INDIANAPOLIS — Bo Boroski could see the tiny beads of sweat bubbling up on the arms of the basketball players. It was such a minuscule, random thing to notice, but that's how zoned in he was.
He could see the furrowing eyebrows of the legendary coach standing on the sidelines. He could see the plays that were about to happen on the court, it seemed like, before they ever happened.
Boroski was so laser focused, so deeply entranced by the game that it felt like an out-of-body experience where every detail, every movement, every smell, every sound inside the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans was amplified.
He was officiating the 2022 Final Four, the semifinal that would be the last game of legendary Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski's 42-year career at the school. North Carolina was the opponent, and it would seal Krzyzewski's career fate.
It was Boroski's last game, too — his third Final Four. He knew as he walked into that arena on the biggest stage of men's college basketball that he was hanging up the whistle. He felt the weight of the game, and he can remember every millisecond of it.
Then, he starts to try to tell it to IndyStar, what it feels like to be a Final Four referee.
Boroski doesn't see the tears coming, the kind of tears he can't stop when he starts to relive that monumental Final Four, his role in the game and the magnitude of it all.
As the camera was rolling inside an empty Hinkle Fieldhouse, a historic college basketball arena, Boroski stood up and signaled time out. He needed to take a few moments to collect himself.
Still, when he came back, the tears hadn't stopped.
"Just something happened to me, personally, in that game where judgment remained at the forefront and truly was never questioned. I don't know if it's divine intervention or what it was, but there was a clarity there that I had never experienced," said Boroski, who officiated three straight Final Fours before retiring in 2022.
"And it really sounds foolish when I say it, but when you care about something so much, I think it just affects your brain to the point where I dropped right in to those stars aligning, where the officials weren't the story, where it was Coach K, where it was the Final Four."
In basketball, referees are often written off as the villains, the bad guys by every party involved — fans, coaches and players — depending on which team wins. But what many of those people don't realize is the pressure officials feel, the emotional toll, the internal battle of a missed call that keeps them up at night.
As the Final Four descends on Indy, the referees working those games will be humbled and honored to be on the court where one screech of their whistle can change everything. Where one call can determine who is crowned the NCAA national champion.
"As you're sitting there anticipating it, the butterflies, the nerves, the feeling, the energy. Because, man, I'm telling you, when you walk onto an NCAA tournament court for your first time, oh, you can feel it," said Chris Rastatter, who officiated two Final Fours and is now the national coordinator for men's basketball officials.
"But once the whistle blows and you start, you get locked in, because you have a very important job to do."
Dealing with angry coaches: Don't be 'pamby, soft guy'
NCAA basketball officials get more than nine out of 10 calls correct, according to the organization. But that doesn't matter when a belligerent coach is the victim of one of those missed calls.
Or thinks he is.
"You can't just focus on officiating plays. If communication with coaches is not at the top of the list, you're not going to be around very long," Boroski said, "and you're certainly not going to advance when everybody's watching."
There's plenty of psychoanalysis that goes into being a referee. Coaches have big personalities and, sometimes, big egos, and officials are assigned accordingly, said J.D. Collins, who reffed two Final Fours and was the NCAA national coordinator for men's basketball officials from 2015 to 2022.
Take the 2022 Final Four with Duke and North Carolina. Collins thought long and hard about what officials to assign to such a historic game.
"I put Bo Boroski on as the referee because I knew that no matter what the game was, whatever was happening, he would be able to manage both coaches," Collins said, "and do it in a way that never, never would embarrass Coach K in, potentially, his last game. And it worked."
One of the most important attributes to being an NCAA official is the ability to handle coaches, the good, the bad and the ugly, Collins said. And each official has their own methods and tricks to doing that.
After a couple years of officiating Division I, Collins decided his interpersonal communication skills were lacking a bit. He started reading books on body language and hand gestures, which helped him immensely, particularly with Michigan State coach Tom Izzo.
"There's a ton of times, he ain't mad at nobody. But he knows he has to get a technical, and so he's gonna wind it up," Collins said. "And if you know that going in, then you can shorten the sequence a whole lot."
After some of Izzo's tirades, he'd come up to Collins: "You know, we're good, J.D. That was just a show, just a show."
When it wasn't just a show and a coach was screaming at Collins at the top of his lungs, he would go stand beside him, lean down and say, "Coach, what do you got? What's the deal?"
"And you have to present strength and force, not be pamby, soft guy. The reality is the best officials have the ability, I call it the midline, they have the ability to get up there and get nasty," Collins said. "And they have to have the ability to come down here and go, 'Hey, coach, are we good?'"
'You're under the microscope'
Fractions of a second. That's the requirement put on officials. "Part of the job description is to be able to make immediate decisions within three quarters of a second," Boroski said.
And the officials make those calls with the world watching, cameras shooting from every angle and the crowds roaring.
"When you're refereeing on that stage, there's over 30 cameras that the network has available to them," said Bert Smith, a current Division I official who has reffed two Final Fours. "So, that just adds to the excitement, the pressure, the emotion of the event, because you're under the microscope."
The people watching at local sports bars or sitting on their couches at home get to see all 30-plus angles. The TV analysts get to see those angles.
"But, I'm making a split-second decision on a play that I'm going to be judged on by 37 cameras," Smith said.
Every single game, Smith has his own mental game going on. He talks to himself every possession. He talks to himself nonstop.
"Every time we run down that floor, and that's a 30-second segment for that team, I'm trying to win it. And, I'm trying to be my best. And, I'm trying to be fair. I'm trying to be objective," he said. "If the average human was to get in my mind in a game, they would go, 'Wow, this guy's crazy.'"
Despite that pressure, there is something that keeps Smith coming back.
"It's the best two hours of the day. I mean, you know what? I get up at 4 a.m. I take the first flight to the city, I get a workout in, I get a lunch, I get a nap," Smith said. "And then I go referee for two hours, and it's the best two hours of the day."
In the NCAA tournament, officials are paid flat fees, tiered from the first round to the Final Four. Most travel expenses are covered — mileage, flights and hotels.
The pay a Final Four ref gets is not widely documented. Most sports sites show the flat fee begins at $1,000 per game in the early rounds of the tournament and can be as high as $2,000 to $3,500 a game in the Final Four.
"It's supply and demand. Everybody wants to work these games," Boroski said. "So whether they are paid a dollar or $10,000, the official is likely going to say yes. There are not many officials that I know, none that I know, that would say no because of (pay)."
'It's almost like a dance:' How Final Four refs land the big stage
Being an NCAA Final Four official is a position reserved for a select few, the elite of men's college basketball officiating. Those who are elevated to the level of national championship game referees have proved themselves in ways beyond just play calling.
"We kind of evaluate on everything. At this stage of their career, at this level, they're all pretty good play callers. But there's more to it," Rastatter said. "There's communication. There's a physical skillset. Do you work well within the system? Can you handle situations and then to do it under the lights of a Final Four? It's a different level of intensity."
During the regular season, referees are evaluated at the conference level. Then, before the tournaments start, each conference nominates a list of officials to work the NCAA tournament. It could be 10, it could be 20, or it could be 40. There is no limit to the number of nominees.
Rastatter and his team draw from that list and whittle it down to, give or take, 109 officials to work the NCAA tournament. There are also nine alternate referees on site to fill in if an official gets hurt or can't complete a game.
The better the official performs in the early rounds, the better the chances of them making it to the Final Four, to the final chosen nine referees, three for each game.
There are many attributes Rastatter looks for when assigning a Final Four official, but there is one thing that always catches his attention.
"Their level of comfort on the floor, just feeling the game and moving. It's almost like a dance. You find yourself in the rhythm of what's happening on the floor," Rastatter said. "And to me, that stands out, somebody who just feels it and sees it and moves with it."
Secret confessions of Final Four refs
The quirks and idiosyncrasies and rituals of being an official on college basketball's biggest stage are a special sort reserved for a few, and these NCAA refs own every single one of them.
"I was very ritualistic. I took a shower at the exact same time before tip. I ate the exact same thing three hours before the game," said Boroski. "I had my pack of Cheez-Its I ate 90 minutes before every game. I wore the same shoes. I got dressed in a very defined sort of way. Left sock, right sock. I wore two compression pants."
The meal he ate three hours before each game was a meatball sandwich from Subway, easy on the lettuce with extra mayo. That is what got Boroski focused and made him most comfortable, but hearing himself say it out loud sounds ridiculous now, he says.
Smith is much less ritualistic. His only requirements are to arrive at the game two hours before with gum, cough drops and lip balm in his pocket.
Collins, on the other hand, would lose his mind if his suitcase wasn't packed just right with two sets of everything — socks, pants, shirts, whistles — just in case something went wrong.
"The socks had to be the same kind of sock that I wore for the previous 10 years," Collins said. "I mean, there's a rhythm to everything you do. And it's not necessarily superstitious. It's just, no, this is what feels the best."
Like the whistle. The NCAA supplies whistles to the officials, but some of them have a rubber grip around them, so teeth don't bite into the plastic.
"I didn't care for that," Collins said. "I was a strict plastic guy."
Facial hair is an unspoken negative for officials, indicating they might be hiding something, Collins said. And never wear glasses during a game. "Glasses say you're blind."
Final Four officials arrive at the city just before their game and leave the next day, an NCAA requirement for their protection. They are escorted by police officers to and from the game. Most of the time, these formalities are just that. But there have been times when officials have felt threatened.
'They're not kidding'
Collins was in West Virginia to work the game against Pittsburgh, known as the Backyard Brawl, a heated rivalry he calls "a nasty event."
He arrived at the arena 30 minutes before the game, walked onto a nearly empty floor and saw two men sitting at the half court line.
"I walk out and they start dropping it at a high level. You dirty blankety-blank, I'm gonna blankety-blank," Collins said. "And they're just screaming at me. And I look at them and I go, 'What's your deal?' And they just kept coming."
Collins had officiated a game the year before between Pittsburgh and Oklahoma State that went to double overtime and Pittsburgh lost. As the men yelled, Collins' officiating partner Jim Burr walked up and told him those men were the two biggest gamblers in Pittsburgh.
"They're not kidding. Stay away from them," Burr told him. "And I'll make sure police are aware because people who lose a lot of money do stupid things."
Collins evaded their wrath and took it in stride. If they thought he made a bad call, so be it.
"We all miss calls, and if an official says they never missed one in a big moment, they aren't very good. They haven't been put in a place where that can happen," Collins said. "In our line of work, it's going to happen. I don't care who you are, it's going to happen. Could be at a seventh- or eighth-grade basketball game, and it could be at the Final Four."
But when the Final Four comes, there's no other inventory. No other college basketball games are being played. And the spotlight is blaring at its brightest level.
"You're a part of this huge (spectacle), the greatest sporting event in the world," Boroski said. "But you focus and you zone in and you trick yourself into thinking it's any other game. Even though you know it's not."
Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Final Four refs reveal secrets, pressure on basketball's biggest stage