Excessive Timeout

[lpneck]

Boys' V. First round state tournament game.

Team A scores with 30 seconds remaining and is now trailing by 2 points. Team A has no time outs left. Team B inbounds into the corner where B1 is trapped. He throws a pass up the sideline (tableside.) A1 steps into the passing lane and makes a very athletic steal about five feet from the sideline. His momentum is carrying him out-of-bounds, however, so he jumps off of one foot, and while in midair, yells "TIME OUT" and visibly gives a time-out signal with his hands.

I am old T tableside in front of the play and grant the timeout. I was fully aware as I was granting the time out that team A had no time outs left, and that we had a technical foul.

Now, the technical foul ended up not mattering, because team B missed both free throws. Team B did end up winning the game by 5 points.

However, this has sparked a bit of a debate. The observer from the state office (who was sitting at the scorer's table literally 5 feet from this play) told me after the game that from a "game management" perspective, I should have ignored the request and simply given the ball to team B. I have also had several other officials tell me the same thing. For what it's worth, both of my partners on the floor said they would have granted the time out and charged the technical foul.

I have no problem with game management theory, and I believe that it is an important aspect of good officiating. If I can get out of a situation where a player wants an extra time out without having to grant it- I am going to do so. I don't believe this was a case where that could happen, though. The team B coach CLEARLY knew that the player was inbounds and had control of the ball when he asked for the time out. How do I explain it to him if I ignore it? The state observer's answer was "you could just tell him that his foot was on the line and he won't have a problem with it. They're getting the ball back anyway."

The ironic thing is that there were NO problems with the call. Coach A did not argue, he didn't stomp his feet, he didn't complain. The play happened right in front of him and he knew what happened. His only complaint was with the player- "What are you doing? I just told you we have no time outs left!" So from a game management standpoint, how is it going to get better if I ignore what happened? All that could happen now is that Coach B gets upset because I chose to ignore the timeout.

Sorry if I am venting a bit, but I am frustrated because I feel I did the right thing and I'm not happy that I didn't get supported by the observer. Just looking for others opinions.