[deecee]

There's a lot of obscure "what ifs" just tell the kid to get in the game. Heck realistically you or any other official won't actually know who the kid is so how do you verify that the correct one entered? If the kid is this confused, as is the coach, this sounds like a frosh/soph game wrapped in the title of "varsity".

If the officials noticed the player "jumping" off the court while the ball is being bounced why not just retrieve the ball back and go to the bench and say "hey kid you want to play so your team has 5?" Instead of playing this cluster f'k to it's completion.

The crew can also just blow the play dead once they realize it's 5 on 4 and there is no immediate action and square things away. The rules weren't meant to account for everything, nor will they. In some cases just do the right thing.

This is all compounded ever further, IMO, if the officials actually knew who the 5th player was and just kept running up and down the court without one time saying to the kid/coach "hey you have 4 and he should get back in the game." I'd most likely have no clue who the 5th player was but if I felt this was one big confused mess I'd do my best to have this resolved before the next stoppage in play due to foul/violation.

The longer officials let messy situations consider instead of addressing them the worse they look. It's one thing if they didn't recognize what was happening and it's something entirely different if they did.

If the kid got a T who cares how you handle it. Treat him as a player or a sub, an argument could be made for either.