‘We’re not going to be perfect’: Referee explains calls against Mizzou in 2012 KU game

Gerry Pollard, Mike Whitehead and Brent Meaux sat still in the referee’s dressing room at Allen Fieldhouse.

Their ears were ringing, heart rates still lowering back down to normal in the aftermath of what seemed like the last chapter between Missouri and Kansas men’s basketball on Feb. 25, 2012. They sat there in their zebra stripes for half an hour trying to decompress and process what had just unfolded.

“It was such a high energy, crazy atmosphere that we just couldn’t hurry up, get dressed and get out of there,” Pollard recalled on a recent phone call with The Star. “Because it was just one of those types of games.”

The wild affair in Lawrence saw Kansas rally from an 19-point deficit for a 87-86 overtime victory in what many thought would be the last regular season game played between the two rivals. They resumed the Border War Dec. 11 in Lawrence, starting a six-game series as KU won 102-65.

Mizzou players, coaches and fans still vehemently disagree with a lot of the calls the trio made late in the 2012 contest. The same can be said for the Kansas side in regards to the first of the two games played between the Big 12 teams that season on Feb. 4, in which the Jayhawks were called for two charging fouls in the final minutes.

Did the wrong team win on both days? Kansas coach Bill Self seems to think so.

“We should have won at their place and the reality is they should have beat us at our place,” Self said nearly a decade later.

When Pollard saw he was assigned to the matchup, he was really excited. This was a bucket list game for him since he started officiating the Big 12 in 1996. He had refereed renditions of the rivalry before, but this magnitude was different. In addition to the impending conference realignment, Mizzou was ranked No. 3 in the country and Kansas was No. 4; they were in a tight race for the conference regular season title too.

“I was also thinking, man, that’s going to be a hard game,” Pollard said. “Which it ended up being.”

Whitehead, who later went on to serve as an officiating coordinator for SEC men’s basketball, was the crew’s lead official. Meaux rounded out the trio, though he wasn’t as well-versed.

“It was kind of a learning experience for Brett Meaux, because he wasn’t exposed to that level of game a lot at his stage of his career,” Pollard said.

Missouri was in complete control in the first half and early parts of the second as it built a 19-point lead and hushed the home crowd. But then Kansas flipped the script, holding the Tigers without a field goal for seven minutes to narrow their lead to one.

The Jayhawks eventually tied the score, 75-75, on an and-one bucket from forward Thomas Robinson with 16.1 seconds left. Frank Haith, the Tigers’ coach, questioned the foul called against Michael Dixon Jr. there, but a decision from the officials seconds later remains the most widely disputed.

Mizzou guard Phil Pressey worked his way from the Jayhawk logo past Kansas’ Elijah Johnson on the left side and drove into the paint. That’s when Robinson came over for help defense. As Pressey rose up, switched hands and soared towards the basket with the game clock winding down, Robinson leaped with him and swatted the ball away. Pressey went crashing to the floor in the process.

There was no whistle, the play ruled a clean block on the spot. The building erupted. Overtime would decide the 267th meeting between the two programs.

Robinson (after the game): “I think I had my eyes closed, to be honest with you.”

Self: “A big time play from a big-time player.”

Haith: “That was a tough one. To this day, that was tough, tough play.”

Matt Pressey (MU guard): “I mean, when you see the pictures or you see the frames and the videos, it’s like, I mean, come on. If you line 100 people up, you’re gonna get I feel 75-80% (in Missouri’s favor).”

Barry Hinson (KU assistant): “That’s one we refer to as an Allen Fieldhouse block.”

Jarrett Sutton (MU guard): “To me, it’s a foul. It will always be a foul. I’ll go to my grave with that.”

Most everyone interviewed by The Star acknowledged that the home court played a factor in a call that could have gone either way, much like the charge calls when in the Tigers’ favor at Mizzou Arena.

Pollard didn’t elaborate much on the officiating crew’s decision in his interview with The Star, but he did say that “there was a lot of contact with Robinson coming down.”

Mizzou guard Kim English, now the head coach at George Mason, didn’t agree with the call, but looking back he’s more frustrated about what he didn’t do. The way he sees it, if he had done one thing, the whole situation could have been avoided.

“I remember if I would’ve cut, I would have had a layup and I would’ve had a game winning dunk at Phog Allen if I just would’ve cut,” English said, the play still fresh in his mind all these years later. “Because I know Phil would have saw me and dumped it off.

“So it’s kind of hard to watch, because Thomas was my man. I was kind of just, I stayed in the corner cause usually Phil kicks that ball out to me for three, but Thomas fully committed, like he should have, to stop the play. I should’ve cut right behind him and I would’ve had a ridiculous play to end my career. I would’ve had a game winning dunk at Phog Allen Fieldhouse if I just would’ve cut.”

Though that sequence is often the one debated between opposing KU-MU fans to this day, there’s one call that stands out more in Pollard’s mind.

Missouri was up 86-85 in overtime when Kansas guard Tyshawn Taylor used his length and athleticism to leap down the court in just a few steps. Mizzou guard Phil Pressey was called for his fifth foul on the driving layup with 8.3 seconds left, forcing him to retire to the bench for the remainder of the heated affair.

“That’s a case of where you’re not alert of getting back defensively and you’re vulnerable to picking up a cheap one,” CBS announcer Clark Kellogg said on the air at the time. “Not a lot of contact there.”

Looking back on the game now, English says it was “another bogus call.”

Even Taylor, who went on to sink both shots at the charity stripe to win the game and secure the Jayhawks at least a share of the Big 12 regular season title, thinks it could have gone either way.

“It might have been a ticky tack foul,” Taylor said. “I think he fouled me but early in the game it might have been no call. Sometimes late in the game it’s no call. They called it.”

Pollard admits: “That’s just one of those plays that we as an officiating crew put a whistle on and I think if you sat with us all three today, we probably wish we wouldn’t have on that particular play.”

Both of the calls involving Pressey were a topic of discussion for the officiating crew following the final buzzer. Though that’s typical, Pollard said. He explained that after each game they look at the tape and break down the calls they made in an effort to improve. The officiating coordinator for the conference talks with them about the way they went about certain missed calls as well, and Pollard personally likes to do individual study after that too.

“You just take those three or four plays that you feel like are stuck in your mind that you want to go back and take a look at — and I mentioned two of them,” Pollard said, referencing the two calls discussed above. “And you go and you look at those things and you break them down and you go from there. You don’t treat that game any differently or anything else. It’s just about seeing plays and getting in right position and using your experience and your judgment in making the decision and moving on.”

Pollard said he thought the crew “did a really, really good job,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean all of the calls they made were right.

“We’re not going to be perfect,” Pollard said. “Matter of fact, if we get 93% of our calls, right in a game like that, we’re going to be rated really, really, really high. And, you know, we can pick and choose a call about every game. And that’s kind of what people did in that game.”

English wasn’t ready to let it go either. The senior decided to make a statement by wearing an SEC T-shirt as he held up the Big 12 Tournament trophy outside of the Sprint (now T-Mobile) Center after Missouri defeated Baylor in the title game in Kansas City two weeks later.

“It was just kind of a shot at the Big 12,” English explained. “It felt like they took a championship from us.”

That was one of the last visuals of Missouri basketball in the Big 12.

The Jayhawks and Tigers meet once again on Saturday, this time as nonconference foes. Perhaps those calls that have hung stale in the air while the rivalry remained in limbo will be recycled with controversies of new.

This story was originally published December 9, 2021 at 10:06 AM.

Lila Bromberg

The Kansas City Star

Lila Bromberg covers the Missouri Tigers for the Kansas City Star. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland and was ranked as the best college sports reporter in the country by the Associated Press Sports Editors in 2021. In addition to covering the Terrapins for four years, Bromberg has worked for Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports and USA TODAY Sports.