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This discussion reminds me of a game a few years ago. My team is down by about 14 with maybe 4 minutes left. The officials were doing a great job up until this point, when I started to notice that hand checking and blocking fouls were being called less and less (on both teams). With about 3 minutes or so left, after two consecutive possessions of my players being hand-checked with both hands and no call, one of the officials responds to my questioning as he runs by on the change of possession. "I'm not gonna call that now, its basically over."
I call a time out, instruct my players to press man-to-man, hand-check, go for steals by disrupting their opponents arms, basically to either get a steal or get a foul call. Since the game is "basically over", the officials aren't calling any of these fouls so we go on a 10-0 run. With about 50 seconds left, an obvious reach-in-slap-across-the-arm is finally called. Our opponent misses the front end of the 1-and-1 and we come down and score a layup, I call timeout. Down by 2 with 44 seconds left, I instruct my team to not foul and just play defense straight up. If we get a defensive stop, we go to overtime. Our opponent inbounds the ball and their guard is expecting to get fouled so he is holding the ball haphazardly and actually takes 2 steps towards the basket he will be shooting the FTs he assumes he will be shooting (without dribbling!). No call. With the ball held out in front of him, one of my players runs up and just takes the ball, no contact. WHISTLE! Official calls the foul.
Opposing player makes both FTs, we miss our subsequent shot. We go to foul and my guard fouls opposing guard across the arm mildy. Officials do not blow the whistle so my player tries to foul a little bit harder. No call. On the third attempt to foul, the final buzzer sounds so the game is over. As I am shaking the hand of the opposing coach, one of the officials walks by and says to me "you really made a travesty of the game". I don't respond, but the opposing coach says to me "those refs really sucked". WHISTLE! I get called for a technical foul.
Maybe I should have just accepted the fact that we were going to lose with 3 minutes left, saved everybody some trouble.
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