Game management, pregame style

[Rich]

I jinxed myself today by insinuating I was good at game management. Tonight I proved I still have some tough nights and that every situation can't really be anticipated.

I'm going to post this in a number of parts. Here's Part I:

Boys varsity about 80 miles from the ranch.

The home coach is one of those 35-year coaches who apparently rides everyone who he hasn’t had working for him for 20 seasons. So I was fresh meat tonight. Not part of the story, but an interesting bit of background information. Duane, when you read this, you've whacked this guy when we worked together there last time, I believe.

We take the court, as required, at 20:00 on the clock. I’m the referee, so in the 2-man system, I am supervising the visiting team. At about the 17-minute mark, the center for the visiting team goes in, goes above the rim, and puts the ball in the basket. It’s close, but in my opinion, it’s not a dunk. No forceful action and never even came close to the rim (I recognize that rim isn't in the definition of dunk, but it does provide an indicator of how "forcefully" the ball was put in the hoop. (Note: My partner agreed later in the pregame when we talked that it wasn't a dunk. He happened to turn towards my basket right as "it" happened.)

Well, the home coach thought it was a dunk and start jumping up and down in front of his bench. Now, mind you, we are 17:00 before the warmup period ends.

I decide to talk to the coach before he has an aneurysm and do some preventive officiating as well. I walked over to the coach and told him that it wasn’t a dunk.

He starts in and after a brief listen I stop him (mainly because I have other business to attend to) and tell him that we aren’t starting the game that way on something like that.

I then go the player and talk to him briefly and told him to knock it off and then go to the coach (I’ve had a few of his games and he’s pretty reasonable) and told him his player’s put me in a hole already and to please tell him to knock it off. The coach goes right to the player and talks to him.

I then go back across the court and we get the captains for the meeting at about 13:00.

After the captains’ meeting, I go to the table as required to check the books, brief the scorer/timer and check the game ball for proper shape/air. As I’m checking the home book, the home coach comes over to the table with a rule book turned to the definition of “dunk” and starts in again about the pregame incident. At that point I say, “Coach, that wasn’t a dunk — you really want to start out this way?” The coach said, “I want you to follow all the rules" and throws the book on top of the scorebook I’m checking and walked away.

That's how my night started. I should've stayed home, I guess. Please feel free to comment, guess what happened next, etc. I'll post more tomorrow. I need to contemplate a few reports I have to write before I finish the story and try to get some constructive feedback.

[Edited by Rich Fronheiser on Feb 2nd, 2005 at 01:39 AM]