14? Was he in a legal guarding position?’ He didn’t leave any stone unturned in analyzing the play. 22? Do you think he may have not been vertical? And what about No. He went through the different defenders and said, ‘What did you see with this defender, No. And it was just the way he approached it with me. “The RA (restricted area) came into play and I looked at it several times before Bobby called me because it was a game-deciding play. “It was a play to the rim late in the game and it was a game-deciding call,” Hall said. Veteran official David Hall has been the recipient of the Dibler Treatment and it’s an experience he recalls fondly. They get taken to an illuminating classroom. Officials don’t get taken to the woodshed under his direction. So much wisdom and knowledge intertwined with compassion is stored inside Dibler’s head that to sit with him while reviewing questionable calls is to be enlightened without being intimidated. Included in his spectacular resume are three Final Four assignments, including the 1982 and ’85 championship games. First testing the waters of officiating at the age of 25 in 1968 at the high school level, Dibler would work more than 1,000 college games - including more than 50 NCAA tournament assignments - from 1973-93. Just how much is the integrity of college basketball officiating in the western region of the United States being maintained under the comprehensive yet compassionate watch of Dibler? Where does one start? He played under the legendary Don Haskins at Texas Western (now Texas at El Paso), graduating a year before the Miners’ historic 72-65 victory against Adolph Rupp’s all-white Kentucky team in the 1966 NCAA championship game. Everything he does, there’s a passion that’s unmatchable, really.” He cares about the coaches he answers to and he cares about the administrations he answers to. “He cares about the guys who are working for him. “Everything he does, he’s passionate about,” said Randy McCall, who has been an NCAA Division I official for 25 years.
Retire? Why in the world would Dibler even think about that when he’s as beloved and accomplished as he is in his role of a supreme mover-and-shaker in men’s college basketball? And well into his 70s, he has continued his life’s work as coordinator of officials for the Mountain West, Pac-12, Western Athletic, Big West, West Coast and Big Sky conferences. He would watch his surviving children - son Rob and daughters Kellie and Carrie - live fulfilled lives that would have made their mother proud. He would marry Mary “Missy” Haywood, herself widowed, a little more than nine years after those horrific early morning hours in El Paso sent his life into a free-fall. Indeed, Dibler is here and he’s feeling as vital as ever. “I was ready if he thought it was the time, but I know that he felt I had more work to do in this life and, for that reason, I’m still here and healthy.” “A continuing healthy diet was not going on and, in my faith, I was very much waiting for the good Lord to call me home,” Dibler said recently in his first public comments about this horrific event. Instead, he was making arrangements for her final resting place. How in God’s name could any sense be made of his beloved wife, Carroll, and 20-year-old daughter, Kristin, being murdered before his very eyes during the early morning hours of June 11, 2000, by Kristin’s former boyfriend in the Diblers’ den? The next day, Dibler was supposed to be celebrating Carroll’s 56th birthday. Existing on a diet of canned green beans and whatever else he could get his stomach to hold down, a gaunt and faded Dibler searched for answers that were simply nowhere to be found. And that’s how I learned the game.”Ī man who had crashed and burned emotionally in the aftermath of experiencing one of the most devastating life events imaginable routinely would stand in an El Paso, Texas, desert. “I can remember getting some railroad spike-type nails and pounding the rim up on a telephone pole that was near the railroad yard. “Our local mailman knew I liked basketball and, one day, he brought me a basketball rim,” said Dibler, who is still blazing a trail in that sport as coordinator of officials for several West Coast conferences at the age of 75. Never mind he was shooting into a rim without a backboard on a dirt court next to a railroad yard with only the sound of occasional passing freight trains. Figuratively stepping into the shoes of Sihugo Green, an All-American from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh during the mid-1950s, Bobby Dibler won countless imaginary games with last-second shots. A boy with hoop dreams, the scope of which he could never have comprehended would one day come to fruition during those halcyon days of his youth in North Bessemer, Pa., would crank up shots during all hours of the day.
0 kommentar(er)
