[A Pennsylvania Coach]

JV-G Friday night. Third quarter, A1 inbounding on opposite baseline. My partner is administering and I am lead, near midcourt, as B is pressing full-court. Nearing what seems like about five seconds to me, I take a peek at my partner and the inbounder and I see what looks like the ball in A1's hands being slapped by B1, on the OOB side of the line if I had to guess. He hits the whistle then comes to me.

Here is mistake number one. He says, "I was starting to raise my hand for five seconds when she reached across." Based on that statement, he probably should've just called that violation.

Here is mistake number two. Rather than let him continue to describe what happened, I asked him, "Was the ball still OOB?" He said yes to I said technical foul. He agreed and called then reported the T. No complaints from anywhere.

After the game, we are describing it to the V officials (one of whom were evaluating me) and he says that B1 reached across and smacked A1's arm. I was surprised to hear that the contact was on the arm instead of the ball, but I realized we never covered that detail in the short conversation. Based on that, I think we should have had a foul or nothing. The only thing I wasn't sure about was if it had to be intentional. I don't think it did, but the V guys weren't sure either. They said he probably should've let it go, or called the five if that came first, but once we were in the conference it would've been tougher to go with one of those options.

If I had the whole thing over again, I suggest either the five second violation if that came first, or a common foul on B1. I do think coming out of a conference with a five-second call wouldn't look good, however.

The good news is that I got an excellent evaluation ("looks like I've been doing it 10 years") so I was pretty happy about that. I still need to slow down when calling a foul, instead of giving the preliminary signal after my first few steps toward the table. I also got my second piece of conflicting advice, which is a little frustrating. (Friday's was don't start my counts so low--he said in our chapter they want us chest-to-shoulder and I'm going waist-to-shoulder. That's annoying because I was doing chest-to-shoulder at the beginning of the year based on what the book shows, and only changed because another experienced official told me that in our chapter we go waist-to-shoulder!)

Last thing, game was V56, H52, with H shooting two shots with 2.8 seconds left. They made the first and called timeout. My coaching brain kicked in and I told my partner to expect an intentional miss and a tip back for three. We talked quickly about watching for lane violations or rebounding fouls, and that he had the last shot as the T. Sure enough, miss, clean offensive rebound, pass to the corner for a wide-open three and... clank! Game over!