[ChuckElias]

Here's a question that came up in my pre-game yesterday. (Great game, by the way. Home team had a HUGE upset win on Friday night. Emotionally drained, maybe partied too much after the game. Saturday, they find themselves down by 24 to the #8 ranked D3 team in the country. They come all the way back and cut it 2 points with under 30 seconds to play. Couldn't pull out the win, but oh what fun!)

Anyway, here's the question. Team A has control of the ball in front court when B1 races up to the official and requests a TO. Brain-dead official blows the whistle, intending to grant the TO to Team B.

Basically, the question is, can the official rule that this is an inadvertant whistle, NOT grant the TO, and put the ball back in play?

My understanding is that in HS, this would not be allowed. I think that in HS a TO that is granted, even in error, is allowed and the team can take the full TO.

But my partner wondered if the "granting" of the TO hasn't really occured yet. In other words, the whistle doesn't grant the TO. It's not granted until it's reported as a TO. Well, if that's true, then it seems like you could just say "Bad whistle, and there's been no TO granted. Let's play."

Thoughts from a HS perspective please.

Now, from an NCAA perspective, something like this actually happened to me once (I posted about it a long time ago). I blew the whistle to grant a TO, but the coach didn't want it unless his team scored on the possession. Communication screw-up. Anyway, the R comes over and says, "He didn't want it, so we don't grant it." And we just resumed the game.

So yesterday, I'm looking through the NCAA book, and I can't find any rule or AR that supports that procedure, either.

Thoughts from an NCAA perspective please.

Because now, I don't really know what to think about this stupid thing in either rule-set. Anybody have a definitive case play or rule covering the granting of TO's?