Wrong ball???

[Rusty Gilbert]

Confession time...

Getting ready to start game the other night, the R throws the ball to me (U1) and says, "you toss."

I take the ball to other side of division line, practice a couple of tosses, bounce it a couple of times, and, when everyone is ready, blow the whistle and throw it up between the two women jumpers.

3 minutes into the game (home team 4, visitors 2) the ball goes out of bounds and one of the players says, "Hey ref, that's a boy's ball."

She was right!

Visiting coach wants us to "start the game over." No coach, we're not going to start the game over.

But, and this is his quote, "that's a correctable error."

No coach, it's not a correctable error, but it is a screw-up on our part. And we're going to handle it just like we would if we had started the game going the wrong way (another official's MISTAKE: NCAA 5.1.3 and NFHS 4.5.4): get the right ball, everything stands as is (points, fouls, time consumed, etc.), and keep going.

Of course we talked with assigning coordinator later and told him what happened. His counsel: "Let one or two of the players hold the ball before tossing it up. They'll tell you immediately if it's not a girl's ball."

Not bad advice. I think I'll incorporate it into my "pre-toss" routine.

[Junker]

I had a similar situation in one of my women's games this season. No one called for a restart, but we did start with a men's ball. The funny thing was that the R checked the ball and gave it to the scorer's table. We left the court when both teams were out and came back to a different ball at the table.

[BigTex]

Before I toss the ball, I find each team's point guard, toss them the ball and say something like, "What do you think?" They usually dribble it a couple of times, toss it back to me and away we go. That will also eliminate one team later complaining that the ball is too flat or too bouncy. My reply to that is, "talk to your point guard, he doesn't have a problem with it.