Over the holidays we were working an area tournament. A
tightly contested championship game in the fourth quarter and one of our guys blew his whistle to signal a timeout only to find out that the team that wanted the time out was no longer in possession of the ball and that the other team had intercepted the pass and instantaneously had made another pass to a teammate (a truly late whistle). Since we signaled timeout, should the team be allowed their time out because of the whistle? We allowed the timeout and then awarded the ball to the other team because they were in possession of the ball when this truly late whistle echoed throughout the gym. Not a pretty sound to say the
least. Should we have denied the timeout? If we granted the timeout should we have given the ball back to the team signaling timeout? What does common sense and the rule book allow? It is usually pretty easy to handle situations that are covered by the rules but when we screw up it is not always easy to correct the dreaded uncorrectable errors!! In our case, awarding the timeout and giving the ball back to the team that had made a good play to intercept the pass appeased the coaches, players and fans because nobody said boo but that doesn't mean that our
diplomatic solution was the correct thing to do! Any ideas on correct protocol?

I think you did it right. Once you stopped play, go ahead and grant the timeout, even if it's now to the defense. Give the ball to the team that had it when the timeout was requested.

DJ,

I give the ball to the team in possession at the time I recognized the TO.

Your partner heard the TO request, turned to verify who requested it.

It's gonna be a match of yellow fluid , but I would have said, "The TO was requested before the interception occurred."

mick

I guess it would be up to the official who called it to determine if he is going to call it a late whistle or inadvertant whistle. If it was late, time out has been called and the team is granted the tiime out and retains possession if it was inadvertant then they have lost the ball and can then request a time out. We kind of did a little give and take and were lucky neither side pushed the issue one way or the other and forced us to play our cards!!

My $0.02
 

I think you need to take another look at Mick's posting. In particular, the time out should be granted at the time the request was heard. It often takes a second or two to verify that it's the head coach making the request, but once the request is determined to be valid, it should be granted as being at the time it was requested. If you want to call it a late whistle, fine. But a request for a TO was made by the head coach while his team was in possession. You can't ignore that because of what happens between hearing the request and blowing the whistle.