No timeouts...but coach wants one

[Corndog89]

I like to tell the coach (head or assistant) when he/she has one and no time-outs. I think its just good game management. However.......

The worst HS game I ever had the displeasure to be a part of involved a "number-of-time-outs-left" fiasco. It involved two horrible, horrible small town girls teams...if we had called every foul and violation we would still be there. Somehow, however, we came down to the last 10 seconds or so with the visitors ahead by 2 points and the home team with the ball. About 2 game minutes earlier, the home team took a timeout, and after conferring with the scorekeeper, I told the home team coach (and my partners) that she no timeouts left. She acknowledged my notfication. Now, with 10 seconds left, home team calls a timeout. One of my partners reports the TO and I'm quietly rejoicing the pending "T" because it means we're finally going to get out of this little corner of hell. But instead he goes to his spot on the floor. I go to the table to confirm with the scorer the home team TO count; the visiting coach is watching my conversation closely because he had heard me tell the other coach earlier that she had no timeouts left. The scorer (she was maybe 15 and this seemed to be perhaps the second b-ball game she had ever seen in her life) in this tiny little backwoods Florida panhandle gym told me that the home team did indeed have a timeout left, that she must have miscounted when I asked earlier. I asked the visitor's scorer what she had, and SHE HAD NO IDEA. My partners and I talked it over and decided we had to go with the official book and granted the TO. Surprisingly, the visiting coach took it pretty well. Amazingly he had his s*** together despite the completely inept team he was cursed to coach. Fortunately the home team held true to form and turned the ball over almost immediately after the ensuing throw in, and by that point it would have taken a coroner's inquest for any of us to even consider calling a foul. BTW, we needed a police escort to the parking lot after this disaster.

Sorry for the long post, but the moral of this story is make sure you can trust the scorekeeper before you pass pertinent data to coaches.