[efbyon]

Of course, I am speculating since obviously I was not there...

I am guessing that the reason why the bench personnel that came onto the court were not disqualified was because the officials could not determine who among those in the melee were bench personnel at the time. The fans coming onto the floor certainly did not help the situation. By rule, the bench personnel that came onto the floor that did not participate in the fight (it looked as if all the "extra" people on the floor were trying to break up the fight, so I would say they were not actually participating in the fight, but I could be wrong since the video may not have told the whole story) should have been assessed flagrant T's and become disqualified, with the head coach being assessed one indirect T (hopefull BillyMac or someone else can provide the rule reference since I don't have my books on me right now).

Another possibility: the officials may have been able to figure out who came off the bench during the melee, or at least some of them, but given that the bench people were trying to act like peacemakers (or so it appeared; again, the video may have not told the whole story), the officials opted not to assess any further T's. If this was the case, then I probably would have informed both HC's what the rule is so that they would know in the event they get involved in a similar situation in the future. There's that chance they could get an official(s) in the future that might be more stringent with enforcing the rules, so the coaches would be better off knowing than not knowing.

I would love to be able to access a TV monitor to determine who should be ejected, but as most of us know, Federation rules currently do not allow that, unlike NCAA. I would not be surprised if that subject gets tabled for discussion in the future, though.

But I think there is still a lesson to be learned here: in situations such as this, one of the officials should act as an observer to determine who came onto the floor during the fight so that the appropriate action can be taken on those that did it, while the other official(s) tries to break up the fight.

Fred