Thirty-seven personal fouls were called Saturday in the Morehead State vs. Eastern women’s basketball game, as well as one technical foul on Eastern head coach Brady Sallee.

According to the Eastern fans, and possibly the Eastern players and coaches, some of the fouls were questionable at best.

The dead ball fouls, pushing and holding, were fouls that you do not see being called a lot. So it seemed the officials in Saturday’s game were a little whistle happy.

Morehead State was in the double bonus, meaning Eastern had committed at least 10 fouls, relatively early in the second half; at least earlier than you are used to seeing.

Sure, maybe some of the fouls were justified. It was a physical game. In a physical game, there are usually a lot of fouls.

But I believe Denzel Washington once said in a football movie, “Let the boys play!” In this case, we are talking about women playing basketball.

In both cases, it seemed the referees were calling too many fouls.

Morehead State and Eastern are arguably two of the best teams in the Ohio Valley Conference.

There was a lot of talent on the court Saturday night, so the referees should have let the players play a little bit more, instead of putting four of seven Morehead State players in foul trouble and five of seven Eastern players in the same situation.

Nine of 14 players that played Saturday committed three or more fouls (the limit is five, then the player fouls out of the game).

“There were a lot of calls out there that we did not agree with, but we understand how tough it is to be a ref,” sophomore guard Ta’Kenya Nixon said.

There were a lot of fouls a lot of the Eastern faithful did not agree with, so Nixon is right, but it is tough to play with foul trouble too.

Morehead State was 16-of-21 from the free throw line. Eastern only attempted 12 free throws.

In the second half, Sallee was called for a technical, clearly upset at some of the fouls that were being called. He was on fire.

Everyone was upset. Even some of the fouls that were being called on Morehead State were questionable and upset the Morehead State bench.

My hope is that the next time these two teams play, the referee crew on that game will let that talent of both teams go at each other.

Calling too many fouls takes away from the game. It makes the game a free throw contest instead of a five-on-five battle.

Do not get me wrong, it was a heart-wrenching game, but Morehead State won the game at the free throw line because more calls went their way.

As Nixon said, Eastern did not agree with the calls.

Alex McNamee can be reached at 581-7944 or admcnamee@eiu.edu.