Quote:
Originally posted by EMM
Player A shoots and Player B goes to block the shot. The whole gym hears a slap of the guys forearm, but the ref says he doesnt see it, so he doesnt call the foul. He says he needs to see it not hear it. The ball clearly changes direction and never reaches the backboard and goes out of bounds. Ref calls the ball out on Player A the shooter. I, not being a ref but being a coach, would think that it is rather obvious that the defensive player hit either the arm or the ball which should have resulted in a foul on Player B or it being out of bounds on Player B.
However, the response from the ref is that he didnt "see the contact" of either the ball or the arm.
What is the right call here?
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The right call is the call that the official made. It isn't that obvious, either. The defender can legally hit the shooter's hand from the side, thus causing the ball to go out of bounds at an angle. If the ball last touched the shooter's hand, even though the defender hit that hand, then the shooter was the last player to touch the ball in bounds, and the defense then gets the ball, by rule.
On
any call, an official is
not supposed to guess. If you don't actually see where the slap landed, then all you have is just a guess as to whether a foul occurred or not. The easy way out, for an official, is to just call the foul. That keeps the coach and fans happy, even though they don't know the rule. Good officials don't worry about this, though. They wanna get the call
right. And the right call isn't gonna be made by guessing.
[Edited by Jurassic Referee on Mar 6th, 2004 at 06:38 AM]