Bruce Pearl: Officiating mistakes are ‘part of the game’

Auburn coach Bruce Pearl continues to refuse to make any excuses about what happened late on in Auburn’s crushing 63-62 loss to Virginia in the Final Four.

Despite the fact that Virginia’s Ty Jerome got away with a double dribble in the seconds leading up to Samir Doughty’s foul, Pearl said Auburn needs to “get over it” as officiating errors are “part of the game.”

“The biggest point I want to make, and I’m sincere in this, I’m not just saying this because it’s politically the right thing to say. There is human error involved in the game. Kids make mistakes, coaches make mistakes. Yes, officials will make mistakes. That’s part of the game. Get over it,” Pearl said on ESPN’s Get Up!.

“Sometimes they’re going to go your way, sometimes they’re not going to go your way. Are we going to give God less glory because we lost and … only because we win? Stop. Grow up, this is part of the game. These kids taught us, I think, in many, many ways how to handle defeat. And that’s a difficult thing to do for these young kids. And I’m proud of them.”

Pearl is correct, and the reality is that you can nitpick any number of calls. Would Jerome have committed the double dribble if Bryce Brown wasn’t trying to foul him, which also went uncalled? Probably not.