Okay, so I'm this new ref and I keep hearing about advantage/disadvantage as the fundamental philosophy to apply to various situations. My question can best be illustrated from a game I did in February between a very, very good team and a barely managing team. These teams were so disparate, it hurt. I literally heard the losing coach say, in the last time out with less than two minutes to play, "Let's see if we can hold them to less than 10 more points."
As I see the A/D thing, you call the illegal contact if it confers a disadvantage or gains an advantage. But everything Team A did conferred a disadvantage because the other team was so weak and unskilled that they couldn't "play through" even rather minor jostling. But if I really called every time Team B lost the ball because of some little bump or hit, it would have been not a game. And the flip side of this, was that no matter how rough Team B got, it didn't faze Team A at all. Even whan the Team A player got slashed from behind on the shot, she could adjust and make the basket. Of course, I called the slash, but there were so many other hits that it was very hard to call even though they were so clearly illegal and so rough -- hard to call because they were barely noticed by the opposition (who incidentally won that game by I think 75 points -- no kidding -- and this was high school 4-A)
This example was the most extreme game like this that I have worked, but I've seen this same situation a number of times. Two teams in the same league so they have to play each other, but clearly unmatched in ability. How do I think through the A/D/ thing in these cases?
|