Quote:
Originally Posted by Freddy
QUESTION: "NFHS, which is it gonna be? Is this the team's responsibility or the officials'? Make up your mind!"
Do I have a legitimate gripe? Or am I just suffering mid-winter light depravation?
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Freddy,
As you have seen by now, the answers are quite clear.
If a team has more than five (to cover JARs situations of seven) players on the court at ANY TIME while the ball is live, a technical foul is to be assessed against the offending team. It is the officials responsibility -- per the manual -- to ensure that only five players for each team are on the floor before putting the ball back in play. It is the team that is penalized for violating this rule.
From my perspective, if a team has more than five players on the court at the same time because one or two players randomly run onto the court during play, shame on the coach. If the team has more than five players on the court at the same time because the officials failed to count players before putting the ball in play, shame on the officiating crew.
UNFORTUNATELY, while the shame is on the officiating crew in the second situation, the team is penalized for breaking the rule. This is the way that the rules are written. To enforce the rule any other way gives the opposing team a legitimate reason to gripe. In essence, if the officials fail to penalize this with a technical foul, the officials have shortchanged the opposition. I was that opposing coach several times in my coaching career.
Could the NFHS change the rule to put 100% of the responsibility on the officials? Well, yes they could (except for the player running on to the court during a live ball). But, the problem is, how would you handle the situation where you end up with six players on the court (as happened in an NBA game recently)? How do you know for sure how long the sixth player was out there? How would you know for sure whether the player joined play during a live ball or had been in since the previous dead ball? Would you wipe out the results and reset the clock? How would it be handled?
While the current rules are not perfect, they are probably the best they can be in this case. LESSON: Count and double-count players (we typically have two of us count the players as they are coming on the court -- that means BOTH of us in 2-man and two of us in 3-man) to make sure that each team has five and only five players. It is better to delay the restart by a couple seconds than to have an extra player or than to be short a player. This is just good game management. When you happen to catch a team with four, six or seven players on the court BEFORE the ball is put back into play, the coaches are quite appreciative.