[Jurassic Referee]

Originally posted by bigzilla
Okay, you asked for it. Not so small, and very mean player holding ball. For unknown reasons, she let go of the ball, which, under the influence of gravitational pull and spin, went down and backwards. She bent to retrieve said ball, and in doing so came under the aforesaid gravitational pull and fell to her hands and knees. Apparently flabbergasted by the situation, she placed one ankle over the other, thus forming a triangle in which she trapped the ball. She then, using her arms, rose up to her knees, which resulted in her buttocks being over the ball. Said ball seemed to literally disappear from sight. And there, I must report, she sat. Apparently she was comfortable, as she made no attempt to stand, nor to retrieve the ball. Meanwhile, the other nine players stood. And stood. An opponent bent over and took a peek from behind, but apparently did not desire to reach into once forbidden territory. After a second peek, said opponent reached out, but then withdrew. This lasted several seconds. Said squatter was not in the lane, and apparently no one considered even attempting to yell for time out, which relieved me of the burden of determining whether one can control the ball simply by surrounding it with body parts the opponent does not desire to touch to get to it. Finally, opponent overcame her fear of what might lurk within and actually extended her hands in an attempt to locate the missing orb, reaching her hands to within the general area that the ball may have been, and I thought "good enough for me", whistled it as a held ball, and went to the arrow.
Afterwards, my partner asked if I really thought the opponent had tied the ball up, and I said no, and that I thought that sitting on the ball or tying it up with legs is not a held ball, but that I was avoiding what I expected to be the ugly situation that was going to occur when the opponent went digging.

Well........that's probably good enough for me too.

I'd invoke seniority though and tell my partner that this one was his throw-in.