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Originally Posted by BayStateRef
We had a couple of lengthy "theoretical" discussion earlier this season ( Rule Relapse - Please Help and Where is the Throw-in?) about the proper throw-in spot following a violation when the throw-in pass was caught out of bounds.
This was a reality in a Friday night boys varsity game. (I was not there, but saw a tape of the game on the local cable TV channel.) 1.6 seconds remaining. Home team is up by 1 point, with designated spot throw-in on visitor's end-line, near the corner. They run a play, where point guard breaks long and gets a pass on the other side of the division line. But the throw is poor, and ends up curling toward the sideline. A1 (the point guard) tries to catch the pass with his feet inbounds, but he doesn't. He has a foot on the line. The officials spent a lot of time deciding where to put the ball in play. They finally decided on the spot where the ball was caught, which is almost 50 feet from the basket.
Had the officials applied the penalty of 9-2 ("The ball is awarded to the opponents for a throw-in at the original throw-in spot.") it would have been a very different try for goal to win the game. (The long pass from half-court was deflected, so visitors never got a shot off.) I am always amazed at how many of these seemingly "obscure" rules references and discussions actually come up during the season. |
This is bound to happen when the committee changes a long standing rule without annoucing it was changed. There are going to be a lot of officials that simply will not review the details of the rules on throwin spots since they haven't changed in years (decades) and there was no announcemnt about the change.
Silent changes are ridiculous. They create inconsistency and errors. I'd bet that a non-trivial majority of officials will not have even realized this was changed.
In this case, the was no good reason for the change. It actually makes the situation less equitable in my opinion.