blood saturated uniform

[daveg144]

This happened in a game last week. I was there (not on the crew) worked in the concession stand and went out to watch the last few minutes of the game. Two of the top girls high school teams in the area (#1 vs #5 in the area).

1:19 left in the game. Team A (home team) has the ball with a 30-25 lead and they are passing to run out the clock. (It's been close the whole game, both teams playing good defense and running very patient offenses looking for good shots). Team B knocks the ball out of bounds. While lining up for the inbounds throw, the coach of B notices blood on the shirt of A1 and points it out to one of the officials.

The official walks up to A1 and tells her there's blood on her shirt that she'll have to get it taken care of. She IMMEDIATELY rips off her jersey and heads toward the bench where a sub, A6 takes off her jersey to give it to A1. I am stunned! I said to the guys I was standing with that that will be a technical foul and then a second for the bench player. They didn't know the rule and I explained it to them.

Out on the floor, the officials have yet to call anything (I think they were just as stunned as I was). A's coach calls time-out and the officials get together. After talking to both coaches, they inform the table that there are two technical fouls. Team A's coach is not happy, but you can see that he knows the rule and that there's nothing that can be done about it.

Team B makes all 4 free throws and on the ensuing possession, they are fouled and she hits both ends of the 1 & 1. Now the score is 31-30 in favor of B. A can't score in their last possession and they have to foul after B gets the ball back, again B makes both free throws and the win the game 33-30 by scoring 8 points in the last 1:19. The crowd boos the officials as they run off the floor (I'm thinking the crowd has no idea they did exactly the right thing).

I talked to one of the officials a couple days later and he said before they could say anything about not taking off the jersey on the floor, it was already off! They were as stunned as everyone else. After getting together and verifying that they had seen the bench player remove her jersey (thus, the second "T") they told the coaches what was going to happen. He said the coach of A was not happy, but he understood the rule was broken. This official (he's very good) also said that in the future, when a player has blood on the uniform, he will escort them to the bench and tell the coach what the options are (substitute a player or take a timeout) and remind the coach to tell the player to change the shirt in the locker room (or out in an empty hall out of the visual confines of the court). That's how I'm going to do this in the future.

What an odd way to lose a game!