Players standing OOB

[Mike Burns]

I had a situation at a G-JV game. I am at Lead as the offense is setting up to run a play. This is when I notice 3 players run 3' OOB off the endline and turn to face the court. They are just standing there about 3' off the endline with about 5' of space between them and facing the court. I'm thinking, "OK, all three of them must have overshot the baseline and are now going to step back onto the court." NOPE! They just stand there. Immediately I reference my internal database and realize that they have violated 10-3-3! (If you believe that I have some land in the Everglades to sell you.) But I did know that a player could not leave the court for an unauthorized reason. Thinking this must be a Technical, but not wanting to go there, I call a violation on team A and awarded the ball to B. When I reported, I said the violation was on the three players standing OOB without an attempt to return to the court. Of course the coach wanted an explanation and said that he had run this play all year and even the varsity team ran the same play... I said "Well coach, don't run it again tonight."

Later during intermission the coach approached me with a rules book in hand. He was very respectful when he said he couldn't find anything in there about the violation I had called. So, against my better judgment, I took the rules book and quickly found the reference I mentioned earlier. I pretty much left it at that, without a lot of discussion since I wasn't about to conduct a rules clinic during my 10 min break

Considering the level of play would you have called the play any differently? Should I have assessed the Tech? Or maybe I'm way off base with this rule to begin with. That's why I'm bringing it here.
TIA

[BktBallRef]

No, you're not off base at all.

That's a difficult situation. I know you don 't want to call the T and I don't blame you. It sure would have helped if A had turned the ball over real quickly, then you could have explained the rule.

Of course, in the end, I guess that's what happened, isn't it?

[ref18]

I would've told them nicely to get their a$$es back inbounds. If they didn't listen, i would've assessed a single T for being out of bounds for an unauthorized reason.