I had a game this weekend where a team was winning by 30 with about 5 minutes left in the game and was still pressing. I wanted to call an unsportsmanlike T on the coach but was not sure this would fall within the bounds of unsportsmanlike conduct. In my opinion it most certainly is but was wondering what everyone else thinks.

Don't even think of it. There's no rule against what the coach was doing, and you would never be able to justify a "T" just because a team is pressing. It's not up to us to dictate the type of defense that they gotta play. Just keep calling the game evenly, and get outa there. Maybe the coach wanted to work on his press under game situations- who knows?

not unsportsmanlike by rule, but morally probably.... what i do in a situation like that is try to really look for fouls if they are still pressing....if they touch them and it could possibly be a foul, i'm calling it...if i call 3 or 4 in a row and the other team gets to go down and shoot free throws this usually gets the point across, if not, it makes for a long game, but helps out the other team a little and if he starts to complain about it then you have a reason for the unsportsmanlike conduct on the coach!! :) just my opinion, i know it's not good to look for stuff to call, but if it's getting out of hand,score wise, i try to make the coach realize that is enough!!!

[Edited by jritchie on Nov 22nd, 2004 at 01:35 PM]

I agree with you totally - BUT I don't see where there is cause to call an unsporting T.

You might try to have a word with the coach or one of his assistants at a dead ball and if he still doesn't want to call off the press then I would enforce any defensive contact in the press as a personal foul. He will get the message that way.

Do you call the same "touch" foul on the other end against the other team?

I agree that the coach didn't need to be pressing at that point, but under the rules, we cannot call this unsportsmanlike. I have heard some say that you could nicely suggest that a coach pull off the press, but its my feeling that if we don't want them to tell us how to call a game, we shouldn't try to tell them how to coach it. Another strategy would be to start calling every nit-picky foul on the press until the coach calls it off himself, but again this isn't something I'd do. Pretty much you have to grin a bear it and go on to the next game. As someone on the board says, "get in, get it done, go home".

My take...It is not the responsibility of the coach of the winning team to keep his margin of victory at a level acceptable to all those at the game, be they officials, spectators, workers, or members of the other team. It is, however, the responsibility of the coaches and/or players on the losing team. The winning team may have been working on different types of pressess...or they may have non-starters honing their press skills.

To be pressing that late in the game, when up by that large of margin, may leave a bad taste in the mouths of some. But is it unsportsmanlike to the point of meriting a T...nope.

like i said, i know it's probably not the right thing to do, but if i'm calling touch fouls on one end, i may let a touch foul go on the other, but i'm not going to let someone get killed just because they are down 40 pts...
This is just in jr.high, Jv or some varsity level games, never would do in college, let them practice all they want too...

Why?

Usually these blowouts give bench players an opportunity to see floor time. They deserve a fairly called game too.

totally understand that situation, but then there is the 2 or 3 starters still in the game and they are trying to set some stupid record for pts or steals or some stupid thing like that... if they are subs, that is understandable that they need to work on stuff too, that is a different situation, but i can't stand when the starters are in and subs are sitting over on the bench and don't get in when the score is really lop sided..

Why?

Who cares who's playing?

i know it really shouldn't matter to me as long as the clock is running, but for some reason its just one of those pet peeves of mine!!! if your going to run up the score, do it with subs!!

a few years back we had a game that was 215-28, and then another one that was 205-70..... that was a little ridiculous!!!!!

My take - standard HS game, do nothing. Kids rec league, ask the coach if he still needs to have the press on. You'd be surprised at how many coaches don't realize what they're doing (ever ;) ).

Too damned bad if you don't like it. Your job is to officiate a game, not be a judge of character.

opinions vary!

You're the Referee!
 

Agree with Rich Fronheiser....You start looking and helping the team behind commits you to losing your objectivity.

Does your state have a "running clock" / "mercy rule" at the middle school/elementary school level?

If Coach A wants to be a jerk....let him be the jerk. I would presume word will get out about this person and he'll eventually have to deal with it. I would probably call the league commissioner and/or the Coach's Athletic Director and mention the incident after the game. Sad part about this is that the "young kids" are the ones who ultimately suffer. Sorry that the "win at all cost" mentality continues at this "learning time". Whatever happened to being role models?

Peace....

wl

As a newbie, this situation raises an issue I'd like to hear from you senior guys how to handle.

Let's take the original post's situation--team is up by 30 and still pressing.

That alone isnt a problem. Might be uncool, but being uncool isnt against the rules.

BUT it certainly makes the players testy and perhaps the crowd testy. So lets add that to the situation--up by 30, winning team is still pressing, and you can tell that the crowd is getting rowdy and the losing players are getting testy.

So now my question is this: how much would you tighten up your calling of the game if you saw the losing players starting to get pissed? Would you then say something to the coaches? Is this perhaps a "preventative officiating" situation, and if so how do you handle it?

Just a newbie looking for a little guidance :)

Clark

Jmo Clark, it's fine to tighten up if they start to get a l'il more physical than you like or start to yap at each other- but just make sure that you tighten up both ways. Iow, make the calls the same at both ends. That's our job- not playing judge and jury on what is really a coach's perogative in the first place. Personally, I never tell the coaches how to do their job. That just seems kinda unreasonable to me if I'm not gonna let them tell me how to do my job also.

When we had a discussion earlier that about a disrespectful player, I suggested that that player better be perfect in the things he does. I would do the same here.

Of course I would not make anything up or call a "tighter game." But if they press and do a lot of swiping at the ball they better get the ball. But if they are just moving their feet and playing great defense, I would not do anything different.

Peace

Definately true, sometimes the coach gets lost in the moment.

If they team A is winning by 25+ and he has subs in and they are still running it up, then I feel sorry for team B at the next practice.

Keep that clock moving. Here in MO, we have the mercy rule that helps roll the time off.

Thanks for all of your responses. The game in question was 6th grade level. The coach still had all of his starters in and I just got PO'd. I did not call the T but wanted to know what everyone else thought.

I find it hard to believe that the league or school association did not have a "mercy" provision in force such as a running clock or no pressing. Are you aware of your state association's guidlines? Perhaps you had an oversight?

In any event, you should never try to be so subjective and influence the game with your morality about sportsmanship as it relates to a blow out. Do your job and officiate the game within the rules set forth by the sanctioning body you operate under. Let the coaches "coach" even if it disagrees with your position in this matter.

several years ago I was coaching my Daughters C level team and somehow, we played an A level team and they were killin us and still continued to press. I called a time out and asked the girls what they thought. Most of them were just playing basketball for the social aspect and didn't care so much about winning. When we went back in, we started inbounding the ball with a perfect pass to the opponent. It took about 3 times for the coach to pull back the hounds. He apologized multiple times after the game.

Robmoz: I did not have an oversight. There are no pressing rules for 5th grade and down. There is no mercy rule in Massachusetts.

When I was a freshman in HS we lost a game 99-69 to a school which presses the whole game. That is their style of play from the varsity squad all the way down.
While our coach was rather upset with us and we ran the entire next practice, I would have been more embarrassed if they had pulled the press.
Of course, high school boys have a different attitude.

What....???
 

....and what "attitude" would that be?

wl

If I don't let them tell me how to ref, I can't tell them how to coach. You may not like it, but that is up to the league.

Mregor

They certainly do. Some are right, some are wrong.

I worked a game once with a partner who was a veteran coach and he was the losing coach in a situation like this. He explained that he instructed his players to hand the ball to the winning team on their throw-in after a basket. The winning team could then score and they would repeat the action. His thinking was that since clearly the other team for some reason needed more points he was going to give them as many as they wanted. Once the winning team was ready to actually "play" then his team would also play.

The result was that the coach got the idea and took the press off.

My experince
 

Several years back, our CYO JV team was all 4th graders and somehow got placed in an all-6th grade division.

We played one team that beat us 36-1. Thing is, the coach didn't take his starters at when he went up by 30, as required by the league rules and the officials chose not to enforce the rule when reminded of it...

So, when I sent the game report to the league office, I asked them to review the game and the circumstances, since in their handout, they mention that they will scrutinize games with 30+ decisions to make sure good sportsmanship was present. While I'm not sure if the league did anything, the next time we played this school, they brought their winless team to play our winless squad. (That game was much closer, a 16-20 loss ;) ).

Some of my old math students always felt they had a 50-50 chance of getting a problem right since there were only two answers -- the right one and the wrong one. Of course, those weren't the brightest students.

My two cents are that we are the game officials, not the coaches, and we should not tell a coach how to do his job. Just as we don't want coaches questioning our judgement on the calls that we make, we should grant them the same courtesy by just doing our job. That's not to say that we should be unaware of the 30+ point lead teams that press, on the contrary, as Clark said, we should be more aware of a potential situation when tempers start to flare. Coaches all have reasons for doing what they do, and they need to face their fellow coaches at coaches meetings, so if one coach has a problem, that's the forum that it should be dealt with in. We need to be aware and recognize, but it shouldn't impact how we call the game.

On another similar note, some of the youth leagues that I've worked in employ "no press" rules after a certain lead has been reached. Personally, I think these rules need to be either re-vamped or done away with, because they allow the trailing team to keep pressing, while prohibiting the winning team from doing so, creating an unfair advantage. At the grammer/middle school level, depending on ability, I'd like to see pressure either done away with, or have some sort of a mercy rule in which the losing coach "throws in the towel" and neither team would then be allowed to press for the remainder of the game.

As for sportsmanship, we need to enforce the rules on the court, and not extend personal feelings to the coaches, and also not allow our judgements of a coach's strategy from impacting the game in a negative way. I think changing calls and being overly punitive to a team based on their strategy is wrong. I also think I would take a strong look at whether the losing coach is making a mockery of the game by instructing his players to hand the ball to the other team on throw ins against the press. I think it's a means to an end, but it's unsportmanlike in its own right and could cause the game to greatly deteriorate as both sides get more steamed.

I used to be one of those officials who really resented coaches who "ran up the score". Doing all the little things that have been discussed here never did any good, it just made life hell for me and my partner. Call the game, call the obvious, let the clock run, and get the hell out.

Having said that, if a team is running up the score AND being a bunch of jerks, we are fully within our authority to deal with it.

(insert "whack" sound here)

I agree with Mregor's attitude!

Several years back I worked with a "veteran" partner who vehemently commented
during halftime about the blowout and unsporting action of the home team to
keep pressing. He managed to keep reasonably level-headed throughout the 2nd half.

Unfortunately, after the game in the officials’ dressing room, he made a brief
comment of disgust and then decided to leave and let the home team coach know
how he felt his choice to press on the entire game. The final score was 99-14.
The visiting team was a cross-town parochial school.

I did attempt to dissuade him from going back at the coach, but he was
hell-bent on making his point. To the best of my knowledge, that
“veteran” official has not seen another contract in our area.