How would you have handled this situation?
 

This is the first time in my career I've really blown up on someone. At the time I was too pissed off to probably take the best course of action, but here we go BV game:

Great game and both teams were ranked high in the state. Other two officials on the crew were a 17 year guy and a 13 year guy. So, ideally, I'd think they'd know the rules.

.2 on the clock in the 4th and the home team has a throw-in in the front court and they are down by two points. A1, the dude throwing it in, throws a prayer of a lob around the free throw line. A2 jumps up and taps the ball into the basket. The trail who administered the throw-in starts screaming no basket and then proceeds to run out of the gym. At this point, having a perfect view of the entire play, I think I had to of missed something on the throw-in(Maybe a tip? No one was defending the throw-in, but I guess there is the extremely small chance a player was invisible to me). Me and the other official are confused so I tell him to stay with the teams and keep them on the floor while I figure out what happened. Calmed the coach/fans/players down before I left.

I get to the locker room, at this point trying to stay composed, and ask the official why the basket was no good. He said since there was less than .3 it was impossible for a team to score, even with a tip. He said by rule there needs to be .3 seconds on the clock to allow a team to tip it in. He made some moronic remark about how long he'd been around and I completely lost it. I have no idea why screaming at him worked but he got back out onto the court and we finished the game. The language I used got me busted by my assigner. I'd guess mostly because the official wasn't the only one who heard me. Thought I was alone with him, but apparently the wresting team or something was close by.

I'm aware I handled this horribly. I'm not looking to hear about how horrible it was, but what others' would've done in the same situation.

I would've had a huddle with my crew before the throw-in to make sure everyone was on the same page with what could be a legal score and what could not. Especially with the person responsible for the last shot. This is the norm around here when there is .3 or less time on the clock.

So....what happened after your fit? You still have a partner on the court and some calmed down coaches. How was it handled after you came back from the locker room?

so much is wrong with what he did.

1. I never stick around, but you won't see me in the locker room while my partners are still on the court (unless I've waited long enough and the partner is still thanking the table crew, the AD, the trainers....

2. Not knowing this rule is unbelievable to me.

Yeah, you probably handled it poorly, but only because you don't know who's within earshot. Maybe a "softer" approach would be to quietly tell him to either get back onto the court or pull out his rule book and THEN get back onto the court.

If there is less than a second I always make sure we all know the player can either catch or tap a try for goal.

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk

This would've saved a giant headache. Big oops indeed, but thanks for saying it.

We came back out and had OT. I got both coaches and just gave a vague, "We had a confusion about the last score and didn't think it'd change the outcome of the game." Luckily they both cut me a break and didn't ask for specifics. The OT was pretty awkward, for me. I had calmed down at that point but felt 'in the tank' and never really got out of it. Other two officials did great and ended up with a 6-point win by the away team. Home teams PG was fouled out and it hurt them.

I think the biggest thing you could've done differently would've been having a discussion during the timeout that occurred just prior to this throw-in (assuming that there was a timeout, which, based on the description of what happened, there almost certainly was).

Make sure everybody's on the same page as far as who has last-second shot, if the shot can be a try or if it has to be a tap, can the thrower run along the end line, and any other potentially relevant information. Also gives us a chance to take a deep breath and relax just a little bit... when I get in these types of situations, I like to conclude with a "I hope you guys are having fun, because i sure am" just to help keep things loose.

Not sure how this guy would've reacted to such a conference, but at least you could've hashed out the mistaken rule without the "postgame/not really postgame" antics.

In other words, basically what Smitty said.

Rebuttal to this "interpretation": If this was actually true, why would we even need to play the last 0.2 seconds? Just end the game right then and be done with it.

Agreed 100% and you are not incorrect in your reasoning for using this rebuttal, but I could see him saying there could be a violation or foul before time starts. This guy sounds like a real cowboy.

FTR, I can only imagine some of the language used around my area would have been pretty similar to what you used. I'm also guessing this other official is not the one who turned you in, and now that the situation has come to light, I'm guessing he's going to be in more "trouble" than you are.

The biggest thing to not do is lose your temper. That's what led to you getting into trouble, right? Next time a partner does something totally stupid, don't lose your temper. Just deal with it and move on.

Had I been the one to go to the locker room, I honestly would have started laughing at him when he gave his interp, and then just told him that we were going to OT and he could join us if he wanted to or we would finish the game two-person.

Unless your health is threatened, I would not get upset over any of this. It is a sport that involves people that makes mistakes.

What should have happen is a discussion before the throw-in was started about the situation. Otherwise, leave it alone after that. If anything I might have had a conversation before we left the floor if it was that bad.

I never understand why people get so upset over things like this because at the end of the day, "They can't eat you." If the official made the mistake, then he will have to live with that mistake more than you if you tried to help. Sometimes just a quick talk snaps people into place. He might have doubted his understanding on the rule and then you could have gotten it right.

Peace

And even if there was not a timeout, say there was a shot attempt that was then batted OOB, leaving the 0.2 on the clock, I would have no issue at all with a 5 second officials huddle, maybe even just the C and the T, to be absolutely certain everyone is on the same page.

I'm surprised that the guy even came back to the court, if he was so sure and he'd be around so long, then I would've guessed he would've been pretty stubborn too.

I agree with the others that a quick conference before the play would have been best, but who knows what the guy would have said during the conference.

I would have been angry - not so much because of the botched ruling - but because he sprinted to the locker room and left his two partners on the floor.

Once the OT ended, what was the post game like?

I imagine it was quick.

I worked a boys varsity game at a school...I was standing in the tunnel at the top of a flight of stairs and the clock stopped with 0.2 seconds left and a 1 point game. I took a few steps down to let my partners (who were stretching) know were were about to take the floor and here come the officials....they used this "interpretation" -- they figured that nothing could happen since it was 0.3 or under.

By this time all three of the officials were on the stairs and the teams were shaking hands.

The amazing thing is that nobody complained at all. I did tell the crew why that wasn't the right thing to do, however.

Bummer dude!
Everything you did was perfect right up till you humiliated that guy in the locker room... Just be grateful he wasn't having a really bad day and decided to go back at you - would have been a real mess; regardless of who was right or who would have won the pissing contest.

Its over now - I applaud you for even bringing it up on this forum... I have new pregame material.

Just like the experience I had some years back that has now been viewed over 48K times.

I never once raised my voice, though.

Is this rule that obscure?

Sent from my SM-G925V using Tapatalk

True, but if it gets posted again you have no one to blame but yourself.

Take the heat, own it, learn, and move on.

I think the important thing is the crew got it right in the end. It may have been worse had you not called him on it.

Somebody needs to post it since there are new guys who have no clue what y'all are talking about.

Agreed. I'm always up for learning from (what sounds like) others' mistakes.

Here's a link

One of our own was the official administering this throw in, not the one who made the call.

Rich, can you remind us: Were there ANY repercussions for the official who went all Al Haig on that play? Any scolding form the assignor, any reduction in quality assignments, any similar tales pop up of him fouling something up?

This isn't necessarily to beat up on him. (He does that to himself just fine.) Just wondering how things unfolded.

How would you have handled this situation?
 

Nothing really happened other than I got a phone call from that league's assigner. I answered his questions best I could....this was before I became a YouTube star. His concern was that we were seen openly arguing on the court - I didn't realize how calm I actually appeared until the video materialized. How I didn't explode at the time is a mystery.

Not a word was said in the locker room. We drove separately - when he went in the shower, I dressed and left.

BTW, that was over 6 years ago. I spent 5 of those years avoiding saying anything about that night. Recently I realized I don't care -- I did nothing wrong.

Finally, for those of you who think you'd have stepped up and fixed things, you have no idea how you'd handle something that you'd never expect would happen in a million years.

You did the best with a crappy hand. I would black line that official before I got home. That is also probably the only time if a coach were to ask me or say something about my partner I'd leave him on his island.

Your restraint was indeed admirable, if not super-human. I think we're unanimous on that point.

And while I can see an assignor's wish to have shorter officials conferences, it's a bit mind-boggling that THAT was his biggest concern after this episode. Unless he privately gnashed teeth and/or read this guy the riot act away from you out of some sort of noble managerial gesture.

This partner, on the other hand, has had to have felt some heat after being on YouTube, etc. so hopefully that's done some good, somehow. After all, he put himself in this terrible, indefensible position. At some point there has to be some sheepishness about this on his part, right?

Question for the OP; Who was the Referee on the crew?
If the official who left, then he needs to be convinced by the other two crew members to change his call.
If you or the partner who stayed on the court, then you have the authority to change the ruling on the last second try and inform the third official. Let him either return for OT or leave as he desires.

What does this even mean and why did you choose to say this to the coaches?

IMO that's a terrible explanation and its patently false as deciding whether or not to count a score in this situation most certainly "changes the outcome of the game."

Sorry Rich this post brought up your play.

@jpgc99: I just left. For the first time ever in a HS game I didn't even change except shoes. Put on my coat, zipped it up, left. I'm grateful for the responses and they've helped. At the time when the game was over I was still frustrated and didn't want to open my mouth in case I said something stupid I'd regret. Jrut brought up a good point, but for whatever reason I just snapped this game and never want it to happen again.

@Nevada: I was the R. I didn't want to outright change the call without talking to the calling official first in case I missed something.

@VaTerp: I winged an answer I thought to be the best at the time. While you may think it's false/terrible/etc, I was okay with it given all the other stuff going on. My entire point was to make it obvious I didn't want to get into details but we screwed up. As angry as I was at the other official there's no way I'm throwing a partner to the coaches.

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.

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.

After all this, Ive realized that I somewhat misread your explanation in that you were saying the crew initially didnt think the play had an impact on the game. Still don't know how that works in a 2 pt game but better understand what you were saying now.

Me culpa.

I was also confused by this explanation at first. But after reading some of the additional replies, I think the intent of saying they didn't think it had an impact on the game is referring to the entire play. In other words, the entire inbounding sequence did not have an impact on the game because the official thought that no scoring was possible with 0.2 on the clock.

I initially read it as "whether or not the goal counted had no impact on the game" which is obviously not true based on the score.

But I think the intent was basically saying that the rule was misinterpreted and as a result the entire play didn't (or couldn't) have an impact on the outcome of the game.