[Rich]

Boys game last night. Small gym in every way imaginable, packed full with both home and visiting fans.

Visiting team comes out and gradually puts the home team away. 8 after 1, 12 after 2, 16 after 3, and the fourth quarter ended 17-2 en route to a 31-point outcome.

The visiting coach came really close to earning himself a technical foul in the second quarter. Apparently I missed a foot on the line on a 3-point basket (I may have -- the coach probably had the best look at the kid's left foot) and he asked my partner about it (he was looking at post/rebounding action and told the coach he wasn't looking there -- to which the coach said, well, if that's the case then you need to call some of the holding, etc. that's going on down there). So it's pretty obvious what this coach is like already. Later, he wants a player-control foul where there simply wasn't one -- his defender was off balance and there simply wasn't anything other than a good move that put the kid on the floor. I'm trail in his lap, he asks for a timeout. I grant it, he wants to talk.

"That's 3 you've missed now. The 3-pointer, the out of bounds in the first quarter, ..."

By the way, if the coach had asked me about it, I might have said something like, "If you saw that shot right, I might have missed it." I was on ball and we had a trap near the division line and he passed it to the top of the key and the kid shot pretty much right away. I was pretty sure it was a 3, but I was moving pretty quickly to get a look. Anyway, he never asked me at the time and by the time he got to it it was 4 minutes (game clock) later....

10 years ago I would've simply whacked him at this point. Last night, I didn't, but I wasn't exactly silent, either. I told him "I'd be happy to answer any questions about a play that just happened, but if you want to give me a history lesson, then you're pretty close to a technical foul." Then I walked away. Normally, I'm not that direct about things, but at the time I thought (and still think) that this was the only approach that was going to stop this rehashing of events (well, a technical would've probably done it, too, but I wanted to see if I could stop it another way -- worst outcome is he gets a technical the next time he does it, and he didn't do it again).

I had a play in the early fourth quarter that's still bothering me. Player drives into the lane and right in the middle of the lane the defender goes straight up vertical and the driving player plants him. I looked at it, thought PC all the way, and in the meantime, my trail (a guy I've worked with maybe two or three times) came busting in with a whistle and for some reason that threw me -- and I had no whistle at all. I mean, this was a garden variety PC foul with the only weirdness was that it was taken with the kid in the air.

The worst part of this is my partner thought I had a whistle -- it was a loud gym and he probably assumed that I had something (and I damned well should have) so he came to me and it looked like we had no idea what we were doing. I simply said, "take it." I mean, I had no whistle, no fist, nothing -- he said in the locker room he must've heard an echo from his whistle. He looked at me and I said "take it" again and that's when he signaled the PC foul. The home bench (who was taking it on the chin from the visiting team all night) was quite unhappy, but like I told my partner in the locker room after apologizing, it was the right call.

So, I have no idea why I didn't call this. I called 3 player control fouls in the game last night and 2 blocks that were bang-bang block charge calls -- I never have problems with these -- and I just can't put a finger on why I didn't have something in that situation. The only thing I can think of is that I've done a lot of 3-person lately and I'd probably give that one to a C and when the outside official busted in with a whistle, I simply yielded to it. And then he hesitated looking for me to make the call when I never made one. No excuse, really, but it looked terrible and a simple call on my part would've avoided all of it.

I have my only Saturday off in a month and a half today. So two days off and then six nights in a row next week. 2 GV, 3 BV, and a juco men's game.