The first foul he tried to take a charge on a baseline drive. Not really a smart play. A 7'0" center is not in there to attempt to get position for a charge by a driving player on the baseline. It was a borderline call but didn't look like his feet were set.
I called Brimah's foul trouble in this game in another thread. Okafor is a smart player and has clever moves and it was easy to see he was going to be a difficult guard. He also gets the ball deep in scoring position and when that happens it is basically you foul or let him score.
Brimah needs to get a lot stronger and needs to start playing better positional basketball. He simply is not ready to play top flight opponents. He got 40 against a horrible team on a bunch of lob passes and uncontested dunks with basically no defense being played on him. The bigger stronger teams that body him and push him out of his spots will defend him with ease, and on the other end they will force him to foul because he is easily pushed off his spots. He is forced to foul when he surrenders position. Okafor and other stronger players get the ball deep against Brimah, and it is all over. He has to get stronger and smarter. He plays a lot like Chuck Okwandu who was actually stronger than Brimah. Okwandu was one of the most foul prone centers UConn has ever had, but by his 4th year he became a serviceable backup and critical component on the 2011 championship team. Earlier in his career, Okwandu was fouling out in 8 minutes of action. It is easy to whine about the refs like you guys do, but this is happening EVERY GAME so it isn't the refs when you see it happen again and again and again. Brimah has to be smarter and not let the refs make a call and he can do that by playing better positionally, and not letting guys get the ball in spots where all he can do is foul to stop them from scoring.
This post was edited on 12/20 10:03 AM by KhalidShockedTheWorld