Here's a sampling of stupid remarks from a girls' AAU 15U, 16U, & 17U tournament this weekend.

Late in the second quarter, the scoreboard displays the team fouls as 9 on each team. Lady in the stands behind me yells, "Ya'll need to call some fouls on our end!"

I called a PC foul on A1, who push off with her non-dribbling hand and knocked her pint-sized defender to the floor. She looks dead at me and says, "Jesus, ref. At least make it look like you're trying to call it fair."

Contact underneath the basket. From a player on the bench behind me, I hear, "Call the damn foul!" Whack! Now here's the stupid part. Coach asks, "Don't they get a warning?"

Same coach. Her 6'1" center shoves her 5'6" defender completely out of the paint on a throw-in. L and I, center, both whistle the foul. I verbalizes "Blue 32, offensive foul." Teammates help B1 up. I report. Four trips down the floor later, I'm directly in front of the coach at center. The coach yells, "Don't touch anybody Sheree, it might be an offensive foul!" Whack! Here's the stupid part. Coach says, "But I was talking to my player." Yeah, right.

Other than the normal stupidity that you hear from the wonderful players, coaches, and fans of AAU basketball, it was a pretty good weekend. A lot of D-1 prospects and some very good basketball.

First of all, it sounds like the game was getting out of hand early. But once again the knowledge of the fans shows through with flying colors. Maybe you could have pulled the coaches or players together earlier and have a talk with them?
It can be a touchy situation when this kind of thing happens. Were these coaches ones that have been working during the season and have known better?
Just keep WHACKING them.

Why no "whack" here? This would be automatic with me and everyone I know.

No question about it. Unsporting and breaking a Commandment! :)

Comments such as those, accusing you of being unfair (i.e. cheating), are pretty much always deserving of a T.

Breaking a commandment - just pray/hope that God sends a lightning bolt to strike down the idiotic player/coach!

No, this wasn't one game. This was over the course of a weekend. Very smooth on Friday night, noisy on Saturday and got bloody on Sunday.

Oh, there was definitely a WHACK! after this was said. I wasn't bragging about the Ts. I only included the technicals that were called in the other two instances because I felt like the most stupid remarks were made after the Ts were called.

But, yes, rest assured that she got popped. I was glad to see her coach immediately take her out. :)

What I always wonder when I see this kind of stuff happen is whether your fellow refs are handing out the T's that they should. You did what you needed to under the circumstances, but did some of your colleagues set you up for this by not punishing this behavior earlier in these players' careers?

I know that players can get emotional at times, but these are high school girls, probably veteran AAUers with 100s of high level games under their belt by this age. We have JV and varsity refs beginning in MS AAU tournaments. I would think that this type of incident would already have happened and they already would have learned their lesson - and there really aren't that many Rasheeds out there. Most players figure it out and don't set themselves up for the automatics, as long as the refs have taught them what an automatic is by handing out the T.

But perhaps this is their first time (they are at the right age) of getting this mouthy, so it's a good thing that you didn't hesitate on the T's. Another possibility is that the coach has set an environment that leads to players having these discipline problems.

Good job in letting them know the boundaries - you may have saved someone else the conflict.

I should add that I know what the coach was doing, but if you were going to pass on one, you probably could have let that go unless he had a lot already saved up. It's a dig, but it isn't direct on you so you have some leeway there. However, I know I wasn't there, didn't hear it (or any previous comments from the coach), and didn't have to deal with the etire game situation.

My feeling is that the players and coaches involved had probably gotten away with similiar comments where they live. We tried to draw the line early into the weekend and early in the games. The coach that I busted got at least 2 other technicals during that weekend.