Girls’ basketball coach facing punishment for racially charged criticism of officiating

Africentric celebrates a 70-66 overtime win over Anna in the Division III championship game at the OHSAA state basketball tournament at the Jerome Schottenstein Center in Columbus on Saturday, March 17, 2012.

Credit: Barbara Perenic

Credit: Barbara Perenic

Africentric celebrates a 70-66 overtime win over Anna in the Division III championship game at the OHSAA state basketball tournament at the Jerome Schottenstein Center in Columbus on Saturday, March 17, 2012.

Columbus Africentric beat Mount Blanchard Riverdale 85-46 in a Division III regional semifinal Wednesday night, but that was not news.

The Nubians are the defending state champions, having claimed their fifth title in 10 years last spring.

They are a perennial power in girls’ basketball.

The bigger story came from postgame interviews when Africentric coach William McKinney had harsh criticism for the officials.

In explaining why his team went to a stall in the second quarter, he said (via The Findlay Courier):

"Because the calls were so bad and the calls were so terrible, we had to play like that, not because we game-plan (for that) against the other team; we have to do that to take the officials out of the game. They scored 25 points in the first half; 14 of them came from the free-throw line." 

Not only that, he saw a racial component to the way the game was called.

"It was just a terribly officiated basketball game, and it's unfortunate because us being an African-American team, the officials call the game totally different when it's a game and it's all white teams. That's just the bottom line.

I went and scouted the game at Ohio Northern (Archbold versus Liberty-Benton in Tuesday's regional semifinal), and they let those young ladies play. It was a great game. But with us, it's like five on eight. We've got to do a better job of getting good officials to officiate better games"

The Courier reported Thursday that McKinney is facing a potential suspension for his comments, and an OHSAA spokesperson confirmed sanctions are coming.

The Nubians, ranked fourth in the state, are set to play No. 2 Archbold on Saturday in a regional final.

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