Its not that I "think it's false." You brought an offical who had waived off game tying shot back from the locker room to score the bucket and send what would have otherwise been a completed game into an extra period. To tell the coaches that "you didn't think it'd change the outcome of the game" is a blatant lie.

I guess you're fortunate that the coaches accepted this explanation. I can't think of any two coaches in this area who would just accept a completely nonsensical answer in a situation like this. Let alone, coaches of two teams ranked in the state.

I'm not the biggest fan of how you handled the situation but at the end of the day I'm all for getting it right. But IMO, we have a responsibility to communicate a situation like this as best we can to the coaches who are impacted by our administration of the game.

You have already thrown your party under the bus by your actions and people in the gym saw what happened and can figure things out. Not to mention the tape. You say your assigner got on you about your language. I'm assuming he was told about it and wasnt there. Has he seen the tape? Is that all he had to say about the situation?

As others have said, the biggest takeaway for me here is a good example of why you should always get partners together and discuss things like this in last possession situations. With .2 sec left we are reminding of who has the last shot, that it has to--and can be--a tip, and for everybody to have an idea of whether shot got off. No way someone is waiving something like this off and we aren't quickly confirming/communicating before leaving the court. I don't care how many years of officiating we all have, these are basic reminders that you repeat at the end of games to minimize the chances of these types of brain farts.

But hey, stuff happens. At the very least though you owe the coaches and participants (via the coaches) a reasonable explanantion here. Around here, your explanation and the coaches tape would have been on the assigners email and phone aroud 9:30pm. And that explanation would be a huge problem.

I don't know. It's probably not what I would have said, but it's not completely inaccurate either.

1. There was confusion about the last score.
2. One official didn't think it changed the outcome of the game, because he thought it couldn't count. "We" here is owning the mistake as a crew.

I really have no idea what I would have said. Maybe "Jimmy thought the game was over," or something like that.

A few years ago, I had stayed after the JV game to run the clock since the normal timer hadn't shown up. I just barely convinced a varsity crew that they had to play the last 0.2 seconds of the third quarter.

"Jimmy had some diarrhea. You know how it goes, Coach..."

You know, a better timer would've just let time expire... :D

Man, Rich. That's brutal. Sorry you have to keep re-living that. But you're right, you shouldn't care because you did nothing wrong. In fact, I'd argue that there's really no better way to handle a cowboy. Hats off. As many others have said, I would have had words for him in the locker room.

You think it's false. Now you don't think it's false. Then you think your coaches are in a different box than the ones around here.

An explanation is NOT what was needed in this scenario. I was sure both coaches knew exactly what happened. Coaches are the majority of my votes and I don't think there's even a chance I lost a vote this night.

Cute change of story, kinda. Assigner called me about the write-up of the play I gave him. The official was the one who said people overheard me lighting him up. As of now, the assigner said no one else had contacted him about poor behavior in dealing with another official. Hope it stays that way, but it took some stress off since before I figured there was a chance if there were complaints by anyone in the school they may have banned me from officiating there.

What else has he said about the situation? If I was the assignor, I think I would have thanked you before anything else.

I would disagree with that. I can't believe both coaches were fine with any of this, before or after the locker room tirade. Especially if this was a rivalry/division game or just two highly ranked teams. The whole thing, as described, is very unusual. I would love to hear what the coaches are telling their peers about what happened, just to see how it all went down from their perspective.

Is there any video from the end of regulation through the OT?

We had an inbounds with 0.7 seconds left in the half a few weeks ago. The timer was slow starting the clock and as the ball got deflected out of bounds, I delayed my whistle so the clock would run out rather than me having to tell both teams that the timer screwed up and that we would not be having another throw-in.

The timer stopped the clock without a whistle or a stop clock signal. I had to go to both benches and end the half with 0.2 on the clock. I had definite knowledge and I wasn't going to allow another throw-in.

I wish more timers would realize that they are not there to think or do anything but what we tell them to do from the court.

In clock-winding-down situations late in the game/half, I've occasionally actually had a quick conversation with the timer about just that very thing.

"Just a quick reminder... the clock starts when (I/My Partner) drops his hand. So don't look at anything except (Me/My Partner)"

Would've been a waste of oxygen with this timer.

Our scorer last night was one of the worst I've had in a long time. Of course he's been doing it for 35 years, blah, blah....he called us back over 3 times cause he didn't get the numbers from us. And that *never* happens with timers that have a bit of a clue.

I would still be in the penitentiary...

My goal was to talk sense into him at the time. It quickly became obvious that wasn't going to happen.

Drive bus over partner....back bus up over partner.....drive bus over partner....

Wow, and I was confident he wouldn't have the balls to rat you out after his performance.