Clock Questions
 

I watched a boys varsity game last night and they had two clock situations that I wanted to ask your opinions about.

1) Team A leads by 4 with 20.6 seconds remaining. A has a throw-in under their own basket. Team B steals the inbound pass and immediately shoots. B1 misses a shot and B2 taps in the rebound. Team B immediately calls a time-out. During the time-out the coach of A signals the referess that the clock never started. In fact, it didn't and the clock still reads 20.6. After a long discussion the officials set the clock to 15.0 seconds. Is this correct? There were no counts on the court from the officials and really no way to determine exactly how much time went off the clock. Obviously, time did go off the clock since the play happened. The rule book says that if the clock was not started properly then "an official's count or other official information can be used to make a correction." The crew did talk it over with the clock operator also. I do not know the crew personally so I did not ask them but it seemed reasonable to me. Is the is right? Also, what if you are on the court and you do see that the clock has not started. Do you blow the whistle and make the ball dead or start a hand count? In this game if the ball had been blown dead it could have had a significant affect on the outcome of the game that Team B eventually would win.

2) Same game. B1 hits a 3 with about 2.5 seconds left in the game, giving B a 1 point lead (an a win). The whistle blows as Team A coach calls for a time-out. As the whistle blew I looked right at the clock and it said 1.0 seconds. The clock reads 0.9 seconds. After a lot of discussion again by the crew they put 2.6 seconds back on the clock. My question is, what is allowable by rule and what is good game management? From my vantage point the clock said 1.0 when the whistle blew. But, in this situation you know A is going to call a TO. Once again, I did not talk with the crew, so I have to assume that they decided that A wanted the TO when the goal was scored, when 2.6 seconds were on the clock. However, because of the loud gym and a slow reaction by the officials to seeing the coach call a TO, they actually blew the whistle at 1.0. Therefore, they went back to the 2.6 on the clock when the goal was scored. What is the correct ruling on this, and do you think the officials were correct in the way they did this? I am trying to learn for future games.

Not correct. Without definite knowledge of some kind, the officials cannot by rule remove any time from the clock. Both teams just have to live with the timer's mistake.
1. Yell "start the clock" to my timer/partner.
2. See if this is a good point in the action to whistle the play dead.
3. If it is then do that and deal with the clock per the rules.
4. If not, then start a VISIBLE count and allow play to continue until a good stopping point, then deal with the clock per the rules.

By the book, 1.0 is the correct time for the REFEREE to put on the clock.
Loud gym or not, it is the coach's job to get the officials' attention for his time-out request.
Rule reference is 5-10-1 plus the case book plays that go with that rule (5.10.1 Sit A-D and 5.10.2).

Thanks. I like the four point check you put out for when the clock doesn't start. I forgot the old "start the clock" call. I already used that once this year and it has worked.

While I generally agree, what if the situation was that A1 was in the air requesting a TO with 2.5 left and the whistle blew after s/he landed OOB with 1.0 left? OR, what if U1 recognized the TO with 2.5, and spit out the whuistle and it took 1.5 seconds to recover the whistle and blow it?

Now, 1.5 seconds is a long time between the normal recognition of the TO and the whistle, but it could be that something greater than 1.0 could legitimately be put on the clock.

The real lesson for Johny isn't whether the officials handled either of these plays correctly, but that someone needs to look at the clock on every whistle and every inbounds play.

Bob,
I don't believe that either of the situations you pose could be considered an error by the timer. The timer is to stop the clock when the whistle is blown. The timer can't read the minds of the officials. There is no rule extant that I know of which would allow the referee to put extra time back on the clock because the official was slow granting a time-out or failed to grant one altogether.