It sounds like the official that you had didn't really know or understand the rule, which isn't really that uncommon in recreation leagues. The basic rule for guarding says:
- You have to initially establish a "legal guarding position", which you do by getting in your opponent's path, and then facing your opponent with both feet on the floor.
- As Jeff said, once you have established your "legal guarding position", you can maintain by it by moving laterally or obliquely, but you never can be moving towards your opponent when the contact occurs. There is no longer any prerequisite that you have to keep both feet on the floor, or that you must be "set" when the contact occurs. You do have to be completely inbounds though. You don't even have to continue facing your opponent; you can turn or duck to protect yourself from the contact. You don't have to allow any minimum distance, either, after you established your legal guarding position. The onus for contact shifted equally to your opponent and yourself, dependant on where the contact occurs.
- If contact occurs, we look to see where the point of contact is. If you have maintained a legal guarding position and the contact is now on your torso, then the correct call should be a charge. If the contact is outside your torso, on an arm or outstretched leg for example, then the correct call would be a block on the defender.
- Note that the above doesn't apply completely if the offensive player becomes airborne. In that case, you have to be there before the player leaves his feet; you can't move under or into the path of an airborne player after he has left his feet, no matter if you are set or not when the contact occurs.
Try the link below; click on the NCAA basketball playing rules and look in rule #4 under "Guarding". These are in pdf format, and are printable.
http://www.ncaa.org/library/rules.html
Welcome to the forum.
[Edited by Jurassic Referee on Sep 10th, 2004 at 07:22 AM]