Not according to a POE issued by the NFHS in the 2000-2001 rulebook--i.e. POE #5- "Acts that must be deemed intentional include when a coach/player says 'watch,we're going to foul'". Lot of discussion about that one back then.

I don't understand why a coach wouldn't teach their players see a fouling situation as an opportunity to risk everything to get a steal. Isn't a steal always preferred over a foul in these situations?

We had a game that we were winning by one with four seconds on the clock and the opponent inbounding at 1/2 court. We had three fouls to give so I told me kids to go all out and take a shot at a steal on the first inbound attempt and then try to swat the ball after a dribble or two on the next two attempts. Result: 1st attempt, insane pressure on inbounding team, we steal game over.

They say it's what you emphasize, so why not emphasize steal attempt that results in a foul if you don't get it.

IMHO, 4-19-3 is clear and unambiguous. It is not legal to commit a foul designed to neutralize an opponent's obvious advantage or to stop/keep the clock from starting in NFHS rules - period.

This type of situation usually occurs with time running out in a close game & the team behind is trying to get the ball back to get a chance to score. This is something I always discuss with my partner in pregame.

Bottom line:
1. Any foul committed in this situation had better be related to a legitimate attempt to attack the ball.
2. There had better not be any excessive contact.

Fail either test and I will call the intentional without reservation, and the opponent will get 2 shots and the ball back.

Its an interesting question coach. What I think is interesting is that in the sitch from other post if the coach had yelled GO after the Ball, get the Ball, Got get him or any variation, he would not have picked up the intentional.

But you are right the kids should go hard after the ball, they may force a turn over and at worse they get a foul called on them (and that's what they wanted in the first place)

I know there are even a lot of coaches who have a code word like Red that means go foul without yelling foul..

Tim, do you really call "X" when B1 simply grabs A1 at the end of the game to force the FT? If so, have you done so for a long time or is it something new you would be focusing on?

If B is playing aggressive defense and going after the ball that's one thing, but if they simply grab, hold, push, hug, etc. with the obvious intent of fouling, I'll call the "X" every time.

It's something that I've always done - both the specific definition and the underlying principal of advantage/disadvantage clearly support it.

[Edited by TimTaylor on Dec 8th, 2004 at 12:06 PM]

And that's how Tim's and my assignor wants it called.

That's good to hear that you guys are going with the call. My assignors have told us to be more diligent with these types of end of game scenarios. I am looking forward to seeing how the officials actually respond.

People in my area are not making this call. As a second year official, I admittedly do not want the before-used "arrow in the back" so I am VERY slow to make it. We all know it's in the book, but people don't just avoid the call, they discourage others from making it as well.

Jim, You must have missed the NFHS statement a couple of years ago that flatly stated if the coach is instructing his players to foul, then it is an intentional foul.

It is late and I don't have the energy to look this up right now, but someone else (JR perhaps?) will surely post it for you.

You must not have had the energy to read all the posts in this thread either. :D

The citation from the old POE that you are referring to is at the top of this page.

Everyone has their way of seeing a foul. If they are remotely close to the ball and don't "try to take the player out" I usually don't give the X. If it is hard foul from behind & if A is in a dead run especially on a scoring breakway and gets hammered it's usually a pretty easy X for me. I always tell the teams that when we get to the lanes that we know they are going to foul so they had better be at least get close to the ball.

Hope it is kosher to exhume this thread and inquire whether a defender is courting the X with you if he closes out on the ballhandler, then on the dribble past him uses his near hand to get some jersey while at the same time swinging the far hand around to take a swipe at the ball upward (from which hard contact rarely if ever results.) The coach teaching this method (and calling someting like "Red!" from the bench) is hoping that even those officials with a lower X threshold will view the jersey grab as enough of a quasi-improvised attempt to get the position and leverage to make the upward swipe (admittedly most often a whiff) at the ball to pass muster -- avoiding the intentional, but impeding the ballhandler enough to draw the foul.

Of course if the defender is too slow he will whiff with BOTH hands, drawing nothing and accomplishing even less (the comedy of errors described above.) But I wonder whether you have ever been tempted to X something like this when the jersey is tugged? Would it depend on the severity of the tug? (Assume there is nothing close to a pirouette occuring.) Would it matter if the defenders started tugging with one or two team fouls, rather than five or six?

And might it in fact be an intentional personal foul under the letter of NCAA guideline at least, which describes "grabbing a player's arm or body while initially attempting to gain control by playing the ball directly . . . " as sufficient? Grabbing nothing but fabric seems more plainly a problem under the off-ball guideline ("grabbing holding or pushing A PLAYER"), but might be OK on the ballhandler as the jersey is, most strictly speaking, neither "arm" nor "body"?

As a coach in these situations I really do appreciate the officials that get the first foul on anything close -- and that's true whether I am fouling or being put on the line. When the defenders don't get the calls and start coming at it harder, nothing good can happen, it seems to me, X or no X.

Coach, at the high school level, actually grabbing the jersey should be an X. It can't be explained away as anything <b>but</b> an intentional foul. Now whether the officials are gonna call it that way is a whole 'nother matter. When I get asked by coachs about this, I tell them that they have to give their officials an excuse <b>not</b> to call an intentional foul-- iow make some kinda play on the ball that creates a doubt that the defender was trying to intentionally foul the ball-handler. There really isn't much doubt when you're just grabbing the shirt, even if it's in combination with another action. Hell, all a defender ever has to do anyway is create some contact when reaching for the ball (short of knocking the offensive player on his butt)to keep away from the X. That can't be brain surgery to teach. If you teach your players to grab shirts, then you're taking a chance that the officials you have on that particular game aren't gonna let you get away with it.

And still confusion persists.

If everyone in the gym knows they are going to purposely (notice the use of the word purposely instead of intentionally) foul then the only differentiation between an intential foul and a non-intentional foul is a token swipe at the ball?

I don't know how many different times I'll need to say this, but I'm getting ready for my first year of officiating so obviously my views come without a wealth of experience.

I think we would all recognize a foul made with the primary intent to hurt/punish the opposing player as an intentional foul. We all would also recognize a run-of-the-mill foul as being just a standard foul. In between is a lot of gray area for me. I can't imagine it being as black and white as some have painted it and my initial reaction is that a number of factors come into play:

Severity/violence of the foul
Emotions within the game (is this likely to spark an altercation?)
Intimidation factor (was the foul made in such a way as to intimidate or bully the offensive player?)
Safety of the players (was the offensive player in a defenseless position or braced for the foul?)
Excessiveness of the contact (did the defender make the minimum or maximum contact to draw the foul?)

Until the strategy of committing fouls to prolong the game is regulated, this will remain a very gray area for officials. Does anyone have thoughts on my criteria?