Back court

[SD Referee]

Originally Posted by benbret

Just received this message from Abiter. NFHS

Much discussion is taking place in the various social media and other places about the follow situation. If you have means of contacting your officials to get them the official ruling, it would be help.

Here is the play...
. Team A has Team Control in their frontcourt.
. Team B deflects a pass into the air and over the backcourt.
. A3 catches the ball in his/her backcourt, before the ball makes contact with the floor in the backcourt.
RULING:
This is a backcourt violation, since Team A had Team Control in their frontcourt and A3 was the first to touch a ball that still had frontcourt status while A3 was in the backcourt. The deflection of the ball by B does not change the status of the ball.
This causes A to be the last to touch the ball in the frontcourt and the first to touch in the backcourt. The ball continued to have backcourt status. Similar to A3 catching the ball while standing out-of-bounds.

Thank you.


Theresia D. Wynns
Director of Sports and Officials
National Federation of State High School Associations
PO Box 690 | Indianapolis, IN 46206

I respectfully disagree and will NOT be calling that a backcourt violation. I agree that it gives Team B the advantage of being able to go after the ball more aggressively.

Anybody on here disagree with my opinion?

[Adam]

I would present the other plays that fit the same logic and see if they want to be consistent.

[Camron Rust]

If it were a violation to cause the ball to have backcourt status, it would be a violation whenever A threw the ball into the backcourt and the ball touched the floor....but causing the ball to have backcourt status isn't a violation.

[Rich]

It amazes me how people try to fit the most technical definition into a ruling....and just make it nonsensical.

If I were king, I would eliminate all backcourt violations where B hits the ball off A in the frontcourt and A is the first to touch, too.

[SNIPERBBB]

Originally Posted by Rich

It amazes me how people try to fit the most technical definition into a ruling....and just make it nonsensical.

If I were king, I would eliminate all backcourt violations where B hits the ball off A in the frontcourt and A is the first to touch, too.

Or we could be really silly and make the division OOB once the ball and player is established in a controlling team's front court.

[so cal lurker]

Originally Posted by SNIPERBBB

Or we could be really silly and make the division OOB once the ball and player is established in a controlling team's front court.

Makes for an awfully short game if the ball can never go to the other end.

But the interpretation really does seem bent on treating the back court as OOB: just as a player who is OOB and is hit by a ball before it touches the floor "causes" the ball to go OOB, the interp makes the player responsible if the ball touches him before it touches the floor in the back court.

[Camron Rust]

Originally Posted by so cal lurker

Makes for an awfully short game if the ball can never go to the other end.

But the interpretation really does seem bent on treating the back court as OOB: just as a player who is OOB and is hit by a ball before it touches the floor "causes" the ball to go OOB, the interp makes the player responsible if the ball touches him before it touches the floor in the back court.

But not really since the ball hitting the floor doesn't create a violation.

[zm1283]

I agree this is not a violation and I saw a funny one this season kind of dealing with this. Team A had control in their frontcourt. A Team B player knocked it away, it bounced in the frontcourt toward the backcourt in the air. The Team A player ran back and got right to the ball and then waited for it to bounce in the backcourt before he picked it up. I don't in any way believe he knows this rule interpretation, but it was still kind of funny because I remembered the conversation about this on this forum before. The Team B player was running after it too and almost got to it first. That play really shows why it isn't fair to Team A to make them wait to pick it up, even though the B player is the one who knocked it into the backcourt in the first place.

[billyu2]

That's a great point. Thanks for posting that situation!