[dbking]

I think that you handled well. I learned the lesson many years ago in the championship game of an AAU tournament. All kinds of D1 coaches in the gym and D1 referees evaluating the game during a ref camp.

5 seconds to go, long before we thought of putting tenths on the board. Team A has throw in and down 1 point from halfcourt. Ball is thrown into to A2 at top of key. A1, the throw in person gets a screen and cuts to bucket for another screen and pops out to the elbow. She buries the shot.

I look at clock from opposite and Trail position. Clock is dead. I blow whistle. We tell teams to go to benches, the three of us meet in center court. We talk for a few seconds and two D1 guys enter the huddle. Standard question, "What do you guys have?" None of us knew how long. They said first lesson, always count the last 5 seconds of every quarter. If none of us knew, the next thing was to use our team mates at the table. The 5 of us went to table. The clock man, paid employee of tournament, said the clock went dead when the clock went to zero. Shooter had just received the pass. We asked him if he had started the clock on time. He said yes. How confident was he that the clock was at zero. He said 100%. The D1 guys said wipe it off. We called coaches together and told them the outcome. One was happy, one was mad.

The post game conference was:

Always count last 5 seconds.
Always have off official from throw in see that the clock starts.
If you have no horn and you are 110% sure the time is out, blow whistle.
Always use all of your resources in the gym, different levels have different resources.

I have lived by this ever since. In 15 years since that date, I have had to use it less than a dozen times, but I have always counted.