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Wondering --
It's hard to feel good about this, no matter how you handle it. Here's what I've done so that I feel I'm being consistent, fair and "equal". I have developed a sort of extreme sense of advantage/disadvantage. Think about it this way. The team that ends up 50 points ahead (and you often know ahead of time who it will be) has all the advantages. You cannot take away any of the legal advantages -- that destroys the nature of The Game. I mean, the whole point is to have legal advantages and to use them. But you can always take away illegal advantages. So let's call the better team, Team A. If A1 has the ball and is able to get past B1 by clever foot work and good ball handling, there's no call. But if she has her hand on the side of the ball just barely long enough to "steer" the ball around the defender, TWEET!, "Carry!" B1 tries the same thing, but A1 has better position and B1 can't get past, no-call. I'm talking about the borderline calls here, nothing obvious. Same thing with contact. If a point guard isn't very good, and is easily bumped out of her path, it's A's responsibility to back off a little, and I'll call it if they don't. Same point-guard B1 now defending A1 with the ball, a minor bump may not confer a disadvantage, so I don't call it. You still have to call all the obvious stuff on either team.
Also, I've felt that overall, calling the game more strictly is better for the underdog team that calling it loosely. It may seem backwards, but I've done a lot of really lousy games and my observation is that, in general, the far less skilled team will rise a little to a strict line, and the advantaged team will back off a little to avoid the silly-little-fouls, and the lower level team will do better than they otherwise would have.
I know that there are people that will disagree with this, but it works for me, and I've even had a couple of coaches appreciate it. It's easy to explain -- "Coach, yes, they are bumping you a little, but they're not gaining advantage by it, Do you want me to take away those easy points?" Or, "Do you want to shoot foul shots all night?"
[Edited by rainmaker on Aug 2nd, 2001 at 02:47 PM]
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