Can somebody please post the link to the most recent bulletin from Hank Nichols? I was told that it was posted yesterday or Wednesday and that Hank is perturbed. Post play is supposedly addressed at length.

But I don't know where to find it. We used to have a link on the ECAC wesite, but I don't see it anymore. Somebody help me out?

Thanks

Chuck-->

I think I have that bulletin in my e-mail at home. If you send me an e-mail, I can check after work and get back to you.

Chuck,

Here is the link:

http://www.ncaa.org/champadmin/baske...ing_bulletins/

Joe

Here is the Hank Nichols bulletin. It very much applies to the high school game too. HS officials often do a poor job of controlling the play and in enforcing bench decorum. I cannot tell you how many times I hear the following things in pregames.

1) "We're gonna let em' play tonight."
2) "I don't care where the coaches are as long as they aren't yelling at me."

Control the game and the coaches box.

Z


FROM: Henry O. Nichols
National Coordinator of Men’s Basketball Officiating.

SUBJECT: Officiating Slippage

We have done it again! After a great beginning of enforcing the points of emphasis, there has been drastic slippage by officials during February, especially as it concerns post play and the coaching box. This is disappointing.

Rough Play. There has been deterioration in calling post play action, roughness during rebounding and cutters being manhandled. All of the good work done previously this season will be for naught if officials continue to ignore the illegal rough play that has surfaced in recent games. There has been too much ignoring plays that were called earlier in the season. Officials, if you have pride in doing
the right thing for the game of basketball, you will address this major concern in every game immediately.

Coaching Box. Many coaches have been roaming all over, getting on the court and going past the 28-foot coaching box demarcation with complete immunity. This is a serious problem and is also unacceptable. As much as we have addressed this issue, officials keep ignoring the problem game after game. Officials must take care of this problem and keep the coaches where they are supposed to be. Coaches must take more responsibility on themselves to stay in the coaching box.

Are memos like this ever issued for High School officials? Where would I be able to find them?

This page was interesting.

In one of my playoff games the other night, we called enough fouls to put both teams in the two-shot bonus in both halves. The game was very physical and all we did hear most of the night was complaining from coaches and players.

If the NCAA and state associations do not like the way the game is called, then hire people that follow those guidelines. Then do not reward officials that are not following those guidelines regardless of experience level. But we know that will not happen because there is a huge reluctance to give newer officials a chance. And the newer officials do not get a change if they are not going to do what is common. I am not talking about minor things, but major issues this addresses. The NCAA uses the tournament games to show what should be done and what should not be done. If they do not like the things they see, why do they keep advancing certain officials deep into the tournament. I can say the very same thing at the HS level (at least around here). Officials only do what we are told and what we are allowed to do. We do not make the rules or reprimand ourselves if we do not follow them.

Peace

Great points, Rut.

Bradford,
Most high schools associations will issue similar bulletins throughout the year. In Iowa, we got our collective wrists slapped by the boys' association for not enforcing the bench decorum rule (we don't have a box for boys here). The various associations may post their bulletins on their websites.

One of the problems with our coaches’ box is that many courts are not marked properly. Some do not even have a coaches box. If they want that rule enforced, support the officials when they make that call. I only call what is acceptable. I am not going to go out calling all this stuff when no one else seems to care.

Peace

Even if a coaches box is not marked, you can still manage the coach in an area. "Your coaching box tonight is from that first chair to the 12th chair coach. Please stay in it." When officials mention the coaches box in the pregame conference with the coach, the coach is immediately aware that you are going to be monitoring it.

You don't have to call a T every time a coach steps out of the box. If you monitor it and just give them that "knowing look" and wave them back in, they'll realize that you are one of those aware officials and they'll soon be managing themselves. If you do it subtly, you can avoid embarrassing the coach and you can also manage it by yourself even if your partner is one of those "I don't care about the coaching box" officials.

Z

I am not big on the use of the coaching box either. If a coach steps out and starts yelling outside of that box, you can always use the box as a tool to get what you want them to do. If the court is not marked your idea is not going to get consistent application. One of the problems is if I do that one night, they might not get that the next night. I think our state should make it clear which courts are properly marked. It is not a major concern or issue, but all it takes is that one time to have a problem.

Peace

I've heard coaches tell me something like, "you're the first ref in a month to monitor the coaching box." I take that as a compliment, not a problem. I just say, "this is your box tonight coach" and away we go.

Coaching boxes are always talked about at our state interpreter meetings so the coaches know that we officials are supposed to manage the box. I have found that coaches respect officials who give them "the eye" when they wonder outside the box. They just give that "oops, sorry" look and get back within their boundaries.

In our state, any floor without a properly marked coaching box reverts to the seatbelt rule so I remind the coaches that I am doing them a favor by letting them have a "temporary" coaching box. When the coach is kept sane, it usually keeps the players and fans sane too. When the coach starts roaming outside the box and gesturing and yelling, pretty soon it spreads like wildfire.

Too many officials act like the coaching box is a pain when it can actually be their best friend.

Z

In Texas we have been told that if the coach's box is not marked to ask the AD to put it down with tape. If they don't want to do that we are to seatbelt the home coach and let the visiting coach roam in front of the bench.

The reason behind this was that if the home AD refuses to put down the tape we should not penalize the visiting coach for the lack of a box. We were also told to make exceptions for neutral site games when neither team had control of the floor.

When I was in Delaware, the state had a good way of dealing with the coaches box. They told the coaches, "You WILL mark the floor, and you WILL stay within that box. If you do not stay within the box, you WILL receive a technical foul-no warning. If officials are not willing to give technical fouls for the infraction, then we will take away the box and everyone will have to sit."

Every coach and official was told this at the state meetings. It worked well because it made both parties responsible, and it took pressure off of officials because coaches knew that if they didn't enforce the box, the state was going to take it away the next season. It also worked because the coaches have to sit in nearby New Jersey and Pennsylvania, so the Delaware coaches were aware of the possibilites.

Where I am in VA, however, enforcement of the coache's box is lax, at best. Most of the floors don't even have it marked. I usually tell coaches to remain within the seats of their bench. Every area of the country seems to be very different with respect to this rule.

Getting back to the bulletin, this article appeared in the NY Times last week. I don't think it says anything new, but it's interesting in that Hank gave an interview to talk about the situation. The quote from Boeheim either came from, or was repeated in, ESPN's Pardon the Interruption. I saw him talking about just this subject. Anyway, here's the article, FWIW.

March 5, 2005
SPORTS OF THE TIMES
In a Brutal Winter, Referees Are Put on Notice
By WILLIAM C. RHODEN

FEBRUARY was not a great month for referees in men's Division I basketball. Earlier this week, Hank Nichols told them so.
Nichols is the national coordinator of basketball officials for the National Collegiate Athletic Association. After watching about three weeks of rough post play, coaches roaming out of the coaching box and players going over the back to get rebounds, he fired off a bulletin to his referees.

"I kind of got after them and said that they've slipped in what we were supposed to be doing and what they've done all year," Nichols said in a telephone interview on Thursday. "They were going well and now they're not, and we need to step it up these last couple of weeks so we can get back on track."

Nichols said his bulletin was not related to the John Chaney incident, in which Chaney sent in a little-used Temple player to commit hard fouls. But his strongly worded memo addressed an atmosphere of loosely regulated physical play that has crept into the college game and has in fact been forming for the past few seasons.

The college game has become rougher, and the officials aren't doing anything about it. For all of the focus on Chaney - and he deserves every bit of it - there is an overriding problem that must be addressed before the vigilantism he practiced becomes a way of life in the college game.

"The officials today are letting too much go," Jim Boeheim, the coach at Syracuse, said in a telephone interview. Boeheim led Syracuse to the national championship two seasons ago and won his 700th game last week. "I had a pro general manager come to our game and said our game is more physical than the N.B.A.," he said. "That's not right. These are kids."

The Big East used to be the worst conference when it came to unbridled physical play. One season, the league even experimented with the N.B.A. allotment of six fouls a player.

Boeheim said the Big East tried to shed its image of physical play for a while.

"Now we're getting back in it," he said. "I think it's a big mistake. The beauty of basketball is seeing guys play and move and run and not have people holding and grabbing."

Scoring has dipped in Division I men's basketball since 2000-1, when teams averaged 71.4 points a game. The current average is 69.7 points.

The more telling statistic is the decline in the number of fouls called in the past five seasons.

In 2000-1, referees called an average of 19.9 fouls per team per game. The figure has decreased with each successive season: 19.2 in 2001-2; 19.1 in 2002-3; 19.0 in 2003-4. At the midpoint of this season, the figure was 18.6 fouls per team per game.

That's a significant drop: nearly three fouls a game that were called four seasons ago are not being called.

About five years ago, Nichols initiated an effort to take excessive physical play out of the college game, and more fouls were called. But in recent seasons, the trend has gradually moved back to fewer fouls being called.

"I thought that four years ago the game was rough and getting ready to get out of hand," Nichols said. "Almost everybody in basketball was concerned that the game had gotten to a point where the weight room outweighed the skills.

"Until the last week or so, we had pretty much eliminated rough play and a wrestling match every night. We've had some slippage these last couple of weeks in February."

Frankly, I was surprised that the numbers supported Boeheim's belief that the game had become more Neanderthal. Referees like to call fouls; they are law-and-order people who use their whistles to dictate the course of a game and send messages to recalcitrant coaches and players. Why would they let the rough stuff go, particularly when they could have a Chaney thing on their hands?

"I think what happens," Boeheim said, "is that officials say they don't want to determine the outcome of a game by calling a lot of fouls. But if they call the fouls early, players will stop fouling because they want to play.

"The heart of this is that the rules are written and the officials are not calling the fouls because, somehow, they think they're going to determine the outcome of a game. It's something that we've been trying to address for the last two years, but it's not working."

Nichols said that outstanding defense was a major reason for the decline in scoring and fouls.

But there may be a more distressing reason for the lack of calls this time of year: fatigue.

The referees - especially the older ones - are tired, and the N.C.A.A. tournament will begin on March 15. Referees are the nomads of the college sports industry. Instead of being under the N.C.A.A. umbrella, as they should be, officials are independent contractors who can work as often and for as many conferences as their schedules and health permit. By this time of year, many officials have had it.

"It could be the whole syndrome in February that everybody's tired, including the refs and the players and the coaches," Nichols said. "They can be getting tired, which means they're not at the top of their games every night, and they're going to pass on some plays."

Every N.C.A.A. tournament has a story line - an undefeated team or a Cinderella. Given Nichols's memo and the events of the past week and a half, a significant story of this tournament will be the officials. They have to call what they see, and they definitely have to see more.

I don't know about you, but I don't feel like I've had enough fun unless we're in the double bonus, both ways, both halves. But maybe that's just me. I'm a law-and-order kind of guy, after all. :rolleyes:

I agree that the coaches shouldn't be treated differently. We got a memo near the end of the season from our assignor reiterating that if there is no box, either it gets marked or both coaches sit. Some schools may view it as an advantage to keep a visiting coach who walks a lot seated. I don't like it, I think the game should stay between the lines. But I can see the logic in that way of thinking.

But I do agree with the directive that if there's no box marked, they sit. It's not a matter of a rule allowing you to seatbelt the coach. It's the other way around. The priviledge of standing to coach is only afforded coaches in states where the box is approved by the state association and it is clearly marked on the floor. The box is a priviledge, not a right.

I can just see it now: Hold on their coach, that's an excessive amount of attitude. I'm afraid I'm going have to write you up for ..... hey, is that a donut? Jelly filled? Mind if I have one? Mmmmm, I really like these lemon ones, you like 'em? So how's it goin this year, coach? You having a good season? :D

We were told somthing similar. If the box is not marked, then the home coach has to sit and the visiting coach may stand.

Same rule in Ohio. The box can vary from game to game as it is the size of the largest bench between the two teams.

If A has 10 players and coaches on the bench and B has 15, both get 15 (chairs or seats)

I do many JV games and I'm usually having site managers mark the box for our game and the varsity.

We are directed to have game management put down the boxes if they are not marked.

A couple of years ago it so happened that the coach was the AD/game management. I notified him about the boxes and he handed ME a roll of tape.

I immediately walked over and handed the tape to the visting coach and said, "Coach please use this to mark your coach's box for tonight."

It took about 30 seconds before the home coach put down BOTH boxes.;)

If the home team does not do it, the visiting team should be allowed to put down the temporary box. If the home coach then has to sit, it is their own fault.

I like that approach ;)