PC or intentional?
 

Irritated dribbler puts up defensive arm bar and accidentally pushes/clips defender in the nose/face. Do we have a garden variety PC foul (no FTAs) or does the intentional foul for contact above the shoulders override? (NFHS rules)

I'm thinking the IF overrides (and a word or two of explanation will be needed to both coaches) but want to make sure.

did he hit him with an elbow?

Think more of a forearm/armbar or open-hand type action. Nothing malicious intended, but space-clearing, for sure.

What NFHS rule would you be referring to?

If you were to reference to the POE issued a while back, my thought isbyoud have to go PC or flagrant, I don't believe there is room for intentional foul here if you read intent into this.

I could see going with a violation or player control. To me the excessive swinging elbows rule needs better clarification what constitutes:

a> violation
b> common foul
c> intentional
d> flagrant


I think D is easy, I think A - C need better understanding.

I think A is pretty clear. If there's excessive swinging with intent to clear space, but NO CONTACT, then it's a violation.


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Yes, this is what I was referring to. Contact above the shoulders is deemed IF, if I'm remembering right. Help a mangled memory.

That was one of the options but not necessarily the only option.

PC or intentional?
 

Don't have my books, but I think that was 2011 if memory serves.

Edit: look up 2012.

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I'm operating off of memory, but doesn't such contact have to be with the elbow in order to remove our judgment and option for a common/PC foul?

The POE had to do with elbow contact above the shoulders but I would disagree that it removed judgement, despite what some of our local interpreters thought.

The verbiage with the POE was elbow.

To the OP, no one can really answer your question with any certainty -- it's too vague. Irritated? How hard did he swing his arm up? If a player swings an arm around out of frustration and clocks someone in the face I'm definitely leaning towards IF. However, just because there's contact with the face does not mean an automatic IF. Could very well have just been a PC.

I agree, but so do my local interpreters. From the outset, we were to judge whether the elbows were swinging "excessively" when contact was made.

Good enough, and I hear ya on the HTBT aspect of it.

What's emerged has been very helpful. I'd always remembered it as "contact above the shoulders" period, and not an elbow above the shoulders. I keep trying to picture the state newsletter in my head and whether the illustrations always included elbows landing, either by definition or by chance.

At any rate, if a ball handler palms somebody's face away or slips an arm bar above the shoulder while pushing a defender away, I'm not going to think of it as an automatic IF any more.

(To clarify, in the 4-5 years since it came out, I think I've seen it come into play just once, and that was about a month ago. Thankfully now, it was just an inadvertent boxing out elbow to the head.)

I've made the call twice: once in a MS game and once in a JV game. Both were rebounds where the player who had gained possession stretched out the elbows and swung in a way that made head contact. Both defenders dropped.