Big 12 Basketball: Social media reacts to refs favoring Baylor

On the afternoon of March 19, the first Big 12 basketball team competed in the Round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament to start off a key weekend slate for the conference. Head coach Scott Drew and the one-seed Baylor Bears faced first-year head coach Hubert Davis and the eight-seed North Carolina Tar Heels on March 19 to determine the first team in the NCAA Tournament that would move on to the Sweet 16.

But this looked to be anything but an easy matchup to get through for both teams, and the refs. The storyline that unfortunately took hold for this Round of 32 matchup on March 19 between UNC and Baylor was how the refs handled things, namely in the second half.

An absolute social media firestorm took hold down the stretch in this game as Davis and the Tar Heels tried to fend off a second-half comeback from Baylor.

And it was a fair point for Tar Heels fans to be upset with how the distribution of the foul calls went down the stretch. To round out the second half, there was a point where UNC had nearly a dozen fouls in a row called on them. That included a vital technical foul call on big man Armando Bacot that helped Baylor rally in the second half.

Big 12 basketball Twitter lights up due to the reffing in UNC’s win over Baylor

Even the Longhorns SB Nation page (Burnt Orange Nation) jumped into the conversation in social media in the midst of this second-half rally from Baylor. But they brought up a valid point that the Tar Heels just didn’t do a good job of hitting the free throws when they were given the opportunity.

Baylor shot roughly seven percent better from the charity stripe than UNC in this game, which was a contributing factor to the Bears’ second-half rally.

Nonetheless, something is usually up with the refs when there are this many sides chiming in on social media. Most other fan bases seemingly sided with UNC in this conversation, but that is still just speculation.

There were obviously still some Baylor fans that felt some type of way about some calls against them down the stretch and in overtime.

Despite what many college hoops fans felt were some bad calls against the Tar Heels in this game, Davis was able to rally his side to come out with the clutch overtime win over Baylor by the final score of 93-86. UNC closed out Baylor in overtime after coughing up what was a double-digit lead coming out of the locker room after halftime.

UNC will now move onto face either the four-seed UCLA Bruins or the five-seed St. Mary’s Gaels in the Sweet 16 in the East Region. There is also still the possibility of the Tar Heels facing the Texas Longhorns or Purdue Boilermakers to decide the East Region in the NCAA Tournament.