IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — He may have been angry, but the Big Ten Conference said Wednesday that Iowa coach Tom Davis was not out of line when he talked about the officiating in the Hawkeyes’ loss to Michigan State last week.
Davis was irate after his team’s 69-67 loss to the Spartans at East Lansing on Feb. 12 and talked with reporters for 37 seconds in which he disagreed with three calls in the closing moments of the game. The loss dropped Iowa, which started the conference season 5-0, to 16-8 overall, 7-5 in the Big Ten.
“After listening to the audio tape of the post-game interview session and reviewing related print stories written about the game, we have determined that coach Davis’ comments did not constitute undue criticism of the game officials,” Kevin Weiberg, associate commissioner of the league, said in a statement.
Weiberg said a “press account from a Detroit newspaper” quoted Davis as saying the game was “taken from us.”
“We have determined that this quotation was incorrectly attributed to coach Davis and was not part of his post-game comments,” Weiberg said.
Weiberg said it is appropriate for a coach to be able to say they disagree with certain calls by officials, but he said they cannot delve into “characterizations of officiating decisions that call into question the integrity of the game officials.”