[zebraman]

Originally posted by Nevadaref

I don't like this sentence. It sounds too much like the directive that the NCAA women's assigners were giving a couple of years ago.

The problem is that there is a place for incidental contact in the game, which can sometimes be severe. Of course, block/charge situations may not be the appropriate place for the application of that rule. The official must have good judgment of when calls need to be made and what contact should be allowed.

The above quote makes it sound like there must be a whistle and a foul called whenever two players collide. I don't believe that is right according to the rules, and I hope that people wouldn't officiate that way.

In the state of Washington, a similar directive was given to all high school officials from our WIAA executive director. However, it applied specifically to block/charge situations. Too many officials were doing the old "no call" on a B/C when they weren't 100% sure if it was a block or a charge. There was a lot of mumbling after that directive came down, but it has REALLY helped the game at the HS level here in Washington IMHO.

It is forcing officials to have a call when there are collisions at the hoop. At first, I saw a lot of younger officials blowing their whistles and guessing (which IMHO was better than no whistle at all with bodies on the floor). After a while, officials started recognizing when a collision was going to occur and they knew that a decision needed to be made and the calls improved a lot. It has made for a lot cleaner, safer game and discourages offensive players from making out-of-control drives to the hoop.

To be quite honest, most coaches seem to prefer a wrong call in that situation than officials just watching bodies hit the ground with no whistle.

Z