Flame? No, but just hope that I'm not being evaluated when I'm working with you. Nothing personal.

No, I'm auditioning to be Martha's love slave.

Answer me this though, Yoda......

Why did they put an ankle bracelet on poor ol' Martha? She lives on a 150 acre farm with about 300 servants. Why did the judge even dream that she would possibly ever think of making a break for it?

Hmmmmm..... Martha on the lam. Could be another "The Fugitive".

"Les Miserables"? Martha as Jean Valjean?

Not quite a flame, but if you like, you can take it that way.

My opinion is that some of the problems we face as officials arise from the fact that calls are not made the same from one game/one official to another. It's bad enough to have differences occur due to judgement or "style", let alone differences due to not knowing the rules, or just plain disregarding the rules.

Nope, you can't go back and fix any throw-in error after <b>any</b> player on either team has touched the ball inbounds to end the throw-in. See casebook play 6.4.1SitD also.

I work with the same partner all season, so we probably won't work together. But if we did work together, I wouldn't let you hand the wrong team the ball :)

So, do you worry more about the outcome of an evaluation than you worry about changing a patently unfair outcome on the court?

If you give the wrong team the ball, YOU'VE made a gross error on the court. Allowing that team to score after YOUR gross error amplifies YOUR gross error.

As an evaluator, you'd get more game management points from me fixing the scenario the way I described. You've already lost all the points you can lose by giving the wrong team the ball. No coach I know would demand those points knowing his team didn't deserve the ball in the first place.

Again, I didn't expect my response to be embraced here -- I feel too many on boards like this have their noses buried too deeply in case books to see the bigger picture. Like how you're going to manage the coach of the team wrongly offended after (1) the wrong team gets the ball and (2) the wrong team scores on an uncontested layup all because YOU couldn't remember which team was supposed to have the ball.

[Edited by Rich Fronheiser on Nov 2nd, 2005 at 04:36 PM]

So it's better to know case 6.4.1 situation 69 than it is to know which team (only 2 choices, BTW) is SUPPOSED TO GET THE BALL?

It's a good thing I'm not a coach, because after you ruled this way against my team, I'd likely get tossed.

Rich,

I agree with your philosophy that we need to get the call right. Where have I heard that before? (oh yeah, it was on this board about a thousand times). And I also agree that getting the call right is WAY higher on my list of important things than what my evaluator is going to think of me doing what is best for the game.

However, if my crew doesn't notice that we gave the ball to the wrong team until after a basket is scored, we're all asleep (and possible comatose) at the wheel and we deserve any beating that we receive.

Z

As an evaluator, you'd get more game management points from me fixing the scenario the way I described. You've already lost all the points you can lose by giving the wrong team the ball. No coach I know would demand those points knowing his team didn't deserve the ball in the first place.

Again, I didn't expect my response to be embraced here -- I feel too many on boards like this have their noses buried too deeply in case books to see the bigger picture. Like how you're going to manage the coach of the team wrongly offended after (1) the wrong team gets the ball and (2) the wrong team scores on an uncontested layup all because YOU couldn't remember which team was supposed to have the ball.

[/B][/QUOTE]As one of the great men in history once said "And Now For Something Completely Different".......

Jmo but I think all of you are being way too simplistic and <b>all</b> of you are missing the "big picture".

This particular situation has got way too many variables in it to say "It's <b>gotta</b> be done this way--i.e. the level of ball being played, time and score, importance of game, political ramifications, etc.

If you're in a situation where a do-ever doesn't really mean that much-- ms game, blowout, meaningless game, whatever-- then by all means have a do-over. Just make sure you explain to the coaches why you're doing it. No harm/no foul.

If you're in a state playoff game replete with assignors/evaluators, then you had better damnwell be <b>right</b>. A screw-up can be explained away. Sh!t happens. A deliberate ignoring of or misapplication of a rule could be referee career suicide though. A state assignor/evaluator present can explain away <b>why</b> something may have happened as long as the situation over-all can also be explained as being handled properly rules-wise. Iow if you made a mistake, you might as well admit it. Evaluators <b>cannot</b> explain away an official deliberately misapplying a rule. And if you think, if this play might or possibly does make a difference in who wins or loses at the state playoff varsity level, that the losing coach is gonna just say "Oh, great, that's good sportsmanship. I'm all for it", well, you're a helluva lot more optimistic than I am.

There's a time and a place for everything. Experience and common sense usually will tell you where and when not you can do what Rich is suggesting.

Again, jmo fwiw.

[Edited by Jurassic Referee on Nov 2nd, 2005 at 05:19 PM]

We walked down this road a few weeks ago.

Maybe some nice person will look back & find it.

If three officials let this happen in a game at a state tournament, they are all committing career suicide no matter how they choose to try to solve it.

Z

I wasn't involved. Until a week ago, it was football season. :)

Yup, probably, but the main discussion is what to do <b>if</b> it actually does happen.

Much as I'd love to say that something like that would never,ever happen to me personally, I really couldn't - to be quite honest.

I was working with a newer guy last year who, in his haste, put the ball in play with 6 on the floor. I had my hand up as I knew they hadn't completed the substitution and he didn't make eye contact with me.

I agressively stopped play (the ball MIGHT have come onto the floor) and I had one of the players sent off. No technical, no complaining either.

A gross error on the part of the officials in managing the game shouldn't penalize either team.

A similar but different happened to me long ago (I think that's the thread Dan is referring to). Two-person game...I signaled white and verbalized white and then brought a few subs in. Partner hands ball to red. I notice immediately, but hesitate on my whistle briefly to make sure. Two dribbles and then I crack the whistle. Give ball back to red. This is an intense, heated game with playoff implications and not a word was said. Nothing. Nada. I should have reacted quicker. No doubt about that.

Had I let play continue, we would have had a hornet's nest and our game probably would have made the main story of the sports page the next day. Sometimes we just do what we gotta do.

We can quote rules all day, but the truth is that almost all refs occaisonally use their better judgement to get out of a situation.

How many officials haven't given the ball to blue when it went off blue but they passed on contact by white? Hey, that's against the rules, but I've seen it done so many times that I've lost count.

Z

Which brings up an interesting question...

If one official has his hand raised, does the ball really become live when the ball is handed to a player by the other official? I think an argument could be made that the ball remained dead since at least one of the officials "indicated" that it was a dead ball and was to remain a dead ball.