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Originally posted by Lotto
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...but amazingly A1 is again the first to reach the ball and saves the ball by directing it diagonally forward toward her basket while tip-toeing along the sideline.
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It's hard to figure out what's happening here, since "directing" the ball could mean simply tapping it forward (in which case A1 still doesn't have control and this isn't the beginning of a dribble) or sort of catching it in one hand and guiding it forward (in which case A1 obtained control and this is the beginning of a dribble).
I'll deal with both cases below, but perhaps you could tell us which of these actually happened...?
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Lotto, you have grasped the crux of the problem. This part of the play is crucial to determining whether or not the call was correct. There is no doubt that this player made the ball go the direction that she wanted while making the save, and because of this my partner believed that she had control. I do not think that she caught the ball while directing it back into the court with one hand. So, I must ask if being able to direct the ball constitutes control. The rules book does not seem to support this conception of player control.
However, the definitions provided in 4-12-1 and 4-15-1 seem circular. Specifically, a player has control if he/she is dribbling, but a player must have control in order to start a dribble! So it is truly not clear if a player can establish control and start a dribble all in one touch of the basketball. How about some feedback on this please!
I came up with an analogy for my partner to test player control in this situation. Say we reverse the direction of the play, so that A1 is saving the ball from her frontcourt into her backcourt. Everything else is the same. Now when she is the first to touch the ball, I asked my partner if he would have called a backcourt violation.
He said that he would not have. Hence, he now believes that he kicked the call and probably cost that team the victory.
The mere fact that both of us are still discussing this play two days after it happened shows that we care about getting the call right for the players. Neither of us care about who called it. We just wanted it to be correct. My partner really thought that he was helping me on this play, not making a call for me, as he believed that I was screened out and could not see the girl hit the ball with both hands due to my positioning.
For the record, I could not see her initially touch the ball with both hands while it was near her stomach, but did see her release it with both hands as she pushed it to the floor.