The voice of Sportsfan radio's Mike Baca has been telling a tale of wild inconsistency from Washington, as the Chico State men's basketball team opened up to an 11-point lead over Central Washington in the Tarp It Wildcat Classic (Central Washington calls itself the Wildcats also), then broke out in a turnover rash and ran into foul trouble. Chico State now trails 50-42 at halftime despite (or because of, depending on how you look at it) shooting 15-of-23 from the field, 5-of-8 from beyond the 3-point line and 7-of-8 from the free throw line. Darroll Phillips has 14 points and Frank Igbekoyi put up eight points in 12 minutes.

But the good stat sheet-filling ends there for Chico State. Mike Martin picked up three fouls in just seven minutes; Ryan Smith did the same in just three minutes. From the sound of this one (coach Puck Smith has picked up a technical), it doesn't sound like all the blame can be placed on lack of defensive rotation or hustle.

Baca alluded to it a little, but Central Washington is a Great Northwest Athletic Conference team, and this is a home, nonconference tourney for them. You can be sure that the GNAC didn't just randomly pick up some bozo refs to do the officiating at this thing, and while I'm not saying that the games are fixed by any means, they certainly aren't any different than any other conference-hosted game. Chico State's own California Collegiate Athletic Association has refs it calls on to do its games, especially the nonconference ones, because a conference looks better when it wins. Yeah, it reeks a little bit, but that's the way it is.

No, Tim Donaghy, you can't place a bet.

But the inside game Puck Smith always longs for hasn't been attempted much on Chico State's side of the floor, while Central Washington is going at the Wildcats trying to get fouls and continues to draw them — Martin just picked up his fourth foul on a missed Central dunk attempt and what sounded like a homer foul (since Baca shouted "Holy cow, the Wildcats are getting homered, they could have just saved us the trip").

There's now a chance for a Central three-point play as Rod Hawkins picked up his third foul; Chico State has fallen behind by 14. I'm getting a little tired of hearing that whistle.