When North Carolina’s Brady Manek fired an elbow into the face of Baylor’s Jeremy Sochan with 10:08 left in an NCAA Tournament second-round game Sunday, it sent the officiating crew working the game to the replay monitor with a big decision to make. Eject a key player from an elimination game, or assign a lesser penalty and play on?
Ultimately, the crew of Donnie Eppley, Kipp Kissinger and Brent Hampton made the right call: It was a flagrant 2 foul and Manek had to go. The strange part is everything that happened thereafter.
The game dissolved into a street fight, with Baylor implementing an extremely physical full-court press that reduced a 25-point deficit to a manageable number in shockingly rapid time.