A partner of mine had this situation the other night at an intramural game.

Situation: At the of the third quarter the ref goes over to check the book. Scorer makes the mistake and says that A has one time out left and B has none. But in reality A has zero, with B having one. Ref informs each team of the timeout status. Part way into the 4th A calls for a timeout. Ump goes to report and the scorer says they don't have any left.

Question: Do you assess the T and give them the timeout or can you get outta this somehow? By the rules only please!

Initially,you had both a scorer's error and a procedural error.After being informed of the (wrong) remaining time-outs,you should only inform the team that is out of TO's,not the team that has one left(2-11-6 in rulebook).The scorer should also have notified you immediately when a team took it's last time-out,not at the end of a quarter.I'm a little surprised that each team didn't know how many TO's they had left,and didn't complain.This is not a correctable error under rule 2-10-1,but I think you can straighten it out using casebook example 2-11-5.The ruling in that states that in case of an inadvertent scorer's mistake,you don't penalize a team that is not responsible.This play is somewhat similar.Therefore,you can deny the TO,straighten out the scorebook without a T,and get 'er going again.I think that covers the spirit and intent of the rules.

Sounds like a great response! Where are you from? Maybe some day we could referee together.

..Mike

I agree with Mike. Nice answer, Dino! :)