Quote:
Originally posted by Jurassic Referee
NCAA rule 3-7-6- "Equipment shall be appropriate for basketball".
I don't think that a player wearing a shoe on his hand is gonna meet that criteria.
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It doesn't sound like he was "wearing" it on his hand, only that he was holding it.
A shoe is legal equipment. We won't stop play for a player to put a shoe back on. And it's a hazard having it on the court. Best option is probably for him to toss it to the bench. But he's not required to do that. So what do we do? The "appropriate equipment" rule doesn't specify a penalty, which says to me that the rules committee didn't consider that an otherwise legal piece of equipment would become illegal (or at least not often enough to warrant a ruling).
The best analogue is probably the untucked jersey rule. Send the player out of the game to get his shoe back on at the earliest opportunity. For a shirt that would be the next dead ball. But in this case, where you may have to deal with the issue of the shoe in hand contacting the ball...maybe kill the play on the same basis that you would for an injured player, as soon as the offense isn't making a move to the basket.
But it the shoe contacts the ball...
Having the shoe in his hand is a disadvantage to the shoe-bearer since he loses the full utility of that hand. That, I think, balances out the disadvantage to the defense that the ball will likely carom oddly off the shoe. If, however, the shoe extends his reach and allows him to get his "hand" on a ball he normally couldn't, then I think you've got to call something. In this case, I think I'm invoking 2-3 and calling an otherwise unsupported violation and giving the ball back to the offense. And I'm sending the player out to get his shoe back on.