Yep, from the sounds of it, you saved your assigner a viral video involving his game.

That was your problem. He pretty much proved to you he didn't have any "sense" when he made that call...
you probably should have screamed…"r u ….ing insane?"…and continued screaming at him to make him think you were insane…. :p

Can't believe it...

What would you have said? I should've said I didn't think an explanation was needed, not that one wasn't. I also wouldn't say coaches were fine with it, especially the home coach when the basket was waved off. Or the away coach when we counted it. The comment I made was the only thing I said towards our phenomenal performance when a coach asked me about what happened. The third official who stayed explained the situation to the coaches and I figured they understood mostly what had happened.

Two comments popped into my head. The one I said and, "Why don't you ask the clown?"

When isn't there video these days? As far as I know it's still on the school's cloud or whatever. My assigner also took a look at it.

I really think that this is a time for the crew to eat some humble pie.

If the partner won't be the one to explain how he screwed up, I think it's on you as the R to do that.

"The ball was tapped before the horn. That's legal. We mistakenly applied the 0.3 second rule to a tapped ball. We're fixing our mistake."

Fair enough. Well said and I like it a lot better than what I did.

Easy to do at a keyboard. Probably not as easy in the heat of the moment.

Of course . . .but also good to think of these types of scenarios with the leisure of the key board, as they may come in handy some time in the heat of the moment.

True, and it's especially good to think of it in terms of concepts. Rich's concept of just eating crow as a crew is a good one here. Everyone knows what happened, so there's no point in sugar coating it. "We messed it up, we're fixing it. Let's play ball."

I've been thinking of the best way to tell the coach, this is it for sure. Like you said, easy to type up, but certainly this seems to be about the best to-the-point explanation you could have.

Spare a thought for the poor 3rd official who was left holding the bag in the gym while this was going on in the locker room. That had to be an uncomfortable feeling.

Great point.

Big ups to Amesman for the Alexander Haig reference.

Does this mean we can refer to Rich as "GHWB"?

Not sure what you're getting at here. I said it's false because IT WAS and never said anything different. My point about it not being about "what I think" is b/c its not a matter of opinion. Your statement was factually incorrect no matter how one wants to spin it.

And I said nothing about "coaches being in a different box" either. I just know that explanation to the vast majority of the coaches I deal with would end up being very problematic.

At the end of the day your crew got the play right and the explanation worked for you in that situation. All good.

But I strongly disagree that the scenario did not need an explanation. It most certainly did. You were just fortunate, IMO, that the coaches accepted the one you gave them without further issue.

It wasn't factually incorrect. We were confused on the last play and the calling official didn't think it'd change the outcome of the game. What I said is basically exactly what happened. We just fixed what initially was called.

Thinking something would be problematic and what would actually happen are two very different things. I can't even remember that last time I had a major problem with a coach and I wasn't worried about them during this game.

I'm fortunate for many things, but this isn't one of them. The worst case scenario is a coach asks another question because he didn't like what I said. Zero harm done as I just better explain what happened. There have been some great responses on a better way to handle mucking up a call, but nothing could've possibly gone wrong here(At the point I was talking to the coaches. they were already calmed down at this point and just wanted to know what went on). Again, worst case the coaches ask me another question.

I've realized over the years that when I (or the crew) screws something up, nothing cuts to the chase like eating a heaping helping of crow, keeping in mind that you can't go to that well often -- or maybe you don't belong working whatever level you're working.

We're human. People have better BS detectors than most give them credit for, even coaches. Key thing is that you are keeping control of the situation even when you're telling them you screwed up.