Whether you felt Iowa basketball player Alvaro Folgueiras deserved a technical foul or an ejection Sunday night probably depended on which team you were rooting for.

Hawkeye fans will probably tell you that Folgueiras and Florida’s Alex Condon were simply battling for a loose ball in the first half, and that Folgueiras swung a closed fist to try to dislodge the ball after Condon threw him to the ground.

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Gator fans will likely say that Folgueiras had bad intentions with his fist and should have received a flagrant-2 foul, resulting in automatic ejection.

The referees’ opinions were the only ones that mattered, and they determined after watching video replay that each player deserved a technical foul and nothing more.

Florida coach Todd Golden certainly did not agree with that assessment. He scolded the officials after they made their ruling, throwing in some colorful language while he was at it.

Golden discussed the play with reporters after his top-seeded Gators fell 73-72 in an NCAA Tournament second-round game in Tampa, Fla.

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“I was told (Folgueiras) threw a punch, but it didn’t connect,” Golden said. “So, it didn’t go higher than a Flagrant 1. I’m not sure exactly what that means. I really don’t understand why Condo got a technical, they were both fighting for the ball. I mean Condo was just stronger and pulled them down to the floor but they were both grabbing the ball. So it was a confusing play and I’m not really sure how it ended on that result.”

Folgueiras staying in the game turned out to be an important development for the Hawkeyes. His 3-pointer with 4 seconds left in the contest gave 9-seed Iowa the victory and its first Sweet 16 berth since 1999.

“People kind of overreacted,” Folgueiras said when asked about the scuffle. “I didn’t throw any punch. It was just a thing of the game.”

He added: “My intentions in the play weren’t to hit anybody.”

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This was Condon’s take:

“I’m going to make sure I get every loose ball and set the standard with our physicality,” Condon said. “Ended up with a double technical and they got the ball back. I didn’t really know if he hit me or not, but I’m sure we’ll see it and look back at it.”

The tussle between Folgueiras and Condon became quite a scene, with players, coaches and referees rushing in and getting involved before cooler heads prevailed.

Iowa coach Ben McCollum talked about the play with a TBS sideline reporter at the next timeout:

“I don’t know, they were just going for the ball, and then everybody got all sensitive,” McCollum said. “Their people got sensitive. It’s like, you’re trying to play ball. It’s whatever. We’ll compete. We’ll fight. We’ll see what happens.”

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After the game, McCollum went into more detail:

“I thought that two guys were fighting for the ball,” the first-year Iowa coach said. “I thought that Al had it first, I thought that he grabbed it and tried to pull it away — because he’s intense and he’s physical. And then I thought that Al tried to pull it back, and all of a sudden everybody’s in a scrum and we’re trying to break it up. And then all of a sudden everybody was mad. I was like, I understand why everybody is mad. … I haven’t seen the video, though, so I don’t know what actually happened. So I’d have to watch the video, but based on what I saw it was just, they shouldn’t have done it, neither one of them were smart in that situation. It was dumb. Kinda part of these games.”

TBS analyst Seth Davis said this at halftime: “I talked to (rules expert) Gene Steratore, and the rule is this, if you swing your fist, even if, it looks like (Folgueiras) was trying to hit the basketball, but if you swing your fist and you try to hit the ball and you hit the person, you are gone. It did look to me like he kinda hit his wrist, hit his arm, maybe got part of the ball. Look, the refs in that situation, they don’t wanna eject somebody from an NCAA Tournament game. So I think they probably adjudicated it well.”

Davis’ fellow analysts Adam Zucker, Charles Barkley and Clark Kellogg also indicated that they felt the double-technical was an appropriate call.

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Kevin Brockway of the Gainesville Sun contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Why Iowa-Florida scuffle resulted in technicals — and not an ejection