A question

[MisterV]

Hello to all,

I am a coach of an 8th grade girls team. We just concluded our league tournament this past week, which we hosted. During the tournament, a situation arose which I was wondering about. No complaints here, just a question.

Situation one--Team A is leading by 6. There are 9.7 seconds left in the game. Team B is in-bounding under A's basket. As team B is coming up the court, the clock is not running. In my estimation, 5-6 seconds go by. Team B throws up a 3-pointer which goes in, then B calls time out. The clock now reads 9.3.

The officials meet at the scorers table with the coaches. The timekeeper says that he mistakenly let 6 seconds run off the clock on an earlier possession, and that he was counting off 6 seconds in his head before starting the clock this time. As you can imagine, this did not sit well with the officials, nor the coach of team A.

The officials said that since they could not remember the exact time which was previously on the clock, and they could not say for certain how much time should be taken off, they just left the clock as it was. The coach of A did not like it, but now, with only a 3 point lead, did not want to risk getting whacked by arguing further. Team A was able to run out the clock and win the game so no damage was done.

By the way, have you guessed that I was the coach of team A?

I have never had this happen to me before so I really wasn't sure if I had a case. I enjoy reading this forum and have learned a great deal. I didn't want to say something stupid about a correctable error which really wasn't and end up as one of the coaches you guys shake your heads about...so I just sat down and shut up.

What should have happened here? Did the right thing happen? I really didn't think the officials would run extra time off the clock. However, we were trying to hold on for only our second win of the season. I probably would have said anything to convince the refs to run some extra time off for me.

Sorry for going on so long. Thanks also for all the good info on this board.