[walt]

Last night I had dinner with two guys, one is the little birdy who told me these changes were coming and the other is a friend of his who is on the rules committee. I’ll start with the two handed reporting. They agreed the press release is poorly written. This is what it means. Last season, some states were asked to informally survey table personnel and ask them about two handed versus one handed reporting of the fouler number. My state was one of them. Most responses were not surprisingly, “Huh?” or “I don’t really care” or “Whatever they want to do.” However, there was a clear preference for two handed reporting, hence the rule change. They put it in the RULE so as to standardize and mandate two handed reporting across the country for games played under NFHS rules. So, what it means is that an official shall report the fouler’s number using both hands at the same time with the right hand signify the first number and the second signifying the second number so they can easily seen and read by the scorer. They also want officials to stop saying “Three” “Four” instead of “Thirty-Four” and they believe this will accomplish that.

They said more discussion occurred related to warnings to the coaches. There are two possible and separate warnings. The first is for being completely out of the box (both feet out) whether on purpose or inadvertently and the second is for non-egregious behavior. The way it is currently written, the NFHS wants the play stopped IMMEDIATELY upon observation and the warning issued and recorded in the book with the accompanying reason regardless of when and what is happening in the game at the time. They guys last night believe this will be tweaked somewhat and gave this scenario as to why. Both warnings can be issued separately or possibly for the same action.

Team A steals the ball and is transitioning to a fast break. The Coach of Team B sees this and steps completely out of the box to stop the play and draw the warning. This is exactly how it is supposed to be officiated given the current wording. Of course we all know, if that happens, we may end up having to address egregious behavior from the Coach of Team A!!!

According to my guys, When this was raised during the NFHS meetings, leadership acknowledged that there are officials who will say “I didn’t stop the play because I DIDN’T SEE the coach out of the box because I was watching the play” even though in reality, they simply chose to ignore the Coach of Team B’s action because they didn’t want to take away the fast break. To that the NFHS leadership’s response was those officials have chosen to manipulate the game and chose to IGNORE a rule which goes against how the game is supposed to be officiated and is unfair to the other team because it allows illegal behavior to go unpunished. The also said that the Team B is risking two possible outcomes. The first is an official could deem his/her action as egregious and unsporting and assess a technical foul instead of a warning or, the official stops play, issues the warning for both non-egregious behavior and for being out of the box and any subsequent violation of either would draw a technical foul.

What my guys said they hope and believe will happen is the wording that comes out and is put in the casebook for this type of play is that the officials will allow the fast break to finish and then immediately stop play and issue the warning(s) similar to how a non-emergency injury or delayed technical foul during a fast break is handled.

They acknowledged that not every scenario can be written up but there needs to be some guidance for plays like that which are likely to occur. The both strongly agreed that the warning rule is a good one and puts the onus for behavior on coaches after the first warning has been issued. As one of them said, “they now have one get out of jail free card and know the risk if they do it again.” They said the NFHS believes bench decorum is out of control and needs to be addressed but that officials believe issuing technical fouls right away is too harsh. Now, officials can warn and then it is on the coaches to monitor and check their own behavior. On scenario that the NFHS wants stopped and they believe the warning will do it is the multiple walk backs to put coaches in the box. They believe it happens way too often and eventually officials just give up and let the coaches wander. They also believe the 28 foot box gives them more than enough room to move and coach and if they cannot stay in the box, there shall be a warning followed by technical foul.

Again, these were just two guys with knowledge of the situation and they were just sharing their thoughts so I am just sharing them here.