Late game - stop the clock fouls
 

I want to say it was maybe last year or year before POE where they talked about the late game fouls actually being called intentional (because their only intent is to stop the clock)....You know the play where a defensive player from the trailing team wraps up or "hugs" the offensive player to draw a whistle so the clock will stop.

Everyone in the gym knows why they are doing it but in years past it's just been ruled a common foul and we handle accordingly with OOB throw in, 1 and bonus or two shots...

I don't work Varsity but curious if guys are you seeing more "play the ball" if you're going to foul (even though we still know why they are "playing the ball"...

Have you had the "wrap up/hug" and had to call the intentional foul and how'd it go over with the coach when you did?

Intentional Fouls ...
 

2012-13 POINTS OF EMPHASIS

3. Intentional Fouls. The committee is concerned about the lack of enforcement for intentional fouls during any part of the game but especially at the end of a game. The intentional foul rule has devolved into misapplication and personal interpretations. An intentional foul is a personal or technical foul that neutralizes an opponent’s obvious advantageous position. Contact away from the ball or when not making a legitimate attempt to play the ball, specifically designed to stop or keep the clock from starting, shall be intentional. Intentional fouls may or may not be premeditated and are not based solely on the severity of the act. A foul also shall be ruled intentional if while playing the ball a player causes excessive contact with an opponent.
a. Anytime during the game. Acts that neutralize an opponent’s obvious advantageous position and must be deemed intentional include:
1. Excessive contact on any player attempting a try
2. Grabbing or shoving a player from behind when an easy basket may be scored
3. Grabbing and holding a player from behind or away from the ball
These are “non-basketball acts” and must be considered intentional fouls
b. Game awareness. The probability of fouling late in the game is an accepted coaching strategy and is utilized by many coaches in some form. Officials must have the courage to enforce the intentional foul rule properly.

Bear Hugs The Offensive Player …
 

From my pregame conference:

Near the end of the game, if the winning team is just holding the ball and is willing to take the free throws
after strategic fouls, then let’s call the foul immediately so the ballhandler doesn't get hit harder to draw
a whistle. Let’s make sure there is a play on the ball by the defense. If there’s no play on the ball, if the
defense grabs the jersey, pushes from behind, or bear hugs the offensive player, we should consider an
intentional foul. These are not basketball plays and should be penalized as intentional.

Happens a couple of times a season in games I'm a part of so unless crews I'm on are the outlier is not an uncommon thing around here.

Its always a murky thing but if we are only supposed to call fouls that meet the threshold of fouls all game long, then the defense has to commit those sorts of fouls while still making a basketball play. What happens IME is that high school kids/coaches who haven't prepped this or ended up in this situation a lot end up in it. So now they've only been committing fouls without trying and don't know how to try and get players in those same siutations.

They just end up reaching or tapping and not getting a call then having to do something that is clearly not playing the ball or making a basketball play in order to get their coach/crowd off their back about committing a foul.

Coach is never happy.

I'm a big proponent of if everyone knows whats going on just call the first contact/reach and move on to avoid something else. Most of the partners are work with also work very high level games uni/semi pro. With older experieinced sophisticated athletes and want the threshold of a foul to be met. I get that. Again IME, with less experienced and trained kids that longer you hold off on the whistle the more likely you are going to be coming away with an unsportsmanlike/int.

Steal The Ball ...
 

When I first started coaching basketball, about forty years ago, if coaches yelled, "Foul him", in a late game situation, it was automatically called an intentional foul. A referee friend told me to come up with a code word instead. I used, "Steal the ball". When my players heard that they knew to "reach in" and hit an arm to stop the clock and force the other team to make free throws.

That old rule no longer applies. If a coach is yelling, "Foul", and the defender simply reaches in and lightly hits an arm, we no longer automatically call it an intentional foul.

When did it change?

Note: Coaching for over twenty-five years, officiating for almost four decades, I've never seen a team use this strategy and come from behind to win. I'm not saying that it's never worked for anybody, but I've never observed it to work in my games. Never. Ever. The team ahead either makes free throws, or the team that's behind misses key shots at the end.

By rule...
 

If a kid does a 'bear hug' to stop the clock, it's an automatic INT Foul in my (varsity) game.

And when the coach complains, I say, "By rule, that type of contact is an intentional foul." And there is nothing they can come back with.

I can't speak to lower levels and how much discretion you're going to give...but it's hard to get in trouble when you enforce the rules as written.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996) ...
 

I had a partner criticize me last season for not calling a first contact foul that turned into an intentional foul a few seconds later from a different defender. I didn't call it because the defender swiped and completely missed. No contact at all. I was right there and my partner was on the other side of the court. Should we call these misses fouls to prevent escalation?

https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.T...=0&w=300&h=300

Really? I don't think it is uncommon when the team is down by a couple and the game is still in 1-1 and we're talking about the last minute of the game (or more particularly, once the shot clock is turned off).

But I'd believe you if what you're talking about the team down by 7 or more desperately grasping at straws having to foul multiple times.

Advice ...
 

If I'm near a huddle in such situations I've occasionally told players coming out a timeout to "Go for the ball". Sometimes I'll even remind an assistant coach of this before the timeout ends.

On the other hand, if an offensive player is getting frustrated after getting poked at, I will occasionally tell him, "Hey, you've played this game a long time, you know you're going to get fouled, make your free throws and it will be over soon".

Stuff like this may keep things from escalating.

Desperately Grasping At Straws ...
 

Yeah. That's what I meant, when it's no longer a real game and the strategy becomes a desperation move. I'm not talking about a three point game with thirty seconds to go. That's still a real game that anybody can win.

If a team is grasping at straws they're probably going to drown. As an official, I think to myself, "Why bother", but on the other hand, "Hope springs eternal". I've seen weird late game stuff happen on television, but never in real life.

https://tse3.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.6...=0&w=300&h=300

And The Hits Just Keep On Coming ...
 

A Thousand Points Of Light (George H. W. Bush, 1989) ...
 

In addition to the above, Intentional Fouls were Points of Emphasis in 2005-06 and 2006-07.

Five times in fifteen years.

In regard to intentional fouls, I guess that the NFHS doesn't believe that officials are doing their job properly.

https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.S...=0&w=317&h=179

Don't unfairly hurt the team with the lead in order to whistle minimal contact. If the offensive team wishes to run the clock, then the defense needs to commit a strategic foul correctly.
I'm not calling something that I would not have in the 2nd quarter. That is favoring what one team desires.

Nope. But if the player's next response is to escalate and swing wildly clotheslining someone I'll get the Int. POst int you better believe on each play after that the rest of way I'm blowing everything down before anyone can get hurt whether it would have been a foul earlier or not.

Awful, simply awful. :(

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.