[hoopguy]

Spent the weekend watching daughter's AAU. Found a couple interesting observations.

One team had a little bit of attitude with refs but seemed typical for AAU. After the game, the girls asked me if I had seen a particular incident and I did not see it from the sidelines. After a foul call, as the calling official was reporting the foul, the girl who committed the foul gave him the finger with both hands from behind him so that he did not see. From my vantage point on the sidelines, I did see the girls on that team giggling as the free throws were being shot but I did not know the reason at the time. The calling official’s partner had not crossed the division line so he was in no position to see this either. My question is, if you were the non calling official and were in position to see the player give your partner the finger behind his back, what would you call? I am thinking flagrant unsporting Tech. Is that overboard? Should it just be an unsporting tech? What about a varsity game? What call to make?

Another AAU play that caught my attention... Inbounds pass under team A's basket. Player A1 throws the ball deep and player A2 can just reach up and touches the ball in the front court and then chases into the back court and grabs the ball. The official does not call a backcourt violation. The player A2, assuming it is a backcourt violation begins walking the ball back toward the official and commits an obvious traveling violation and then realizes what is happening and passes the ball. No idea why the official missed the obvious travel but got the fact that it was not backcourt. Maybe he was congratulating himself or arguing with the coach. After the game, I saw the coach questioning the official about that particular non call on the backcourt so I think he may have been distracted. It seemed funny how he got the tough call but missed the easy one.