Atlanta ? Ewing vs. Olajuwon this wasn’t.

The most anticipated battle in decades between two of college basketball’s best big men, Ohio State’s Greg Oden and Georgetown’s Roy Hibbert, never quite materialized in Saturday night’s semifinal. Thank three guys whose names you wouldn’t – and probably shouldn’t – know.

They are referees Ted Valentine, Richard Cartmell and Mike Kitts, who seemed almost as determined to grab the headlines as any player. They whistled 25 fouls in total, four each against Oden and Hibbert, and had almost as much to do with the outcome – Buckeyes 67, Hoyas 60 – as anybody wearing a jersey and shorts.

Without their big men, these looked like two very ordinary teams.

And if Oden gets in as much foul trouble against Florida, which thumped UCLA 76-66 in the other semifinal, the game could wind up just as lopsided as when the Gators and Buckeyes met in January with the college football championship on the line.

Neither of Florida’s big men, 6-11 Joakim Noah and 6-10 Al Horford, are classic low-post players. But without Oden in the lane to play traffic cop, either could pile up points Monday night. The Ohio State freshman collected four fouls and wasn’t a factor when the Gators rolled to an 86-60 win during the regular season.

A few days before tip-off, Ohio State coach Thad Matta recalled the days when every high school kid tall enough to see over his locker didn’t automatically hire an agent and declare himself ready for the NBA.

One measure of how quaint that notion seemed is that both participants in the last really good big-man game in the NCAA Tournament, the 1984 meeting between Patrick Ewing of Georgetown and Hakeem Olajuwon of Houston, have long since retired from the pros. But Matta was hopeful, anyway.

Georgetown's Roy Hibbert, left, attempts to hit the ball out of Ohio State center Greg Oden's hands. The two vaunted big men were sidelined by fouls in Saturday's semifinal.

“It’s going to get the game back to where it used to be in having that low-post threat,” he predicted.

It took only a few minutes for the zebras to prove him wrong.

The game was all of 18 seconds old when Hibbert collected his first foul, and only 33 seconds older than that when Oden matched him. Not to be outdone, the Buckeye center picked up his second less than two minutes later and headed to the bench to cool his heels. It was more like freezing his heels, since Oden didn’t set foot on the floor the rest of the first half.

“What happened?” Oden said, mindful that talking too little was likely to get him in less trouble than talking too much. “The ref blew the whistle.”

“As I told Greg at halftime,” Matta chuckled, “he should be well rested.”

“I was out for 17 minutes,” Oden said about his first-half experience. “I wanted to get in there and tear the rim out.”

First, however, he had to watch Hibbert strut his stuff, throwing down one monster dunk just inside the 8-minute mark and again some 40 seconds later, grabbing a layup by teammate DaJuan Summers as it bounded off the rim and slamming it back through even harder.

But just as the Georgetown big man was awakening echoes of predecessors Ewing, Alonzo Mourning and Dikembe Mutombo, well, you know what happened.

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Hibbert, personal foul No. 2.

The consolation prize for which was a seat on the bench.

“I just had to make smarter decisions,” Hibbert said.

Not that it would have made much difference.

There’s no way to blame the fast whistles by the officiating trio on inexperience or even unfamiliarity. It’s true that it looks worse when a big man reaches in to try to steal a ball than a guard, because everybody’s eyes are on him, and the offending limbs are bigger. It’s also true the college game has precious few big men these days because of the lure of the NBA.

But both Valentine and Kitts are veteran officials, having worked plenty of Big Ten and Big East games. And while several were questionable, there was only one really lousy call, made by Valentine at 6:37 in the second half. That’s when Oden launched himself at the basket for a dunk and Georgetown’s Jeff Green had position on the runway. They crashed and just about the time they started to pick themselves up, Valentine blew the whistle. Small wonder he had to think about it for a moment – and got it wrong, anyway.

“They made the calls,” Green said. “I’m just going to, you know, walk away and not say anything.”

If there was a time to raise a stink, it was almost three minutes earlier. Oden was on the Ohio State bench with his third foul and the Hoyas took advantage of his absence to tie the game at 44. They had a nice inside-outside flow to the offense, then a shot went up, Hibbert hooked Buckeye defender Ron Lewis to box out for a rebound and …

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No. 4.

In what proved a perfect snapshot of the evening, he headed to the Georgetown bench even as Oden was leaving the scorer’s table to come back in. They crossed paths several times in the lane, and occasionally under the basket.

But that one moment said as much or more about the battle between them as any.

Sad.