Technical for excessive timeouts?
 

With 4 seconds remaining in a 7th grade game, team A was to receive a 1 free throw plus bonus. Team A coach was observed by me asking the official scorekeeper if he had a time out remaining. I witnessed the scorekeeper nodding yes. Coach A calls time out and it is granted. Team B designated score keeper argues they do not have one. In addressing the issue with official scorekeeper it is realized they do not have one. Should technical be assessed or is this a reversible officiating error.

If you were to click on search and type in (excessive timeouts) you will see this one been discussed before in detail.

No TO granted. I explain to the coach that he/she CAN have the TO, but it will cost him/her a Technical Foul. If he/she doesn't want it at that point, line up the players and shoot the Free Throw. I would have a hard time penalizing a coach when the official scorer made the mistake. There is also preventative officiating. YOU check to make sure he still has a TO. Let him/her know when they are out, or let them know how many TO's they have left. YOU go look at the book, and maybe even keep a mental notebook. As the official, there is a good chance you could have prevented this by being in regular communication with the official scorer. But that is just my opinion.

If Team A's scorer informs the coach of Team A that he had a time-out remaining and he didn't, I'd have a difficult time not assessing a T.

I would like to know how they determined that the coach was actually out of TOs. I mean, the official scorekeeper says he has one left. The opponents scorekeeper says he doesn't. 4 seconds left...hmmm, I would have to consider that B was trying to lure me into calling the T on A for excesive TOs. I guess you guys are much better game managers then I am because I honestly don't think that I could remember how many TOs a team has called when there are 4 secs left. That's why we have a book. Now, if the official book indicates they are out and the scorekeeper said the wrong thing then that is one thing, but if the official book says they still have one then it would be interesting to see how they determined they really didn't. Just curious.

That's easy, Johnny.

How about if the visiting book has the exact time written down that each TO has been used, and the home team just has an X?

I've seen it happen.

WARNING: THERE IS NO RULES SUPPORT FOR THIS AT ALL!
We now return to our regular discussion.
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The coach should have kept track of the time-outs better himself or had a manager or asst coach do it for him. The official should charge the team technical foul.

JV or Varsity game, you say, "Coach, you asked for it, you got it. And by the way, you have to pay (meaning a T) on the way back onto the floor."

Lower level, this early in the season, you quickly decide whether or not to assess. Then whichever you choose, you do with a confident and cheerful demeanor, telling the other coach you'd do the same for him.

By the book, yea, it's a T. It's also not a correctable error (Study 2.10). But with young coaches, young table people, inexperienced refs, you can get away with an oops! sorry if you do quickly and certainly. Don't waffle, or hesitate, and just go for it.

This is why I periodically check with the table during the game to make sure both books match. Time-outs, team fouls, players in foul trouble (3 or 4 fouls).

Once everything is matching going into the last 5 minutes of the game I can keep track for the rest of the game in my head.

Whether the coach has been keeping his own count or not is irrelevant. The coach's count has no standing, as only the scorekeeper's count matters. The coach could think he has all his timeout's left and would still be assessed a technical because according to the official scorebook has has exhausted his timeouts.

After further review, I've come up with the definitive answer. The visiting coach should be charged with a technical foul for excessive timeouts, and the home team should be charged with a technical foul for unsportsmanlike conduct for giving incorrect information. We must assume that the table has deliberately given incorrect information, as the home team is supposed to provide competant official scorekeepers. This scorekeeper is not performing her/his duties properly, since they have not given the coach the required warning when the last timeout was used and they have also given incorrect information. The school should also be reported to the league officials.

WHOA!!!!!

First off, I'd like to see some rule support for a technical foul for "giv[ing] incorrect information.

Second, before you call a T, you better have PROOF that the home scorekeeper did this on purpose.

Third, this is a 7th grade game. I've made mistakes on the book in D-I college games. No one has ever recieved a T because of it.

Finally, consider what you're doing. You're actually assessing a technical foul ON AN OFFICIAL. What happens when your partner incorrectly calls a travel against the home team? Do you T him up and count it towards the home team's foul count? Yikes. I've seen bad table crews, I've seen biased table crews, but I have rarely seen a timer/scorer who deliberately throws the game toward their team.

Rarely? I've never seen it. And if there is such a tablecrew, they'd better be getting a lot more out of it than a 7th grade team is going to pay!!

We recently had a long tedius discussion about officials with full college schedules taking a small number of HS games to qualify for playoffs.

Would you agree that for these people HS varsity is "lower level"? What advice do you give them about how to handle "lower level" games?

When I said lower level, I meant lower than JV and Varsity, which is what I had just been talking about in the previous sentence.

Mabye I'm being too subtle for you.

Isn't your line of "upper level" and "lower level" rather arbitrary?

Game last night, team A is out of timeouts. A1 asks for and is granted a TO. What is the correct procedure for assessing the T?

Yea, I suppose so. What's your point?

Luke, grant the time-out to Team A. Charge them with a team technical foul. At the conclusion of the TO, administer the 2 FT's and subsequent throw-in for the "T".

Last night my wife (a varsity girls coach) was going thru her score book figuring stats from her teams last game ( a single overtime win) and discovered the home team had taken 5 full timeouts and 2 thirty's. Her scorekeeper had dutifully written down the time of each one of them. I'm sure it won't happen again.

Is this a trick question?

My point is you arbitrarily decide between "upper level" and "lower level" games and alter the rules to match your percieved expectations at each level.

That's all. No big deal.

Okay, I see. Yea, it's not just my perceived expectations, though. In general, around here, we aren't supposed to be as strictly literal with the rules at the "lower levels". If I've got a 7th grade game, with 7th grade scorekeepers and a 22-year-old coach in his first year, and I make them take a T as in the OP, I'd get a call from my assignor if he heard about it. "Cmon, you can afford to be a little flexible in this situation." If it happened even at the freshman level, I might be okay to do this if I handled it correctly. At JV or Varsity the phonecall would go the other way. "You should have given the T."

Frankly, Dan, it's been the hardest thing for me to learn, when to be flexible and when to be rigid (we're talking basketball here, you gutter-snipes out there!!).

Good Lord, Woman! This is a basketball forum, <b>not</b> a bowling alley.

Such talk.....

Umm, where's the tongue-in-cheek smiley icon?

IMO, there are too many people saying the coach is responsible for tracking his timeouts. By rule, this is the table's job. The coach's count has no standing.

Obviously, there is no rule supporting a technical foul for an incompetant table. There is an assumption in the rulebook that the table is competant. In this case the assumption is erroneous.

If the table is competant, then they are cheating. If they are incompetant, then why would you believe that their new count is more accurate than when they said the coach had one more timeout left? You no longer have any reliable knowlege whether the coach has any timeouts or not.

I think we may be missing the point...

What does the book require us to do? I think there is something that requires the coach to be notified when no timeouts remain?

Once again this goes into game management and know what is going on the floor. If it is a tight game we should know. I ask the table often how many time out are left especially in the closing minutes. We talk and both officials should know.

As a courtesy I normally tell them what I have verified in the book when they have a couple left... always when they have one, and always when they they are out.

Making sure of timeouts is as importatnt as checking score and evrifying it is ok going in the waning moments. Is not any different in confirming number of team fouls...

Late in the game my crew will always check with the table to verify time outs and correctness of score, position of arrow and such. As a courtesy I recomend that we inform each bench of the time out situation to prevent these types of things from happening.

If the official scorebook says he has one - he calls it - and you grant it - I'd like to see you justify to your assignor that you gave him a technical foul because he didn't have a timeout left.

This is a game managment issue and it is still ultimately your problem at the end of the day. If you are checking with the table periodically to make sure things are correct you can avoid these types of situations.

Jim, you're making a huge mistake here.

From the original post:
"Team A coach was observed by me asking the official scorekeeper if he had a time out remaining. I witnessed the scorekeeper nodding yes. Coach A calls time out and it is granted. Team B designated score keeper argues they do not have one."

Team A is the home team. The coach's scorer told him he had 1 timeout remaining.

What's your call now, big boy? :)

Two things:

Informing the coach he has no timeouts left is found in the Officials Manual. It's not a rule.

If the official scorer had 1 tiemout remaining, then there would be no reason to notify the coach.

BY RULE Nevada, you are absolutely correct. But it also doesn't say that officials need to address coaches concerns during the game either, and yet we do. I merely replied from a game management perspective. Sometimes we, as officials, use our own best judgement when a situation falls outside the normal guidelines defined in the rulebook. If the coach "thought" he had a timeout, and then because of mistake that I, or my crew, SHOULD and could have prevented, I am not going to penalize them. I will however, give that coach the opportunity to get out of a bad situation without causing further delay or problems. When Team B coach asks why he didn't get a Technical, I respond, "Coach, I screwed up. I didn't check the book and account for the all the timeouts, and I am not going punish that coach or his team for my error. I hope you understand. Thanks."

Is that in the rulebook or officials' manual, NO. Is it good game management, I say yes. IMHO

I don't have my NFHS book on me but somewhere in rule 2 under scorekeeping I believe it says something about notifying, via an official, the coach when his/her team has no time-outs remaining.

Scorer's Duties
2.11.6 - Record the time-out information charged to each team (who and when) and notify a team and it's coach, through an official, whenever that team is granted its final allotted time-out.

Anyone who calls a technical foul here is crazy and is intent on career suicide, IMHO.

The OFFICIAL SCORER has a record that Team A has one time out left. When the official grants the time out, he is granting a time out that team A HAS.

If, during the time out, the visiting scorer realizes that the official book was in error, and at that point all parties agree that Team A should have been out of time outs, it does NOT change the fact that when the time out was GRANTED, team A OFFICIALLY had one time out remaining, and it was granted LEGALLY. That seems to fall into the "non-correctable error" category to me.

Now, the situation is different if the OFFICIAL SCORER is the one that has no time outs remaining in his book. Let's say that coach B asks the visitiing scorer "how many time outs do I have?" Scorer B says one. He requests and is granted a time out, and the official scorer informs you that B had no time outs remaining.

Now I have a technical foul which I am mad at myself for the rest of the year for having because it should have been prevented with better game management.

OK, two technical fouls on the home team. ;)

For the record, its found under the scorers duties;

ART 6... Record the time-out information charged to each team (who and when) and notify a team and its coach, through an official whenever that team is granted its final allotted charged time-out.

ART 9... Signal the nearer official each time a team is granted a time-out in excess of the allotted number.

ART 11... Compare records with the visiting scorer after each goal, each foul, each charged time-out, and end of each quarter and extra period, notifying the referee at once of any discrepancy. If the mistake cannot be found, the referee shall accept the record of the official scorebook, unless he/she has knowledge which permits him/her to decide otherwise..............

Ding wrong answer, thank you for playing 2-11-6 requires the coach to be notified that there is no remaining time.

However you are absolutely right

If the offiicial scorekeeper made one mistake and did not record something right in the book ( and by the way we should have known this and checked) and failed to notify us, We should compound the issue and give the guy the additional timeout without penalty that allowed him to win the game because he got the clock stopped, setup the game winning play. Whoops opposing coach the official scorebook just screwed you and well it was our fault for not knowing what was going on out on the floor. Sorry your chances for the league title are screwed because well you see, the official scorekeeper gave the hoe team and extra time out and well I just cant do anything about it because well I just ref, I cant know whats going on with the table and the scoreboard although it is all my responsibility. Pardon my inability to officiate your game properly. Hope to see you next season...

No way in heck I'm granting a T here. The official scorekeeper told the coach that he had a time-out left and that is what the official book had at the time. So at the time that the coach requested the time-out, he had one left. Common sense please.

A little preventative officiating: I always have the visiting scorer and the official (home) scorer sit side by side. I tell them that they will keep their books in sync and they will not tell me later that they have a discrepancy. Ever since I stared doing that, I've never had a problem.

Like I said, grant an additional timeout because the official book told him (maybe did not even look at the book). You are only compounding the problem. Try and justify all you want the rules dont allow for an additional timeout just because the official scorekeeper said so. Heck if that was the case the official scorekeeper will just continue to oh whoops I made a mistake dont penalize my team.... It was what was noted in the book and what we have knowledge about... If the official scorekeeper messed up somehow it most likely (unless on a neutral floor) it was his own team... That's right we would allow a homer to influence the game forgot that is in rule 14.... Rule 15 states that official scorekeepers are not subject to oversight or review by the officials on the floor, if fact I think the exact wording is. "Official scorekeeper can do whaterver in the H**(LL he wants at the table witout penalty or oversight" Rule 1 in the Atheletic Directo'r manual also states AD's have no oversight over scorekeepers and cannot discipline them or fire them without consulting both Billy Hunter and POTUS.




There is a difference between the scorekeeper and the book here. If the time out stops the clock and allows the game winning