[BillyMac]

First a thread appears about spitting out a whistle, and then it happens to me last night.

Girls varsity game. Four minutes left. White is down by about ten points. White coach takes a time out, probably to tell her players to foul Blue, to stop the clock. Blue brings ball into the front court in my primary, and White reaches in, slapping Blue on the wrist. I try to blow my whistle to call a common foul, but I spit out my whistle, the first time that I can remember doing that in many, many, many, years, although it might have something to do with a recent change from several years of using the Mini Fox whistle to now using the regular Fox 40 whistle. White "hacks" on Blue's wrist at least twice more before I have time to get the whistle in my mouth to blow it for the common foul. The Blue player looks at me like "Why are you letting them beat me up?" and I explain to her that I split my whistle out and couldn't blow it fast enough to stop the additional fouls. She nods and smiles at me.

Here's the kicker. On the next Blue possession, White must have figured out that they "really" have to foul Blue for me to blow my whistle, so White grabs Blue by the jersey. Other than reaching across a boundary to foul an inbounder, there are only a few "automatic" intentional fouls that I call, the "bear hug" foul, the "grabbing the jersey" foul, and the "two handed push from behind" foul, because these are not "basketball plays", so I call an intentional foul on White. The White coach doesn't like my call, and I felt badly because I'm sure that the intentional foul wouldn't have occurred if I had not spit out my whistle on the first foul, but intentional was the call.

My partner said that I could have passed on the intentional, knowing that I was partly to blame. Comments?