I had a BV game couple days ago. One of the teams (not the one with the DQd player) thought this time was a TO. It was their ball on the endline and we were ready to go. I had blown my whistle and put the ball down. They were half a second away from a 5 second violation. I told the coach it's not a TO and between the horn and my whistle your players should have been on their spots ready to go.

Nah. He let it go. I kinda think coach didn't know if it was a good argument and decided to give it a whirl. (The table crew might have fit well into that other thread . . . .)

He gets 20 seconds. If there isn't a sub on his way to the table by the time I finish the word "five," my next words are to the timer.

I've only had one coach get to 20, and we shot two extra free throws.

I agree. You almost always have to be proactive with the table when a sub doesn't come immediately.

Part of the problem is table education. Most varsity tables fully understand the concept of timing timeouts and the 15-second warning horns that go with them. Conversely, most of them give you a deer-in-the-headlights look when you say, "20 seconds. Go."

If that concept is challenging, the idea of sounding a warning horn just five seconds after starting your stopwatch is even more foreign to scorers. It's not like they actually read Rule 2 or anything.

I haven't done this when I'm the R, but perhaps in the future when I have my little conversation with the table before the game I should specifically talk about replacement interval procedures.

Meh....not sure if I want to go there or not.

It's the one thing I make sure to talk about with the timer.