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My feeling is that you have to control play without controlling the game. If the game requires 60 fouls to be called, then call 60 fouls. If you can get by with 25, that's even better. I've had both extremes this year. We had a 1A team and a 2A team and had 62 fouls in the game. But they never adjusted. They kept pushing, setting illegal screens, handchecking and on and on. A week later, we worked a 4A game and called 17 fouls, 7 & 10, in the first half. With four minutes to go in the 4th qtr., we had called 2 fouls on each team. During a TO, a reporter on the baseline asked me, "Did you guys change the way you were calling or did they adjust?". I asked, "What do you think?". He smiled. 27 fouls for the game, as one team had to foul to put the other on the line.
Rut, you are correct that rough play is not a POE this year. But let me tell you about the POE. When I go to the state rules clinic next year, I fully intend to wear ear plugs. Our crew started the year out by calling palming and intentional fouls by the book and by what we were told at the clinic. What happened? We got complaints phoned in after almost every game. It's not unlike the MLB strike zone. It lasts long enouigh for a few managers to start cmplaining about it and it's gone. Until you can make every official in your association place the same empahsis on the annual POE, the ones who do call it will get blasted. Subsequently, we've gone back to calling both items in the same manner that we did last year.
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