[26 Year Gap]

Originally Posted by cmhjordan23

I know the philosophy is that a foul in the 1st QT is a foul in the 4th QT. 8th grade boys, 3rd place game tied with 5 sec left. Team A drives the endline (not very hard) and team B was in legal guarding position until he gave one of those hip checks. In the bonus, hits 1 and team goes on to win by 1. Coach didn't say much about it, but the fans were definitely on us. Saying that was weak. You hate to call a foul like that to decide the game but it is still a foul. I know the proper thing is to call it (my partners call), but would anybody let that go.

Originally Posted by just another ref

This thread kinda warped over time, did it not? The OP, I think, recognized the relative importance of the final seconds in the scheme of things. He also feels, apparently, that a bad no-call is better than a bad call. I would agree. But what I get out of the OP is that he is asking if he should change his standard of making a call in the final seconds to help avoid making a bad call in this circumstance. I think most of us agree the answer to this is no.

Any foul call in the dying seconds is going to elicit fan response and bench response in a close game. I know it is HTBT, but the description in the OP matches up to: blowing the whistle = good call, right call; and, not blowing the whistle = choking or swallowing the whistle.