[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Back In The Saddle:

You are absolutely correct. cc never said where the L was looking in his origianl post, but if the L was not looking up at the ball and the rim, how was he able to decide that the free throw attempt hit the rim? That is why I asked cc to clean up his play in his original post so that we had a better understanding of what happened on the court.

I agree that we want to have all of our calls to be correct. But that still has to be done in the context of officiate your primary and to trust your partner. If and official does not officiating his/her primary and is looking where he/she is not supposed to be looking, then who is officiating his/her primary? He/she is so concerned about watching the ball in his/her partner's area and worrying whether his/her partner is making the correct calll that he/she is missing everything that is going wrong in his/her primary.

This past Friday night I was the U1 in a boys' H.S. varsity game in Michigan. This was the second time I had officiated with these two other officals as a three-man crew. The same official was the R for both games. During the pre-game for the first game, he announced that we would not rotate and the calling official for a foul would become the new C. This official officiated the L position from a spot on the endline between the where the sideline and endline intersect and where the three-point line intersects the endline. He could not have initiated a rotation if his life depended upon it because of his position in the L.

During Friday's game, the R was in the L and I was the T, table side in the first half with Team V in position of the ball in its front court. The ball was table side and six or seven feet into V's front court. In other words I had onball coverage. H1 had a legal guarding position against V1 near my sideling, when V1 attempted to drive between H1 and the sideline. H1 was stationary, and I was preparing to have to either make a charge call against V1 or an out-of-bounds call against V1, when from 35 feet away and way out of his primary the L called a blocking foul on H1. The L had no idea what was going on in his primary and he certainly did not know what was going on in my primary. I said nothing not even at half-time when he berated the entire crew for the lousy job we were doing as officials. I never said a word because I was a visitor on this crew.

With less the one minute to play in the game, the R was in the C opposite the table when V had the ball in its front court. I was L so I was not looking at the ball, but it was table side above the free throw line extended and the T had onball coverage. The C was a good thirty feet away from the ball and had at least four players directly in front of him in his primary area. You guessed it, he called traveling on V1. The T lived with the call.

With less that fifteen seconds to go in the game, H was down by three points and had the ball for a throw-in on the endline, tableside, in its backcourt. I was the T and you know who was L. V was pressing. H inbounded the ball and then V1 knocked a pass between H1 and H2 out-of-bounds on my sideline in front of V's bench. I signaled H ball. From over forty feet away the L game running giving the foul-tip signal (I did not know we were umpiring a baseball game) and signaling that H2 had knocked the ball out-of-bounds. This time I would not let him change the call. I told him that the sideline in this play was my primary, not his and that H was going to get the ball. He protested, stating that he was the R. I told him that he had no business looking where he had been looking because he had too many players in his primary to be looking at the ball.

Needless to say, he did not like what I told him. We finished the game, H lost be three points. He said not a word to me or the other official in the dressing room. All I can say it must have been a long drive home for the two of them because the U2 had driven them to the game.

Remember officiate your primary, trust your partner, and get the plays, such as correctable errors, AP Arrow resets, fights, etc. correct.

MTD, Sr.