Two words: shot clock. That cuts down on the amount of late-game fouls, simply because both teams have to play offense and defense until the shot clock turns off on the last reset before the period ends.

One possibility is that the leading team scores enough points to put the game out of reach while the shot clock is on, making last-ditch fouls irrelevant. The other is that the trailing team scores and forces enough stops to keep the game a one-possession contest, and/or takes the lead before the shot clock turns off. Only if there is a fringe scenario (2 possession game with ~30 seconds left) would fouls really happen in a shot clock game. In my experience, with no shot clock, fouling starts as early as 3 minutes left in the game (more typically at 2 minutes), but with a shot clock, fouling starts with 1 minute left at the earliest (more typically fouls start occurring around the 30-second mark (usually the final time the shot clock gets reset while still staying on), so the amount of end-of-game fouls is less with a shot clock.

Therefore, a shot clock could render this discussion moot, as fewer stop-the-clock fouls tend to happen in shot-clock games.

Then why hasn't it reduced late game fouling in levels that use the shot clock? The NCAA and NBA have had the shot clock for decades and there is still a lot of late game fouling.

The fouls would stop if the NBA and NCAA assigners would put JV officials as a fourth official on the game to get them experience.

Junior Varsity College ...
 

Sarcasm aside. Seriously, do colleges have junior varsity teams? Every once in a while I hear something about such teams.

I know that many years ago freshman were not eligible to play "varsity" college basketball, so colleges had freshman teams (1968 NCAA changes to freshman eligibility sports except football and basketball. 1972, football and basketball followed suit).

I believe that the Ivy League was the last to make the change to allow freshman to play "varsity" (1971 for some sports, 1991 for football).

Note: That's why Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) only played three years (66-67, 67-68, 68-69) of "varsity" basketball at UCLA. He didn't leave early to join the NBA, he was forced to play a year of freshman basketball at UCLA.

From a fan/parent perspective, it is frustrating that there is no consistency in end games (as demonstrated in this thread) as to (1) whether the "soft" foul is called and if so how soft and (2) where the line is between an acceptable tactical foul and an intentional foul.

While I can see arguments for a wide variety of ways to handle, it is frustrating when in one game the officials calls the phantom fouls on the "don't want to encourage excessive roughness" theory and in the next the officials let the team with the lead play through fouls that would have been called earlier in the game.

While I'd like to see consistency, it seems Fed has been trying to do that (in a variety of ways) for decades--I recall a push back when I was playing (which was before NFHS had a three point shot...).

Maybe basketball needs to take a page from baseball, which recently allowed for the intentional walk by the manager just telling the ump. We can just let the coach tell the ref. "Foul" and a foul will be called on the player closest to the opponent with the ball.:cool:

Yes, Division III and NAIA colleges do have junior varsity teams. They may not be frequent, but they do exist.

I have only reported what has happened in my games that do use a shot clock, so perhaps things are different at the Division I level.

Offensive Tactics Vary From Game To Game ...
 

Because tactics, especially offensive tactics, vary from game to game.

Some are easy for me: no play on the ball, defense grabs the jersey, pushes from behind, or bear hugs the offensive player, almost always automatic intentional foul for me. The defensive side is easy to officiate.

The hardest part for me is figuring out what the offensive team (ahead late in the game) wants to do. Some want to shoot free throws (probably good free throw shooting teams), and others don't want the clock to stop (they want to play keep away). It's easy after the first foul in the "chess game" is charged, and one knows what the offensive team wants to do, but I hate being surprised on the first move.

A Rare Bird ...
 

It's nice to know that some colleges still value student participation in intercollegiate athletes. Maybe the true student athlete really does exist.

UNC Tar Heels have a JV team that plays many JuCo teams.

I've actually played and watched enough basketball to recognize that :rolleyes: . . . and while I'm not a basketball ref, I am a soccer ref, so I have a pretty decent grasp of the situational aspect . . .

But the simple fact is (and I think it is actually aptly demonstrated by the various comments in this thread, all of which are coming from refs that have enough commitment to the craft to be hanging out here to get better) that there is a wide chasm separating how different officials call these plays that has absolutely nothing to do with the tactical differences in games. There is, of course, always going to be grey, but from my experience in watching HS games the past few years, that grey zone is way to big from game to game so that players (on O or D) have no idea what is going to be called at the end of any particular game such that the intentional calls seem more like lottery ticket wins than punishment for misconduct.

Generic Descriptive Meaning ...
 

Agree. But sometimes a player has to reach in toward an opponent before fouling an opponent. The reach in isn't the foul, the contact is the foul. Reach in has a very generic descriptive meaning in this context (that I probably should have avoided).

Subvarsity May Be Another Story ...
 

Sorry to hear that. Luckily for me, what happens in Southern California isn't the same as what happens in my little corner of Connecticut. We're pretty consistent, especially on the varsity level, from official to official, from game to game, and from year to year, as to how we handle late game situations. It's often discussed at our meetings, even if it's not a NFHS Point of Emphasis at the time.

My alma mater started one a few years ago and roughly half the teams in its conference have one. Going only by what's true in my state, college JV teams seem more prevalent at the D3/NAIA level as ilyazhito stated. That said, there have been some small college teams in New England that have a varsity team and B-level team that functions as JV team and plays some of the even smaller colleges in that region that field sporadic/fledgling teams that lack the talent and resources to compete on an organized level.