Did I make the right call on THIS situation?
 

YMCA girls' middle school game.

A1 gets trapped in her frontcourt in the right corner by two B players. She heaves a pass over the basket [within a foot of the rim] but it doesn't touch the rim, but goes to her teammate, A2, who is in the far left corner of their frontcourt. As A1 throws the ball, B1 hits her forearm. I call a foul on B1, but on the pass and not on a shot. The coach of the other team goes crazy, and so does some of his parents. They are screaming that it was a shot. I was pretty close to the situation where the player was trapped and I saw the look in her eyes; she wasn't looking at the basket, but was looking at her teammate cross court.

Did I make the right call, giving it to the A team for an oob throwin? Or because the ball went right over the rim, should I have considered it a try, even though in my opinion it was more of a pass attempt.

Your opinion on this, please.

If you think it was a pass, you made the correct call.

Explian it to the coach and move on. If the coach won't let it go, deal with that.

Ignore the fans.

It's a judgment call, it's what you get paid to do. Sounds like a pass to me.

4-41-2 . . . A try for field goal is an attempt by a player to score two or three points by throwing the ball into a team's own basket. A player is trying for goal when the player has the ball and in the official's judgment is throwing or attempting to throw for goal. It is not essential that the ball leave the player's hand as a foul could prevent release of the ball.

You did great. :)

If it's a pass, it's a pass.

One thing I might add, in your description you said that the pass made it to A2, so was A1...who was in a bad situation, a trap...really put at a disadvantage by the contact by B1?

Sounds like you could have called nothing on this play.;)

So you're going to wait to see if the pass makes it all the way across the court to A2 before you decide whether to call a foul or not? :confused:

There is a statute of limitations on when you can blow a whistle for a foul?

Don't tell me you blow it immediately on an outlet pass on a possible break?:confused:

It's a foul when an advantage is gained by the illegal contact, and there are plenty of cases where that requires a late whistle.

If the pass was made more difficult by the slap, it's a foul. Whether the pass lands at its intended target isn't relevant. Also, in a ms girls game, I'm more likely to call the slap on the arm than hs boys.

I'd rather not take away a potential advantage by team A, for contact that did not cause a disadvantage by team B...a late whistle is not a factor in that decision.

The higher the level, the more contact I'll allow in this case. MS girls, a hand slap is getting a quicker whistle. HS game, I'm looking for more of an advantage.

It may be the case of a slap with the hands of the defender still in a legal position (arms extending vertically inside the cylinder). This often happens with a trap defence, as three players are very close to each other in a very small area of the court. In this case the offensive player caused contact and (legal) defence should not be penalized.

I disagree...at the appropriate levels.

When working a level that understands the value of a almost certain score (and can count on such), they'll expect to not have that foul called...they'd rather get the points. Most HS coaches get it, a few don't.

Several years ago, I was working a men's league game with a variety of talent...former collge players, former HS players, and some that never played on an organized team. On one play, one of the latter group got slapped fairly hard across the arm as he threw a long pass down the court to a wide open teammate breaking for a sure basket. The guy started complaining about the foul as the teammate was catching the ball and starting to go up for an undefended layup. The that played college quickly pulled him aside and explained that they really didn't want to wipe the points from the board and get the ball OOB in the backcourt. Never heard another word from that player.

No but there is common sense. Do you only call fouls on missed shots and when the ball is turned over? Recovering a loose ball is not the sole test for whether a foul occurred or not.

This wasn't a fast break, was it? It was a trap in the FC. Just because the ball was recovered by a teammate, it doesn't that A1 wasn't placed at a disadvantage. I'm not going to call a foul and kill an easy 2. But a loose ball that falls into the hands of a middle school girl "in the far left corner" is not an easy 2.

And how do you know an advantage wasn't gained? You're telling Greg that he shouldn't have had anything on this play, so I guess you know better than the official who was standing. I'd be interested to know how you know the pass was intended for A2 "in the far left corner."

I'll agree 99.99% of the time, except on Monday night I did A HS summer league, we let them play and all hell broke loose, so unless you set the presidence up front that contact may get you in a game out of control...

There is a difference between let them play and let them kill each other. Calling the game is an art not a science. Just because all hell broke loose in your game does not mean you should not let them play. Also the more kids get older, the stronger they get, the more skilled they become, and the more they can handle contact. That is why we call it judgment.

Peace

I said COULD HAVE, so come off the high horse before you get a nose bleed.;)

Rutledge, this was my postI agreed with the poster, What I meant was we did let them play,and the contact was a little more than normal MS game. And it got out of control , so we had to reel it in.

What Rut was saying is there's more to it than letting them play versus not letting them play.

Is it a rivalry game? So did we pay closer attention to possible flare ups?

Did we pay attention to trash talk? And deal with it.

Were we aware of body language between players? And handle it accordingly.

Players that want to be out of control will be regardless of how you call it, the key is recognizing the problem BEFORE you need to reel things in.

You ref'd a HS game where "we let them play, and the contact was a little more than normal MS game"? Sounds like very weak HS teams if they can't handle "a little more contact than a MS game."

Out of control, to me, means that they are either not making basketball plays or they are playing outside of their actual ability. I kind of think this might have been a case of the latter. So how long did it take to "reel" them in? If you know, how many fouls were called in each half?

In HS summer league your better talent is not playing. These are typical up and coming players. We play 20 min running clock, at the 12 min mark we were 12 to 11 fouls each per team. This was Prince William County in Va.
The Start of the second half we pulled both Make believe coaches aside and told to reel them in.

Just curious, but are you in CBOA or Quantico?

Neither, Although I do work with officials from both associations. I've been asked to officiate with both...I also do some work for Central and Battlefield.

Not trying to be nosy, but I just wondering if we had worked together. I assume (I know what happens when you assume) that these are not games contracted by CBOA since non-CBOA officials cannot work games that the associciation contracted. At least that is what I was told. I know that a few CBOA officials do work with other associations.

I was asked to officiate for CBOA, I am considering for next season. If you are an indepedent contractor how can they tell you what to officiate? That is one reason why I won't do CBOA games.

CBOA doesn't tell you what you have to officiate, you can pick and choose from a variety of leagues, levels, etc as they use the Arbiter in self assign mode for many (most) of their recreation leagues. Scholastic games are another beast, but they have a great training and evaluation program to create quality varsity officials. For the most part, you won't just walk right into Cardinal the first year and call varsity. There is a straightforward program of how transfers get accepted and a definition of each level of official they have in the association (Varsity, Swing, JV, Applicant).

I also know that if you wish, you can always work non-CBOA games/leagues. My father is a varsity official (after 5 years of hard work) and he still works for the independent youth league where we both started our careers.

OCReferee

@refva: Maybe I didn't say it very well, but what I trying to explain is that in a cboa assigned game, you will not see a cboa official and a non-cboa official. Your are right, as an independent contractor, you can work anywhere you choose to work. Not sure exactly what you meant by "tell you what to officiate". Because we use the Arbiter system, and you can "self assign" games, you can (generally) pick & choose any game/time/location you want. That being said, the system was originally set up so that 1st & 2nd year officials could not assign themselves to the more high level games. I was told this was done because most 1st and 2nd year officials did not yet have the skills for that level. This obviously isn't true for everyone.

@ocreferee: I know and have worked with your dad. He is a damn good official and my personal opinion is he should have been moved up earlier that he was. Cardinal has a pretty good training/advancement program. However, like most associations, we have officials that should have advanced quicker and some officials that should not have advanced. I have seen the association ask officials to go back through the summer evaluation program. We used to refer to this as the Flint Hill Program, because of where it was held.

What I meant was, there are some association that don't want you to work for other associations. They think that they have the sole right to your skills. I have hit that block a couple of times. So it is a sensitive topic with most of the officials that I work with. they try not to verbalize where they work.

DBlref, Please turn your private message on. Will discuss further if you like

That's how my HS association is. We are not allowed to work leagues/tournament for which our association unsuccessfully made a bid. It's a bullsh*t rule for more reasons than I care to get into in this forum.

We have a HS commissioner and a Rec League commissioner and all assigning is done at their whim. Definitely a touchy subject here on the Peninsula.