Saturday night, boys' JV. I had an experienced and strong partner. The game was close the whole way. Both teams pressed and both wanted to shoot a lot of threes, and made a fair number. Both coaches were decent. The visiting coach was a little young and complained two or three times but nothing significant.
Fast-forward to the final minute. Home scores with ~55 seconds left to go up 50-46. Visitors come down and are looking for a three from their best shooter but he is guarded well and nobody wants to shoot. Somebody else finally shoots and misses with 15 seconds left, and after a home rebound the visitors foul and we have a 1-and-1. Home misses, visitors dribble up and the visiting coach takes his last timeout with 9.5 seconds left.
This was a galactically-dumb timeout. They need two scores, and now can't stop the clock after the first one if they get it. Out of the timeout, they pass in to the corner and get a three blocked OOB on my endline (I'm L) with :08.2 left. On the ensuing throw-in, they hit a cutter for a layup. Home grabs the ball out of the net and I glance up as I start my count and see 5.7 or so. After a couple seconds of the visiting coach yelling for a foul, a visitor reaches through the plane and smacks the ball. I hit the whistle and glance up at :00.9 on the clock. I report the technical with the visiting crowd jeering (and the visiting coach happy of course.) I do know the case book comment about ignoring knocking the ball away or breaking the plane with less than five seconds, but I don't think it applies here as the count was going to end before time expired.
Home makes 1 of 2, so now it is 51-48. The inbound pass comes in and the visitors foul the guy who catches it. I blow the whistle for the foul and the clock stops at :00.1. Double bonus. I report the foul as the visiting coach is loudly telling me it should be :00.6. Not sure if he was thinking of the NBA rule where a minimum of 0.3 would have to come off in that situation or what. But I've got no information or rule to use to change the time in this situation. He's a step on the floor and a step on the wrong side of midcourt. I REALLY don't want to pin him with 0.1 left. I tell him twice that he's been heard and shoo him back. I turn back for the free throws and hear my partner say something about picking up a marker. I turn back and I guess he threw his marker down and it was on the floor. I point at it and as he turns to pick it up he screams "that's terrible!" and I've run out of rope, so I pin him.
Visiting crowd is crazy now, and we quickly shoot the 4 FTs, as home makes 3. 54-48. I crossover to handle the final throw-in and as the home player is coming over I hear a fan yell "you have time, you can call at least one more technical" which was a little funny. I bit my lip to keep from smiling and a moment later we were out of there.
