Rick Pitino wants NCAA coach’s challenge rule to include foul calls

Rick Pitino wants the NCAA to change the coach’s challenge rule to include foul calls next year.

In Saturday’s win over Xavier, star forward Zuby Ejiofor fouled out.

The St. John’s coach believes the officials missed several of those calls after watching the film.

“Look at four of the five fouls on Zuby, I will say he didn’t touch [the other player] four of the five times,” Pitino said Tuesday. “So not only are the referees not only doing a good job of look, here is your best player, the MVP of the league, incidental contact of any player, great player or not, you shouldn’t be calling. But he didn’t touch him four out of the five fouls. The game before, he got two fouls, and he didn’t touch the player.”

This is the first year that college coaches are able to make challenges involving out-of-bounds calls, goaltending, basket interference and restricted area plays at any point.

Teams must have a timeout available to challenge, and a successful challenge retains the timeout and allows a second, final challenge.

But that doesn’t include fouls.

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“The foul call [being challenged] needs to be put into basketball. Zuby the other night, he would still be in the game. Fortunately for us, we have Ruben Prey,” Pitino said.

He later added: “It’s not just us. As I watch the league. It’s two things, it’s referees calling out of their area. If it’s a baseline call, it’s the referee on the baseline that has the best look. The second thing is it’s incidental contact that gets them in trouble. Stop calling incidental contact.”

Starting guard Oziyah Sellers has attempted only five shots in each of the past two games and has failed to crack double figures in the past three contests.

Pitino is imploring Sellers, the team’s top 3-point shooter, to be more aggressive.

“Oziyah needs to rub up next to Joson [Sanon], because Joson has never met a shot he didn’t like,” Pitino said. “Oziyah passed up about five open jumpers in the last game. That’s just his personality. I’ve done everything but plead with him to take open shots, and he’s just not getting it done.

“He has open shots, he’s not taking them. He doesn’t recognize daylight. You come off a screen and you have to recognize daylight from where the defense is trailing you, and he’s not doing that.”