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Well, you guys are right -- by rule it's an easy call, but in reality it's not that easy.
Sure, inadvertant whistle and B's ball.
But think about it for a minute.
B did not have any timeouts. You stopped the game with 0.7 seconds left, when it was clear that time would have expired by the time B1 landed on the floor. So now, because of your faux pas, you are going to give the ball to Team B underneath their own basket for a throw-in and last-second shot attempt!!
Of course, Team A wants (and probably deserves) to shoot two free throws (for a technical on Team B), but instead you are giving B the ball and an underserving opportunity to win the game.
Well, that's what we ended up doing -- and I said to my partner, "Pray that they don't make a shot and we go to overtime."
Thankfully they didn't.
What would I do next time?
I would tell the Team B coach that since he's saying that he didn't call timeout, time would have expired by the time that his player hit the floor (we're only talking 0.7 seconds here!) And I'd instruct the timer to start the clock and we'd go to overtime.
Is that supported by the rules? Probably not -- I think that the inadvertant whistle is what is correct by rule. But what is fair to the game? If Team B had hit a shot in that last 0.7 seconds it would have been OUR fault no doubts about it. They did not deserve to get another throw-in because they had no timeouts. Essentially we gave them a HUGE advantage by giving them a throw-in.
However, I doubt that this situation will ever happen to me again, but that's what I would do... In fact, I tried to convince the coaches to simply go to overtime, but they wouldn't go for it, so we ended up going with the inadvertant whistle ruling, but I didn't like it one bit.
Incidentally, I have never been booed as much as when I was handing the ball to Team B's thrower (the visiting team) after all the controversy. One of the home players knocked the ball out of the hands of a Team B player as soon as he got it and time expired, for which I am still very thankful!
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