[mrsref]

I was watching a 6th-grade girls' game yesterday and saw an unfortunate mistake. I made a ruling (more on that later), now I wonder if I was right:

Close game, less than three minutes remaining. During rebounding action under red's basket, the ball goes out of bounds and the lead official says "white". While white is getting set for their press-break inbounds play, the official hands the ball to a red player, who inbounds to a teammate. who passes to another for an easy lay-up to tie the game. Red is fouled on the shot by the white player who was on her way to inbound the ball.

The referee now realizes his error (with help from the white team's coach, who points out that the official indicated that it was white's ball, but gave it to red). The two officials confer at mid court, then the more experienced official (not the one who made the error) comes to me for help. Because he knows that I am a retired official and was the local NF rules interpreter until about five years ago, he is looking for guidance.

He tells me that yes, his partner did intend for the ball to be inbounded by white. He doesn't know why he gave it to red. Is there anything they can do about it?

I gave him my opinion, but now I wonder if I blew it (after five years of not studying, I'm a little rusty on the finer points). This is what I told him:

This is not a "correctable error" by definition. This is a mistake by the official. I said that there was no way to take the points off the board in this situation -- the score had to stand, no time put back on the clock. Basically, the official said "sorry" and play continued with the free throw. (The good news is that white held on to win by five, so the official's mistake did not cost white the game.)

As I thought about the situation after the game, I'm not sure that red should have shot the free throw. There are situations that an official can correct a mistake (not to be confused with a "correctable error"). For example, if red had inbounded the ball and the official noticed his mistake before red scored, he could have blown his whistle and given the ball to white to inbound. Any elapsed time would be lost. But since the mistake wasn't discovered until after the basket, we can't take the points down, right? And the foul by white has to stand...but should red have gotten the free throw?