[Mark Padgett]

Two guys who run camps in this area asked me to work some "holiday" games this weekend. The teams are middle school boys and are supposed to be from a fairly competitive program. I worked four games and three of them went as smooth as any I've ever had. However, one of the games was something out of a Stephen King novel.

We were told to "ignore" certain administrative things like illegal numbers and names in the book being late and/or wrong, etc. That saved a lot of technicals because one of the teams had all 12 players with illegal numbers. Their lowest number was 66! We had six technicals on six different players (on both teams) during the game for reaching over the line and hitting the ball while the inbounder was still holding it. We had a technical on a coach for throwing a clipboard onto the court, not because he was upset with us, but because one of his players blew a breakaway layup by fumbling the ball OOB and he was mad at his player. All totaled, there were 11 technicals in the game.

Here's the really weird one. Two players on the same team got into a fight with each other! Apparently, one of them felt the other was hogging the ball and wouldn't pass off to open players. This came during play. We tossed both of them.

Wait - it gets worse. A parent came down onto the court and yelled at a player on the other team because that kid fouled their kid intentionally. We had made the correct call, but I guess that wasn't good enough. We had game management toss the parent - a mom! If she would have touched the kid, we would have called the cops.

The final score was 27-18, not because the teams played a ball possession game, but because they were just that bad - oh yeah, they could hardly make a free throw, either - even when there was no one on the lane.

And to think, if I hadn't set my DVR, I would have missed the Law and Order marathon for this.