Looks like we could be heading to a Zapruder film kind of moment from the Marquette-Pitt game. The Dominic James injury seems to be generating some controversy. Not the foul by Levance Fields. The bump or shove from Antonio Graves followed by James stumbling down the rest of the court in pain over his shoulder and crashing off-court.

Now that is where there is some controversy.

But the issue after the game was the two-handed shove in the back Antonio Graves gave James as James was falling to the court in pain in front of MU’s bench.

James remained down for several minutes while being attended to by medical personnel before getting up under his own power and making his way to the locker room.

After the game an angry Tom Crean gave Pittsburgh coach Jamie Dixon a piece of his mind before leaving the court, presumably about Graves’ shove.

“I just watched the tape. (Graves) didn’t bump into him,” the MU coach said shortly thereafter, carefully measuring his words. “The foul wasn’t the issue. The foul was just a foul. It’s what happened after the foul that I have an issue with. But we’re just going to leave that alone, watch the film and go from there.”

Now maybe the film is being run, over and over in Milwaukee and being slowed down and dissected. I only saw the numerous replays during the game and on College Gameday last night.

To me, it looked like an accidental bump. Graves was running behind Fields and James on the baseline. When James got fouled and was in obvious pain, he started pulling up and stopped angling to the basket. That was when Graves ran into him. Yes, I would say Graves probably got his hands between the two, as they started to collide, but I definitely saw no extension like it was a shove.

I heard no mention of a controversy until I saw an early release of the aforementioned article late last night.

The Pittsburgh papers are rather vague on the incident. I would also note that the J-S article makes no mention of James hurting his shoulder running into Gray on a screen as the early AP story mentioned (and again no mention of a push).

James initially injured his shoulder running into a screen set by the 7-foot Gray in the first half, then aggravated it while being fouled by Fields with about 13 minutes remaining. James had a team-high 16 points in 30 minutes, but the Golden Eagles struggled for long stretches with James sitting down and leading scorer Steve Novak contained.

I don’t want to be absolute in defending Graves. I didn’t see a two-handed shove, the refs didn’t see one, the commentators didn’t see one, the national ESPN highlight show (never exactly a group to avoid controversy) didn’t say anything and judging by the lack of reaction towards Graves by the Marquette bench at the time (since it happened right in front of them) they didn’t seem to see one at the time.

Krauser was even shown on camera talking to Crean after the incident. Then of course the article has Crean going to Dixon to give him “a piece of his mind.”

Now if Graves did give him a shove, then he should be suspended for a couple games. Pitt plays strong, physical basketball. Not thug-ball.