Florida / Texas Tech Denied Substitution

[BigT]

We had a state championship game at the end. A girl subbed out before FTs and came back in before a tick. She hit the winning shot. Pretty big screw up. How often do coaches try this and how often are we paying attention to who just left and who wants to come back in....

This is as hard as the loose ball offensive foul on an inbound late in the game and we think we need to shoot FTs. That is missed a lot too...

[Camron Rust]

Originally Posted by BigT

We had a state championship game at the end. A girl subbed out before FTs and came back in before a tick. She hit the winning shot. Pretty big screw up. How often do coaches try this and how often are we paying attention to who just left and who wants to come back in....

This is something that isn't so easy to track and there isn't a procedure for doing so. Most scorers don't record who came out at what time.

It is up to the officials to just remember and with everything else that can occur in the interim, it is a lot to remember potentially 3-6 players' numbers for who might try to come back in a few minutes after some timeouts, FTs, maybe another foul or two, etc.

[crosscountry55]

Originally Posted by BigT

We had a state championship game at the end. A girl subbed out before FTs and came back in before a tick. She hit the winning shot. Pretty big screw up. How often do coaches try this and how often are we paying attention to who just left and who wants to come back in....

Yeah a play like that is one of my biggest fears. It is very easy to miss. It definitely seems to be more common at higher levels and/or with more astute coaches who like to play individual defensive and offensive matchups for certain possessions.

A good official scorer is worth their weight in gold here, but seeing that we can't count on them to know the rule, I think the moral of the story is to pay close attention to who leaves the game during FT substitutions in late game situations when the score is close. Whether or not a final free throw is good or not has an impact on the score differential, which good coaches use to determine who they want on the floor. Sometimes it's the team member they just took out. We need to be on the watch for this. I don't think coaches usually try to pull a fast one on us; they're just coaching and don't think about it. That said, I'm sure there are some that do know the rule and simply try to get away with an illegal substitution if they can.

This usually seems to be an issue during free throws. But it could also be a problem if a violation or foul occurs before a throw-in ends.

[Raymond]

Originally Posted by crosscountry55

...

This usually seems to be an issue during free throws. But it could also be a problem if a violation or foul occurs before a throw-in ends.

I have 2 college scorekeepers who are very diligent about that. One them actually caught the attempted illegal substitution for us when we had a foul during a free throw.

When I worked the my state final this season the scorekeeper had us pull 2 players off the court who attempted to start the 2nd quarter but never checked in between quarters.