Who gets the Technical?

[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Originally posted by Nevadaref

Under NFHS rules you can't do that. Any technical foul on bench personnel must be charged directly to some single offender. It also is charged indirectly to the head coach. See the penalty section on page 63 for 10-4 as well as the chart on page 76.

If you are certain that the comment was not made by the head coach, but by some team member, then, I believe, that this method is not justified either for NFHS basketball rules. You have to just pick one of the subs and charge it directly to him.
Of interest here is that the NFHS Soccer committee made a rule change for this year, which specifically addresses this issue. The rule states that in this specific situation if the official cannot determine who made the comments from the bench then the head coach receives the penalty. The basketball committee should strongly consider following suit here, but until they do, I simply cannot justify a direct on the head coach for something that we know he did not do. It just isn't supported by the rules.

[Edited by Nevadaref on Feb 10th, 2004 at 06:53 AM]

You most certainly can to charge a direct technical foul to the coach if you are certain that the offending language came from bench personnel but you are not sure who on the bench used the offending language.

A6 swears at the official and the official knows that it is A6 is the member of the bench that swore at him. A6 received a direct technical foul and the head coach receives an indirect technical foul. Why does the head coach receive and indirect technical foul? The head coach receives a indirect technical foul, because the conduct of bench personnel is his responsibility, and the penalty of an indirect technical foul in the play that I just described is supposed to be incentive for the head coach to keep his bench under control.

Since the head coach has the responsibility to keep his bench under control, a direct technical foul charged to the head coach is the correct penalty for the original play posted at the beginning of this thread.