We get all kinds of e-mail here at Hoop Time.

Some of it is kind, like this message from Dave of Manassas, Va.:

I love your blog. keep up the good work.

Others are less complimentary.

Take this message, which came from someone who felt the need to hide behind a vulgar pseudonym who filled out the feedback form like this: City: You are State: dumb Zip: moron.

Not sure why that person felt the need to hide its identity. The actual message of the e-mail, which pointed out an error in one of our posts, read like this:

"They need to win here, and again Saturday at Holy Cross, just to hold on to the No. 2 seed. They lose any ties because of 157 RPI."

Completely wrong. They only need to win 1. Do you pay attention to anything YOU write or just point out when other people, like Andre Williams, are wrong? Instead of criticizing others maybe you ought to check your own fatcs moron.

Have to admit, it does take a little of the sting out of being called a moron when they spell an easy word wrong in the message.

Spelling aside, though, that message, like the handful of more courteous one making the same point, was correct. In previewing the Lehigh at Bucknell game, we did confuse the issue. What it should have said was Lehigh needed to win both, and get help from Army, to claim the No. 1 seed. A win in either game, at Bucknell or at HC, would indeed give the Mountain Hawks the No. 2 seed.

They might also have pointed out that the Lehigh-Holy Cross game is Sunday, not Saturday.

Bottom line remains, Lehigh is in a must-win situation. Although the loss to Bucknell actually boosted Lehigh's RPI significantly, the Mountain Hawks remain at 147, 17 spots behind Holy Cross. Maybe one of the math whizs out there who knows how to tweak these formulas could let us know the specifics, but we are guessing that if Lehigh had played at least one Division 1 game instead. Remember, the road is your friend in the RPI.

David from Chantilly Va. writes:

Something needs to be said on your blog about the poor league officiating this season. Yeah, I am a Lehigh alum, but I have seen American and Bucknell games called just as poorly. It is terrible. If you watched the Lehigh v. Bucknell game on Wednesday and did not think that it was one of the most poorly called games in history, then you are blind. It was a complete travesty for the league, the game, and the two schools. You have to say something about this...it is such crap.

Since when have we hesitated to comment on the officials?

Actually though David, if you think this season is an anomaly, or that Lehigh v. Bucknell was really "one of the most poorly called games in history", then you have a very limited history of Patriot League basketball. This has never been a well officiated league.

Nobody would argue the Lehigh-Bucknell game was whistled flawlessly. But "one of the most poorly called games in history"? There were some bad calls, some glaringly bad, but it was nowhere near the worst we have ever seen. The worst cases are when the officiating is so inconsistent and uneven that it effects the outcome of the game..

That was not the case in the Lehigh-Bucknell game. In that game, what happened is what seems to happen all the time. In the first half, the officials let the two teams play, in the second half they tightened up. If anything, that benefited Lehigh by keeping Bucknell off the foul line in the first half.

But despite our complaints about Rich Giallella, who seems to violate the most sacred commandment of officiating (Thou shalt not be noticed) every time we see him, the game was pretty evenly whistled.

Lehigh fans will forever complain about Badmus fouling Neptune, arguing, incorrectly that there should have been a flagrant foul call (while never mentioning the no= call on the Neptune reach-in at midcourt that precipitated the play). Bucknell fans were equally outraged when Olivero grabbed Badmus at midcourt, negating what would have been a Charles Lee breakaway (yes it was intentional, but no, it never gets called and thus should not have been called there).

There is an argument that the previous schedule setup, with Friday and Sunday league games, allowed the league to get a better pool of officials because it was not competing with other conferences (aside, primarily from the Ivy League) for their services. But both coaches and observers around the league lamented that many nights those higher level officials seemed to be there just to pick up a quick paycheck.

Certainly there is little evidence that the officiating was any better last season than this season.

Bottom line, between the Patriot League's lower per game paycheck, the inconveniences of travel to many of its campuses and the paucity of legitimate TV games (the refs have egos, too, just like the players), this is not a conference that will get the top officials for most of its games.

Think the officiating is bad in the men's games, watch the women's games sometime. There, the pool of officials seems to be even younger and less experienced.