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Had a game last Friday. Two private schools who are big rivals. The little facility only holds about 1,000 but it was SRO and extremely loud. At halftime we are talking and feeling pretty good about how things are going. That must have jinxed me.

Early in the third quater I have a hold on H23 in the lane from the L. Understand, this guy is either 6-10 or 6-11 and the next tallest guy on the floor at the time was maybe 6-3. As the players are headed down the floor I report the foul of white 12 (12 was the number of the player held). I am about to administer the throw-in and it hits me. I look at the table and can tell they are wondering what I have been drinking. I jog over and correct the reporting. When I get back to my spot the player is grinning at me so I just tell him I had a brain f@rt and he laughs and said "Been there dude". Down at the other end I have a bang-bang play right in front of me and I call an block. The place goes nuts and all of a sudden I am thinking I screwed it up.

Somehow the combination of those two things gets my flustered. All of a sudden my whistle is really slow...coaches start chirping (rightfully so)...and my reaction to changes in direction is slow. Even when I started doing a little play-by-play in my head of what I am seeing it takes me a good 5 minutes of game time to get myself focused.

I have not felt that useless on a court in a long time. Other than the self-talk does anyone have advice of what else might work? Honestly, I felt like stopping play and going bang my head on the wall in an attempt to knock myself back to reality.