I was working a JV girls tournament this week and had an incident that made me want to disappear off the court. Luckily I had an experienced partner that made a decisive call and we went on without any flack from the coaches.

I was working trail in the backcourt. A1 was trapped near the freethrow line by B2 and B3. I then hear a coach yelling for a timeout. I then turned quickly to see if it was indeed the team A headcoach and see that it is. I raise my hand and blow the whistle to grant the TO only to see B2 driving for a layup...which she made as I blew the whistle. I just froze not sure of what to do. My partner signaled the basket was good and we continued on with the game.

I realize I should've turned to look at the players again before granting the TO, but I didn't.

Has anything like this ever happened to you, and if so, how did you handle this situation or how would you handle this.

Happy 2004 everyone!!!

Yes, I followed the proper procedure. I granted the TO and waved off the basket. Once you have player control when the TO was requested, then that is when the TO is granted, not when you get around to blow the whistle.

Not yet and I hope never. This is why coaches should not be allowed to call TOs. this has not hapened to me yet because I will let the coach yell and yell while I look at the play. With a trarp situation you cannot take your eyes away from it to look at a coach. So what happens? I watch the play and the coach has a fit because I did not recognize him for a TO. My answer is: you have five players out there whom you presumably coach who can call a time out while I properly officiate.

Absolutely.

Hi Bart. May I present an opoosite view. The TO does not occur when it is requested. It occurs when you call it which is when you blow the whistle. If there is no player control after I am able to sneak a look at a coach I do not call the TO. Any other opinions on this??

When I recognize the TO is when I hear the TO being requested. The fact that I'm a second or two late to verify and blow whistle after I have recognize the TO does not take away the TO. As per the Women's side, we were told to KNOW the coach's voice.

I'm not turning away from a competitive play to see the coach. Sounds like your partner was in a better position to see the coach and may have seen the time-out request eventually. If the coach gives me grief I'd just say, "Coach, do you really want me to turn my back to the players during a competitive situation to look at you?" If he's still unhappy, too darn bad.

Z

So, if a player jumps, grabs the ball to save it from going OOB, requests TO, and then lands OOB, you're not going to give him the TO because you didn't blow your whistle before he landed?

In this situation of the player going out of bounds, he gets the time out. there has been no change in bal plaition bt=etween request and whistle. In this case the lage time between request and whistle is no longer than that for any violation of foul call. When there is an obvious change in ball location or play situation that is longer than the usual whistle lag time, the coach does not get the TO.

Lag Time? I have a very slow whistle. I see the foul, I think to myself, yes, thats a foul, beep. HHHmmmmmm. I guess I can tell the coach I take it back, I was tooooo slow. :)

I don't know what that means.

You can't have your cake and eat it to. If the coach requests TO and there's player control when the request is made, grant the TO.

Bart and BktBallRef are correct. If there is player control when the request for a team timeout is made, then the timeout request must be granted.

I am not sure how long Bart has been officiating women's college, but the head coach has been allowed to request a team timeout in women's college for over 30's years. I know that there are H.S. officials who do not like having head coaches request team timeouts, but a good pre-game and proper mechanics can reduce the problem that happened in the posted play.

From the description of the play I am going to make an educated assumption that the officiating crew was a two-man crew and that the Trail official was Table-side. In situations like the posted play, the official who is Opposite-the-Table needs to be aware of possible timeout situations and should be the official who grants the head coach's request for a team timeout. This eliminates the need for the Trail official in this play from having to look away from the ball to verify who is requesting the team timeout.

I don't mind that coaches can call a timeout in hs. I just leave it as a secondary concern. If there's any action whatsoever in my primary, coach has to wait. I'm not giving it to him unless I'm sure there is player control at the time I see him request it. If it takes me 10 seconds to notice due to action on the court, he's not getting a TO based on where the ball was 10 seconds prior to me looking at him. Until I see him requesting it, I don't know that it was him, so the request isn't official in my mind.

10 seconds is admittedly an exaggeration. You're right, it won't take that long for one of us to look at the coach. My point is that if, in the two or three seconds it takes me to look at the coach and verify who the requester is, his player no longer has control, I'm not granting the TO. In most cases, this won't be an issue. I can foresee times, however, when I won't be able to look in time.

Sorry Snaqwells, went to edit the previous post and deleted it it instead.

That's not going to happen. He's not going to stand there for 10 seconds and not say a word. If he doesn't get the TO, he's going to continute to ask for it until you grant it. If you don't acknowledge him, he's going to get louder and louder. I don't think there's anyone here that's so disciplined that they're not eventually going to glance at him and see the request.

When you see the request and you know that he asked and his player had the ball when he asked, you grant the TO.