Jay Williams calls out national championship officials for calling second half like 'a ballet'

You don’t want to come out of a game as good as this year’s national championship was discussing the officiating. However, with the discrepancy between how the two halves were called, it’s something worth noting in how the game played out from start to finish.

Following the 65-63 win for Florida over Houston in San Antonio, Jay Williams took to Twitter on the point about the amount of fouls called. He, like many watching last night, didn’t appreciate how the referees allowed them to play in the first half but then called it much tighter in the second.

“You can’t call the 1st half like a UFC fight & call the 2nd like it’s a ballet. Shoutout to Florida for best adjusting to the 2nd half…but this game was horribly officiated,” Williams tweeted. “Only 4 fouls total were called in the first half. 25 fouls were called in the 2nd. If you set the tone for how the game is officiated then keep it that way the whole game.”

Williams then made similar points this morning while on ‘Get Up’. He was just frustrated, as a former player on behalf of the ones on the court last night, that there didn’t appear to be consistency in the whistle from one half to the next.

“Yeah, I mean, first off, shoutout to Florida for adjusting, right. Like, I don’t want to take any credit away from them because they did the best job and they attacked. But, as a player, if you’re going to allow me to be physical in the first half, that’s the standard for how I think the game is going to be officiated. And, I can be aggressive. They weren’t calling any fouls in the first half. To all of a sudden just flip that from a UFC battle to a ballet recital? C’mon, man,” said Williams. “I mean, how am I supposed to find any rhythm in the game if, all of a sudden now, in the first half I’ve been able to put an arm bar on you and now in the second half I can’t touch you, now I have to pat you when come down the court? To me, I just want there to be consistency.

“Look, you could make the case, yeah, they just called more fouls. But there were a lot of fouls in the first half that weren’t called. They set the standard by being physical and that was not the case throughout the course of the game – and that’s what bothers me as a former player.”

The discrepancy was obvious between the twenty minutes coming out of halftime. Four fouls were called in the first half before 26 were called for in the second, including five immediately on the Gators in just over the two and a half minutes coming out of the break that resulted in a controversial technical foul on their bench. Add in a no-call on a pretty clear goal tend, which ended up making a difference in a two-point margin, and the outing ended up earning criticism for the officials before it was over with.

All in all, the title game was a great one to finish off the 2025 NCAA Tournament with a dozen-point comeback giving us a contest over the final twelve minutes of play. Many, including Williams, just wished they’d been allowed to play a little bit more down the stretch like they’d been allowed to to start off.