No time out left, or do I

[tjchamp]

This weekend at a 9th grade tournament, Team b coach asks the official scorekeeper (parent of team A player), how many timeouts he had left. Scorekeeper indicates he has 1 timeout left. Both my partner and I hear him tell him he has 1 timeout left. It was a 2 point ballgame with less than a minute to go. Team b get controll of the ball, and calls for a timeout. Scorekeeper then tells us he was mistaken, Team b had no timeouts left, and Team A had the remaining timeout.

We did not penalize team b for an excessive timeout, but coach for team a wanted us to just that. We explained to him what happened, he wasn't happy, but he didn't argue much either. Would you have done the same? What would you do if this was a varsity contest? It wouldn't seem right to penalize a team if they got bad information from the official scorer.