Team A has the ball. It is slapped loose and bounces off several sets of hands. Mad scramble for loose ball, with each team touching it a couple of times before A1 chases after it. A1 touches in in front court, but doesn't gain control until backcourt. I (as team B coach) call out "backcourt", not too loudly, but loud enough for the official across from me to hear. He responds back, "No possession, coach." I think about it for half a second, was embarassed to have yelled anything at all, and call back to him "I know, just wishing!" He smiled and went with the game. I became a total fan of the guy because of his court presence. In retrospect, I don't know if the call was totally correct or not, but frankly, I didn't care a bit.

Now the question, did A loose team control while the ball was being batted around? If not, did my official make the right call?

If Team B never gained possession of the ball, then Team A still had team control.

BC violation.

Thats the old, cant be last to touch in FC, then first to touch in BC deal.

Violation.

Coach, you would have better off in this situation with an official that had a little more rules knowledge, and a little less "presence".

That should start it,eh? :D

Ooops
 

Referring to rule 4-12-3b (2001-02 Rule books) for definition of control:

"Team control continues until the opponent secures control."

Despite Team A fumbling the ball all over, and off Team B, Team A retains team control and is therefore still liable for a BC violaiton...

per Rule 9-9-1

if they are the last to touch in the FC (and thereby cause it to go into the BC) and first to touch in the BC.

I think overall, as officials we miss the correct call on these situations way too often. I know I have missed a couple this season but I'm getting better.:D

Yeah, it would have given us one more posession. However, compared to last week, when the officials were the weakest I've come across, he was pretty darn good. This call was the only issue I could find the whole game, and he handled is so well that I'd still take him for any games we play. Maybe he's not the best with the book, but he's very good on the court. He was always in position, made the early held ball calls (girls game), and showed a great deal of respect for the players and the coaches while maintaining control. There was plenty of incidental contact the whole game, but the fouls that were called were the right ones. We had more call against us than for us, but they were all good calls. He may never make it very high, but for where he is (MS CYO) he does the job.

I'm not ripping you or the official, but something you wrote stuck out.

Why is making an early held ball call a good thing? A held ball occurs when opponents have their hands so firmly on the ball that control cannot be obtained without undue roughness.

NOT when two players from opposite teams touch the ball at the same time.

NOT when the ball is laying in the midst of a pile of players.

Sorry, but this is one of my pet peeves. Call it a held ball when it actually is, by rule, a held ball.

Sorry, Rich - last night was the first back, and I definately had 2 or 3 held balls that weren't :(.

Good guidelines above, though.

Rich, I couldn't agree with you more, it's just that with middle school girls, the likelyhood of one girl being strong enought to rip it out of the other girls hands is so slight that bodies can go flying and kids get hurt. The previous week, the slow whistles resulted in girls going to the floor on at least four occaisions in the first half alone, and in one case a girl got mildly hurt and could not return to the game. As you say "<b>A held ball occurs when opponents have their hands so firmly on the ball that control cannot be obtained without undue roughness.</b>" Maybe it's because boys hands are stronger, they are more likely to grip the ball with their hands when the ball is contested, but girls are likely to wrap their <b>arms</b> around the ball and use their bodies to try to get/maintain posession. I'm not saying that everytime two girls touch the ball at the same time a whistle should blow, I just saying that the officials who recognize this difference between boys and girls don't need to wait as long before the call. In my experience, it actually keeps the game going faster, keeps tempers under control better, and reduces the chances or injury.

I have removed the sentences indicating which team slapped the ball into BC. Let's say team B was the last team to touch it prior to going into BC. In this case team A can grab the ball in BC without a violation. Team control was not lost, but B was the last to touch the ball.

That's true but that's not the original play.

What difference does it make whether a girl grabs the ball in her arms versus a boy who grabs the ball with his hands?

It's disappointing when people expect a quicker whistle in girls games because they're scraed the "little girls are going to get hurt." People complain all the time about girls games being called differently than boys, yet you advocate that so they won 't get hurt. Well, if they're concerned about their little girl getting hurt, then they should keep her at home and let her play with Barbies.

I call a girls game the same way I do boys. If there's the possibility of a held ball. I'll wait an extra second or two to see if someone will pull it away before it's an actual held ball. If I don't, sure enough, someone will pull it away just as the whistle blows.

If the players are on the floor, I'll blow it a little quicker simply because it's less likely that someone is going to come away with it and because I don't want players diving on the pile.

But those standards are for boys AND girls. One gender deserves no more protection than the other.

Let's just thank the Lord that we don't have jump balls anymore. Middle school games would go on for hours.

I've noticed that when I officiate with people I don't know that they usually are the ones who get to the held ball first. It's especially embarassing when the ball is, essentially loose.

As far as the differences between girls and boys ball, I recognize that disadvantage from contact may come at different levels of contact between a boys game and a girls game. That doesn't mean that I call the game differently. Differences exist between individual players, after all.

I think it is insulting to girls and womens teams to try to "protect" them by discouraging aggressive play and hustle. Last week I had a classic held ball situation (well, had I been working with a quick whistle person) where a player reached in and momentarily shared possession with her opponent, then pulled the ball right out of her hands. Her coach was livid that I didn't blow it dead. I told him that if it came out that easy IT WASN'T held.

The reason why there seem to be a dozen held balls in girls games is probably because some of them shouldn't be called held balls.

Of course the standards are for boys And girls. The standard includes, and I quote again "A held ball occurs when opponents have their <b>hands</b> so firmly on the ball that control cannot be obtained without <b>undue roughness</b>. Girls tend to wrap their arms around the ball, perhaps because their opponents are not strong enough to just pull it away quickly by brute force, perhaps for some other reason. In any case, that causes a situation in which "undue roughness" is much more likely. The officials are required to use their judgment as to when that line is crossed. I believe that the line gets crossed differently between girls and boys. Maybe there is the same amount of elapsed time that good officials wait to make their determination but since girls tend to wrestle longer than boys, it just seems that they tend to wait longer than necessary for girls. An official should not have to wait until kids go flying and undue roughness has already occurred before they can judge that undue roughness is the only way one kid will get the ball from another.

I assure you, I am not one who is afraid that "my little girl will get hurt" playing basketball, but neither am I one to watch kids getting hurt when an experienced official could prevent it by exercising good judgment.

I agree with Rich. Hands on the ball doesn't mean it is 'held'. Let someone attempt to pull it away first before you blow the whistle.

I may have mentioned the game I had a couple of weeks ago, girls Christian private school game. The coaches, administration, and parents are convinced that if one of their girls is touched, it has to be a foul. Heaven forbid one of them hits the floor. It's gotta be an intentional or flagrant foul. In any case, here are some examples of what happened:

Coach comes ACROSS the floor, at the 6 min. mark, to myself and one partner while the R was at the table, to tell us how HE want the game called. Meanwhile, the R is learning that the lineup hasn't been submitted to the table. Coach is more concerned about how HE wants us to perform our job than he is about doing his own job.

Coach has three girls get injured in the game. A foul was called during each of the for situations. On the final injury, the parent came onto the floor and is yelling at me that I allowed his daughter to get hurt. Of course, Barney Fife is outside, getting a doughnut. Actually, the foul didn't even cause the injury. After the foul and the call, the girl just flops to the floor, like someone has just shot here in the head. She bangs her head on the concrete floor.

Then some man comes on the floor, gets in my face, and tells me that we are going to have to start calling the game closer! I back up, inquire exactly WTH are you, although I don't use those words. He informs me he is the AD, to which I reply that doesn't give him a right to storm onto the floor and tell us how the game is going to be called.

After a short break and conference to restore order, we finish the last 5 minutes of the game. We called 11 fouls on each team in the 1st half, and 10 and 8 in the 2nd half. None of the fouls involved excessive contact nor were they intentional or flagrant in nature. We were consistent throughout.

Oh, the best part! The AD took an a$$ chewing from my booking supervisor when he called to complain about us! :D

Parents of boys are used to watching their child fall down and come up with a face full of dirt since he was a little guy. Many parents of girls haven't seen that on a daily basis since childhood. I try to keep that in mind when officiating girl's ball and hearing the ignorant chatter from the stands.

Z

I agree Z. I can handle ignorance in the stands. But what I won't tolerate is...

...a coach who comes to me before the game and tells me how he expects the game to be called.

...game management that allows fans to come onto the floor and yell at officials.

...an AD who comes on the floor, without identifying himself, and yells at an official that he wants the game called closer.

Those are the things that got the AD in trouble with the booking supervisor in our situation.

And that is sad. Parents like this are, without realizing it, holding girls and women back by treating them differently on the court. It is a contact game and players will get knocked down and occasionally hurt.

A really bizarre column in the local paper here last season noted that the big conference's girls games were getting rougher -- that there were a LOT of fouls called in those games. The article acknowledged that there were a lot of fouls called but still blamed the officials for allowing rough play. Figure that one out -- the article seemed to be blaming the officials for whistling too many fouls and for having rough play simultaneously.

What's worse is when a player actually does get hurt during some isolated play, you call a foul on the play, and get blamed for it anyway. Makes you want to say, "I CALLED a foul! What else do you want me to do? Take the charge myself?"

Back to 2-man tonight. My little "vacation" working 3-man in Illinois is over for now and now I'm back to the 2-man realities of home :)

I coach girls only now, used to coach both. We play a physical game, if my girls play me in practice I try to give them more than they will ever get in a game. Basketball is a physical sport when it is played well, and girls can and should learn to handle it. I know that mygirls are much better as people from having played high level physical ball.

Boys vs. Girls
 

I was reffing a pair of freshman games last Saturday. I hear what the fans say but I don't listen. To me, it seemed like the parents of the girls were yelling at the players, in other words, "coaching" them. During the boys game the parents seemed to be yelling at the officials, a more "traditional" approach. I think parents of girls are more protective and the dads assume the girls don't know much about basketball out there. Maybe if they worked with their kids in the driveway more instead of turning them over to organized teams, they'd learn more. One of the biggest changes in sports in the last 30 years is that kids don't play pickup games after school anymore. Everything is 'organized', e.g., rec leagues, park board leagues, etc. It must have to do with both parents working now. Kids are missing out on the 'fun' of sports. We didn't need parents to organize everything for us to have fun.