NYS HS Basketball Protest

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by so cal lurker

... why wasn't their book checking with the official book? Heck, I did that when I was a teenager keeping the book for junior high games. Cross checking fouls and TOs with the official book is pretty basic.

Agree, but this was a state tournament semifinal game. Here in Connecticut tournament games from the quarterfinals up are played at neutral sites. I'm not sure who is allowed to sit at the table, but maybe there was a neutral scorekeeper and scorekeepers from each team weren't allowed at the table.

I would like more information before I throw anybody under the bus.

Were team scorekeepers allowed at the table? Were the officials informed by the table that the coach had used his last timeout? Was the head coach informed that he had used his last timeout? Did he question this after being informed? After charging the technical foul did the officials double check the scorebook(s) for errors?

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by SC Official

I never inform the coach if he/she has anything other than zero left. I work with some officials who will tell the coach late in the game if he has one, two, even three timeouts left. What if the table was wrong and you tell the coach he has one left when really he had none?

Things Officials Should Probably Not Be Saying In A Game

"Coach, you have one timeout left", is a courtesy often extended by officials to coaches, when, by rule, officials should only be notifying head coaches when their team has been granted its final allowable timeout. If there is any miscommunication, or mistake, involving the table crew reporting remaining timeouts, then the officials, by rule, need to stay out of the conversation. Let the coaches, and table crew, communicate about remaining timeouts, other than when a team has been granted its final allowable timeout, which by rule, is required to be reported to the coach by the officials.

[Paintguru]

Originally Posted by BillyMac

Agree, but this was a state tournament semifinal game.

Even worse. "We can't even run our own tournament correctly, but if we screw up....sucks to be you!!!"

Further reflection does make me think that for how often basketball rules are misapplied, it would be hard to allow protests to occur in all such cases. However, for this to occur at a state run tournament?! Come on man!

[ODog]

So let's assume there was (somehow) no communication between scorer and officials, which is an indictment of all four of them.

When the officials were informed, "Hey, he didn't have any timeouts left when he just called that one," didn't the alarm bells at least go off then?!

Wait ... WHAT?! You never told us he'd used his final timeout. You sure?! Let me have a look at the book.

And I'm assuming the coach is rightfully losing his mind at this point, lending even more urgency to the "let's have a look at the book" situation.

Perhaps they did "double check" at this point, but since the scorer had it documented wrong, there was nothing doing. I would just like to know how it all played out.

You have to smash through a lot of roadblocks/checkpoints to get to this point.