playing short by choice
 

A friend brought up a scenario in a movie of fiction concerning interscholastic basketball. With exactly 5 players available and eligible at a point during a game, a coach keeps one on the bench out of personal pique. Legal?

Robert

Not legal. It's probably the first and only time a movie has the facts wrong.

Hoosiers, anyone?

By rule, if 5 players are available, the team must play 5 players. But the coach could just say the 5th player is hurt and not available.

Agreed.
I won't queston the coach, ... unless he has more than one player that is "injured or, otherwise, unavailable".

Here it is straight from the NFHS book, Robert. In other words what Coach Norman Dale did was not permissible. ;)

NUMBER OF PLAYERS REQUIRED
3.1.1 SITUATION: After six players have been disqualified, Team A has only four who are eligible to continue in the game as players. In a gesture of fair play, the coach of Team B indicates a desire to withdraw a player so that each team will have four players on the court. RULING: This is not permissible. Team B must have five players participating as long as it has that number available. If no substitute is available, a team must continue with fewer than five players. When only one player remains to participate, that team shall forfeit the game unless the referee believes this team still has an opportunity to win the game.

This case does not apply to a team disciplinary problem.

[QUOTE=Nevadaref]Here it is straight from the NFHS book, Robert. In other words what Coach Norman Dale did was not permissible. ;)

Well, what was the rule in 1951?

[quote=CoachP]The movie wasn't made in 1951. :)

It makes no difference either way, as I'm quite sure the producers did no research with regard to this matter.

Since we're talking Hoosiers...here's my favorite article written about the movie. What I find funny is how many people I know that have had many of the same thoughts during the movie. It must be a sickness. I can't tell you how glad I was when they finally put out the latest DVD version with the scene about how Buddy got back on the team. That always bothered me. :D

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2...simmons/040302

Fun article. Interesting thoughts about the black head coach of the other team. There could be lots of reasons why he didn't take a time-out near the end of the game. He probably couldn't call it from the bench back then, and maybe he couldn't get the attention of one of his players. Maybe he already had the play called. I think I read (maybe written by the same guy) that somebody watched a tape of the game and that's really pretty close to how it played out. I have no idea where to confirm that, though.

Thanks, Junker.
Really enjoyed it.

Bingo, Scrappy. When I started out in '59, all TO's had to be requested by a player on the floor. Coach's couldn't request them. They should go back to something like that too. Maybe only allow coaches to request TO's during a dead ball. Allowing a head coach to request live-ball TO's causes nothing but headaches imo. Terrible rule.

The two disc DVD set includes the video footage of the entire Milan vs. Muncie game. You could verify it by watching that.

Mick, the underlined sentence applies.

And I believe that Mick's point is that the team A does <b>not</b> have 5 players <b>available</b> because of a team disciplinary problem.

I agree with Mick.