Well, I seem to be in the minority here so I'm going to discuss this with all the officials I work with around here and talk with the varsity guys in between games. See what the prevailing opinion is in these parts.
I did this with the '3 second' thingy after reading and participating in that thread last week. 'All' of the varsity guys I talked with about the 3 second violation agreed that this is something one most aviod calling if you can. Game manage it they said and gave me some pionters.
Which leads me to last night:
Had a sophmore boys game, conference rivals. Great game, I worked with a guy who's been doing this for 34 years but has retired from doing varsity.
Tie game with 8 secs left (home team was up by 9 before they went into a stall offense with 2 minutes to play) home team is inbounding the ball. They get it in and make a couple of passes and as time is running out A1 shot fakes and B1 doesn't bite, he stays on the ground with arms up. A1 trys a disperate shot, and throws himself into B1 but doesn't displace B1 (in fact there wasn't much contact, but it looked awkward), B1 deflects the ball and the buzzer goes off. I called nothing, it happened in my primary. Of course the home crowd and coach loved me for holding my whistle. hehe.
Anyway, home team losses in OT. In the locker room afterward my partner lets me have it for not calling the foul. I told him what I saw and why I didn't blow the whistle. He says he didn't see it but out of the corner of his eye but what he did see looked ugly. My response was that I've been told that just because it looked ugly doesn't mean it was a foul. The 3 varstiy guys who were there for the next game agreed with me, but they didn't see the play.
Even though we talked about it for a half hour after the game, I'm still not convinced he is right. During the game he made two calls on blocked shots that from my vantage point at trail looked like clean blocks, even though they looked bad, I didnt' see any contact between the players, just a very hard block of the ball.
Still learning, guess I always will be.
