Face Guarding

[rainmaker]

Called it today. Boys' varsity. Little kid, works his arm between the arms of the ball-handler, starts waving his hands about 1-1/2" from the face. At first I didn't realize what was happening, but it dawned on me, finally. After I called it, the coach was very upset. He said he ought to get a warning first. I said, there's no provision for a warning in the book. He said, after all this contact that's being no-called, it seems silly to give a technical for something so small. I said, it's not listed in the book as a contact foul, but as a technical for being unsportsmanlike. He said, he'd never heard of this before. I said, it's in your rule book, rule 10, player technicals. But he won't look it up. THey never do.

[Black&White]

I admit in my first season of playing basketball, I used to block the vision of my opponents. But I was never told I couldn't do it. I 'out-grew' this tactic later on, but I only found out about the rule when I was studing for a rules test.

Its just one of those rules that gathers the dust...

[RookieDude]

I said, there's no provision for a warning in the book

There's no provision for warning a player to get out of the key either...but many of us do.
Call your game how ya like...but, IMO sometimes we can get to "rulebooky".
Give the kid a warning, and nail him if he dosen't want to listen.

[ShoeBall]

I don't think it's the ref's job to teach the players and coaches the rules during a game.

If the kid is doing it sparingly and unconsciously, then give him a warning.

If she is doing it deliberately and constantly, then slap her with the T.

At least that should tell the teams that if they want to institutionalize a tactic, they had better do their due diligence and make sure it's not against the rules.

[bossref]

The way I learned it was that if a defender
is waving hands to DISTRACT then it if OK.
If the defender is trying to totally OBSTRUCT
the visual field of their opponent, this is
unsporting, and a T should be called.

And yes, I agree with giving a warning
if they are younger/inexperienced players
who could use some instruction.

If you sense that the player knows exactly
what he/she is doing, T them.
They will learn very quickly that this is not acceptable.

[SMEngmann]

I called faceguarding earlier this season too and did so without warning. I felt the player was doing so deliberately and attempting to gain an advantage, so I made the call. I don't think warning for unsportsmanlike acts are appropriate, I think they must be punished immediately or you risk inconsistency, the "Well you gave him a warning why not me" type of thing.

On a similar note, I had to call a T today on a player for dislodging the ball on an inbounds pass (reaching across the plane to do so). Interestingly, this happened to occur on the inbounds pass after I double T'ed that team's irate assistant coach. I'd never seen that happen before and it was the worst possible timing for that call. I hope that type of situation never happens again for me in a game.