes the real question.

Did Tennessee basketball do itself and the SEC a favor with its critical mistakes on Saturday? Again, those mistakes put the blame on the Vols, not the refs, for losing. But it did expose Jordan and show the gross mistakes made by the refs and the horrible look it was for the league. So maybe they served a purpose.

The Vols are better off long-term exposing this now then in another situation, maybe the SEC or NCAA Tournament. I’ve never been on the train that you should never blame officials for a loss. However, I’ve also never been on the train of blaming officials for a loss when your team had multiple advantages in a game and made multiple mistakes.

Both things are true from last Saturday’s game. The officials made some serious judgment errors. But the Vols still had every opportunity to win the game. By not taking advantage of them, though, they allowed the officials and Jordan to be put on blast. That’s a crazy way to think about how this ended up, but it could serve the SEC well in the future.