Substitute Not Ready

[crosscountry55]

Had a GJV game today in which the visitors had 6 in the book and the home team had 8. And it was a slugfest. Even a conservative foul calling strategy was not enough to prevent some players from fouling out.

With about four minutes to go in the 4th, the Vs were down to four players. The home team got down to five with about 1:30 remaining. But here's the catch. H8 was in the book but did not expect to play, so was not dressed in the proper game shorts. After H1, H2 and H3 had all fouled out, coach sent H8 flying into the locker room to put on the correct shorts, and in the meantime said, "we'll go with 4 until she comes back....that's fair, 4 on 4, right?"

Of course we've all read the case play that states if you have five, you have to play five. I told the H coach that I appreciated his offer, but by rule he has five available team members, so he has to play with five.

Of course all this is occurring while H8 is in the locker room getting the right shorts on. It's a one-point game, and not surprisingly the V coach is angling for some sort of penalty on H. DOG doesn't apply here, and nothing about what the V coach did was unsporting (it may have been shortsighted, but it wasn't unsporting). So I didn't feel I had a penalty to administer.

Finally after about two minutes H8 returned and we continued play.

Did I handle this correctly?

P.S. The game went to OT, and the V team, playing 4 against 5 for the last 8 minutes of basketball, won the game. Interesting.