Unsporting Foul

[kbilla]

Originally Posted by Da Official

But JR...you do agree that "Face Guarding" is an attempt to obstruct someone's vision correct?


Guys I'm just wondering when is this ever called? I've never seen an official call this foul (other than myself). Why is it in the rule book if nobody understands it or wants to call it?

Peace...

Then context in which I last called it was an inbounds play and the guard was "face guarding" his opponent and was holding his hands in front of the players face. The offensive player actually smacked his hand away once and he put it back again right in the players face. This is much different than closing out on a shot for instance and attempting to divert the concentration of the offsensive player on the shot....the only purpose of this was to obstruct his opponent's vision so he couldn't see....you are rarely if ever going to see this in a hs game b/c the coaches/players generally know this rule..i had it in an 8th grade game...

[TheOracle]

KB, how about a quick whistle, stop the inbounds play, say "Hey, get your hands away from his face!", and start again. I bet that would solve the problem for the game and be a very easy, non-controversial fix.

[kbilla]

Originally Posted by TheOracle

KB, how about a quick whistle, stop the inbounds play, say "Hey, get your hands away from his face!", and start again. I bet that would solve the problem for the game and be a very easy, non-controversial fix.

Absolutely could have done that, I actually questioned myself on that when I I posted this last week. In that situation, the game was getting extremely heated and they had been double and triple teaming this kid all over the floor (he was by far their best player). On top of that the coach for the defensive team was screaming "GET IN HIS FACE"....now I will grant you that as we have seen in numerous posts/threads today and yesterday, none of what they had been doing to this point was a foul, but in my judgement when I added all of that up, considered the direction the game was going, and in an attempt to get things under control, once they did something that WAS a tech (and blatant), I went right with it rather than the warning...this was the first time in 18 or so years that I have ever called one, only SEEN it called one other time...the call itself turned out to be very non-controversial, the coach asked what his kid did, I went over and explained it and that was that, no further questions..