teaching point

[Jurassic Referee]

Coach, I'm with everybody else on this one. You would be very wise to leave this one alone imo. You're coaching your players to foul an airborne shooter when they're in their most vulnerable position. You could get a serious injury out of this one very easily, especially with players who don't have the highest skill level and may still be a little awkward.

The FED issued a POE on this one a few years ago. They want us to call the so-called breakaway foul an intentional if there is excessive contact involved. The recommendation was that it didn't matter if the defender went after the ball, if you felt the contact was excessive then call it an intentional foul, or even a flagrant foul if the airborne shooter really gets dumped. As I said, you're taking your chances on this one.

Quotes from that POE:
Acts that may be deemed intentional include:
- grabbing or shoving a player from behind when an easy basket may be scored
- excessive contact on a player attempting a shot.

Part of our training is to go over this explicit call, and then ask our officials to call it the way that the FED wants.

[Edited by Jurassic Referee on Jan 18th, 2005 at 05:17 PM]