Foul as time expires in regulation
 

Red 3 shooting 1 FT, leading by 1, with a 1 point lead. 20.4 seconds on the clock. Ball only hits backboard. Trail official calls violation. No time off clock. Officials had an opportunity to get together prior to the FT and talk as there was a timeout. Decided that on the ensuing possession, the new lead would have clock for the final shot since new trail would have back to the clock.

White throws the ball in and brings it up court. They manage to get 3 different shots off before a foul is called as they make their 4th attempt. Foul is called by lead and as he blows his whistle he looks up and sees 0.0 on the clock. Neither official heard a horn go off to indicate time was out.

What do you do?

Check with the table to make sure the horn was on. If it was, line them up to shoot and wait for the horn.

Shouldn't matter.

You can check with the table to see if the horn did or should have sounded.

Why do people do this? It makes no sense aside from verifying the clock starts. I don't and can't watch the shot and the clock at the same time. Unless you're incredibly lucky, you're not going to have both in a perfect line. You go with the horn, or, if present, the lights on the board. And the trail can do that just fine.

And the play demonstrates my very point...the lead was busy covering the play and wasn't able to look at the clock.

Gotta go with the horn. Check with the table to ensure that it was enabled. If it was, administer the foul. If not, try to figure out, with the table's help, how long it had been at 0.

Do note, however, that I've had a few occasions where the horn started to sound just as the timer was stopping the clock such that the horn sound with just a very short and weak bleep, almost in audible in some venues. It is possible that the horn did sound if ever so briefly.

OK, we slightly screwed this up.

I was the trail in the original post. After the foul was reported, we discussed what to do given that the clock read 0.0. We decided to shoot the FTs with the lane cleared. She missed the first and made the second, sending the game to OT.

Would it have made a difference if we had shot it with players in the lane? We'll never know. We didn't think to talk to the clock operator to see if she thought time was out before the foul was called, or if the horn was enabled.

We did have a chance to review the play via video afterward. The clock is only visible during the throw-in. Using a stopwatch, we determined that the foul did in fact occur before time on the clock expired, so granting the free throws was correct. We just jacked up administering them with players in the lane spaces.

Live and learn.

Not necessarily. If the foul happened so near the end of time that the timer could not stop the clock before the horn sounded (and assuming that the horn did sound or would have sounded if it was turned on), and no official had knowledge of the time that was on the clock at the time of the foul (as in your case), then you were correct to have no one on the line.

(I recognize that some associations / states like / require the officials to put "some time" back on the clock if the foul happened before the horn.)

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Thanks. That explains it well. My partner was sure that the foul occurred prior to expiration of time. We still should have consulted the table rather than go it on our own.

Just to add a little more info, this was a regional championship game, where the winner qualified for state and the loser was done for the season. The host school won in OT, after being the team that trailed pretty much the entire game until it got to OT. They were considered the favorite, but after previous games in the tournament, I had told my partner that if the "underdog's" top 3 players played the way they were capable of playing, I thought they had a chance to pull off the upset, and they almost did. The home team made up an 8 point deficit in the final 90 seconds. Losing team missed 4 FTs in the final 25 seconds, and we later heard from their coach that they only made 4 of 17 FTs in the 4th quarter. Tough way to lose.

I should also add that I've never seen more wasted tears in my LIFE. The team that ended up winning was down about 9-10 points when tears began to flow from various players, both on the floor as well as on the bench, with about 4 minutes left in the game.

This was definitely a girls game! :eek:

I think there is some use in this practice. Let me give 2 reasons:

1) We can all keep a mental countdown and know approximately when the horn is set to go off, so it doesn't catch us off guard, and I think when you get down to 5-6 seconds, most official probably do this so they can be especially dialed in to whether a shot is released in time or not. However, with 20 seconds remaining, it is a little more difficult to accurately gauge 20 seconds in your head with other stuff going on. Being able to glance at the clock, without turning away from the play, is useful.

2) If this gym were particularly loud, then it is possible for a horn to not be heard by the covering official. I think it is a lot easier to have to make a decisions about whether or not a basket should count when you don't hear the horn if you have the clock within a glance of watching the release.

From the sound of it they weren't so wasted.