Might end up being a long story, but there are a couple of different stories to tell.
Varsity girls and boys games, homecoming, very large crowd, working a two-man crew. I had worked JV Tuesday night and had the visitors then also, so, I was expecting some grief about that from them. I had nearly T-d the varsity girls coach on Tuesday night during the JV girls game, and probably would have if not for knowing that I had them in a Varsity game on Friday. Girls game really went pretty well, it was a 20-point margin in the end with the visitors winning. Had one crash in the first few minutes that I no-called and probably should have got a charge, my partner the R, had pre-gamed that he wanted a call if we had a crash, and I went right out and no-called one. Girl had great defensive position, dribbler comes in makes slight contact, tries to stop, passes the ball off, maybe extended her forearm slightly and they both fell the floor.
After a 45-minute break in between games where they introduced every homecoming queen since 1978 (seriously), my partner and I head out at about the 15-minute mark. My partner is a good official and I know him from our football crew last year. He worked two rounds of sub-state basketball playoffs last year so he is a qualified official, however, he needs to hang out here more often to learn the finer points of the rules. We are walking around the court, when he grabs me by the arm and looks up. I turn to see two of the home team boys jump up, grab the rim, and pull it down about three-four inches. We quickly look at each other and say "oh sh*!t". He takes off towards the table and I track down the two kids that I saw doing it and get their numbers (not as easy as it sounds, they had warmups on and were a little reluctant). As I join in his conversation with the home boys head coach (also the AD), he is telling him that we are going to start the game with 6 free throws and the ball out of bounds. I pull him off to the side and explain to him that three technicals are indirectly charged to the head coach and he will be ejected, tell him that I have two numbers of the guilty parties and try to persuade him to only assess two technicals because I didn't see the other one and we don't have a number. He doesn't think that three indirect's would be assessed, says it's only one to the head coach, and is adamant (sp) that he saw three. At this time, visiting coach is chanting "i've got three", and home coach is questioning whether grasping is illegal or if it's only dunking and asks us to look it up to make sure. I volunteer to do so and quickly come back and show it to him. While I'm gone, partner tells v-coach, h-coach, both administrators, and the table personnel that we will start with 3 techs, and 3 team fouls (I added that 11, & 13 will start with one personal) and instructed the table to announce it before the game. We went in the locker room at about 4 minutes as both teams left the floor. Once behind closed doors, I let him have it, "We have got this really screwed up now" I say and show him the penalty for grasping the ring which is, of course, and indirect on the coach for each one. Tell him "if you would have slowed down, took your time and listened to what I was trying to explain to you, we could have avoided some of this mess". He agrees and is beginning to panic, I tell him what's done is done, let's go from here. I do understand it wasn't all his fault, mind you, I should have been more forceful and took charge more, but, that's not easy to do with a more experienced partner. He decides to stick with what he told everybody, three T's, but no coach ejection. We went back out, told both coaches what we should have done, that we had made a mistake and were going with our original ruling, which was fine with the visiting coach. He said "I don't want him dumped, either." We removed a high school age fan during the announcement of the penalty, but, for the most part, the rest of the game went fairly well. I felt like my partner was giving the home team an unfair advantage at times on his calls, probably subconscious if at all. That could have also been because they were getting shellacked by 20 points. I just tried to call my game and forget about the pre-game events.
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