Well, not in the SIU men’s basketball 85-76 loss to No. 9 Creighton Saturday in Omaha, Neb.

The most important number wasn’t the 44-28 points in the paint, 21-17 points off turnovers and the 20-6 second-chance points, all of which the Salukis were the victor.

The game came down to something the players couldn’t dictate – the officiating.

The officiating that gave Creighton, the home team and America’s flavor of the month, a 40-to-8 free throw margin.

Oops. I mean chasm. A deep chasm like Seal’s acne pots.

SIU was outscored 30-4 at the charity stripe.

It even flushed the normally self-controlled SIU basketball head coach Bruce Weber.

“Should I go on a tirade like the Georgetown coach?” said an agitated Weber in a post-game interview with Mike Reis, referring to Georgetown basketball coach Craig Esherick’s criticisms of officiating in college basketball. “It’s there! It’s in the stats! What do I even got to say? It was 40 to 8! We got [no free throws] in the second half for 18 minutes. They were the ones pressuring us!”

Shame on Eddie Jackson, J.D. Collins, Ron Berkholtz – the officials at the Creighton game – for bringing Bruce Weber to the brink of insanity. That is like making Santa commit theft.

So, does the team being pressured to shoot receive only eight free throws while the other team gets 40 chances from the charity stripe?

Serious, today officiating is as low as the stock market and even more crooked than Kenneth Lay.

During my heyday as a glorified cheerleader (12th man) on a 1A high school basketball team, I had to watch bad calls over and over, and the officials never took one bit, not even a crumb, of accountability. So being my over-analytic self, I developed a soundproof theory about officials in general. There are exceptions but they are rare. Some even go to church, even though it won’t help them.

In the real world, the 9-to-5 world, officials are unliked and are generally car or insurance salesmen. On some rare occasions, officials might hold an upper-level job for a ref-like caddying or owning a pawnshop.

After work, no one hangs out with them at the bar and their role in life is relatively miniscule. Plus, their wife cheats on them and children hate them.

But by night their role changes. They have a whistle. They are always right; can’t admit an error. They are the dictator of a game!

Note to all officials:vertical stripes are slimming, not powerful.

What a breath of fresh air when NFL commish Paul Tagliabue will openly admit that the officiating in the NFL sucks.

And they have replay!

I sit at home and watch the replay and get the call right. Pat Summerall can depict what happened on the play and call it correctly, and he is so old that his loose skin from his forehead hangs over his eyes and obstructs his sight.

Baseball is bad as well, but nothing can seriously rival how bad college basketball officiating is.

I sat on the edge of my seat when Bobby Knight would go onto a rant and throw chairs and get so irritated with the calls that spit would literally heat-seek its way onto the officials face.

It is understandable why the man gets so pissed at interviews – he is going to lose 10-15 years of his lifespan from stupid calls. I wish I could think of a stronger word than stupid.

No, Bobby Knight was justified. Honestly, that man must have thought he was in some crazed episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

If I was Kent Williams – I’d get more girls – and, on my last game ever as a collegiate basketball player, I would blow up and go “insane.”

Within the last minute of the game I would walk up, stare at the ref and say, “I hate you!” And then I would proceed to beat him physically.

This is also justified. Williams takes a beating all the time. Do the refs do their jobs and call the foul? NO! They let Williams get illegally screened and pushed around.

However, there is no chance he would do this. Kent is a good kid who has never even been cited for a traffic violation at SIU. (Yes, I checked).

But the one-way street coming from the parking near health services tricked me during my first few weeks here and I am not so clean slated. Yet I could be forgiving.

I would cease from my ref-hating if I could see one thing:After they blow a call, if they would say, “Hey, I am wrong. Sorry. I am an idiot, my wife cheats on me and my children hate me.”

Normally I would allow the officials to make it up when Creighton comes here March 1, but I don’t think the Salukis needs their help to beat the Bluejays. They did it in every aspect of THE GAME last Saturday.

Zack Creglow is a freshman in journalism. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the Daily Egyptian.