To 'T' or not to 'T'
 

I haven't called a tech in a hs game Fresh through Varsity in as long as I can remember....tonight doing a Soph boys game. Going pretty smoothly, near the end of the first quarter I am T in front of visitor bench bench and I can hear the home coach almost behind me, so during the next dead ball, I basically walk the home coach who was in front of the table back to the box and say "coach the box ends right there"......a few trips up and down and we are back in the same position and have a sideline out of bounds and I look and the coach is right back there almost in front of the table again...so I walk back down again and go "coach I need to have you in the box". His response is "its a dead ball I can be out during a dead ball!" My only response was "coach you cannot, you must be in the box at all times"...no further incident til near the end of the second quarter. There is a play at the basket and my partner has a no call in his area. We transition and he gets a foul on a home team player, we're shooting two. Next thing I know the home assistant yells "how is that not a foul down there!", throws his arms up and proceeds to stand up and walk all the way to the end of the bench to get himself a drink of water....that's it, I bang the assistant coach...would I have without the comment? Possibly not. But how many "warnings" can I give to a HC and/or his bench before enough is enough? I thought I was more than patient with these guys...and I was suprised how little this HC knew about what he & his bench personnel could do given the fact that I think he has been around for quite a while...so we shoot the four FT's and before we were going to inbound, I decide I better explain the seatbelt, so I walk over and say "coach that techincal on your assistant is also indirect on you so you must be seated the rest of the game" and the assistant goes "yeah we know the rule!" Really?!?!?! If you knew the rules we never would have gotten to this point would we?

To make it even better as we are coming out to start the second half, a guy approaches us and introduces himself, turns out he is one of the varsity officials/state finals official, so I am really interested in what he has to say. He asks us a few things and then says "That T - did you really think that was necessary?" Apparently the coach went up to him at halftime and goes "how can the guy T me for my assistant getting a drink of water?!?" He didn't bother of course to mention the prior two warnings, nor the comment before walking down to get a drink...once I explained that,the varsity official was a little more understanding (he hadn't seen all that), but I still didn't get the feeling he was sold on it...as I said I can't remember the last HS T I gave and I truly am not a bench watcher. If the coach hadn't been literally in front of the table twice, we probably never would have gotten to this point, but at some point enough is enough! Thoughts?

Around here, sophomore ball is reserved for players that aren't good enough for JV, but too old for freshman ball. Sometimes called JV2. Is that the case in your locality? Yes? I figured. This coach fits the same category!

Why the 2nd warning? From your description he was out of the box by 5-10 feet. IMHO, walking him back the first time & pointedly telling him where the box ended should have been his only warning - his blatant repeat offense should have been an immediate T. The problem with repeated warnings is that they don't take them seriously - one warning max, then calmly & dispassionately penalize. Just my $0.02...........

I know this my sound like being a SmartA!!. when the "varsity/state finals official" questioned me why I gave A technical. My response would have been all unsporting behavior is penalized accordingly.

I gotta agree...the first warning was warning enough...the second time is when the T shoulda came out.

I think we lose our credibility if we keep giving warnings and not acting on them...

As soon as his last word of that sentence came out of his mouth, I would've whacked him!!! I'm not there to teach the coach the rules just enforce them.

Agreed. Wouldn't let this progress to the point where I had to t the assistant.

Thanks all for the feedback...I suppose the reason I didn't hit him right away the second time he was out was to that point I had not heard a peep out of him, all he was doing was coaching....once he made it known what his belief was about being able to be out of the box during a dead ball and I explained to him I couldn't, I thought that was that...I agree however about repeated warnings being a bad thing which was why by the time we got to the third incident with the bench I whacked him, but I may have been an incident too late...

Actually around here that isn't the case, a team would never move a player up from Sophs if he/she was only going to play JV b/c the JV doesn't even play a full schedule usually....usually the JV will only get a game the day after the varsity plays if the other team has enough players who didn't play in the varsity game..it is basically used to get them some pt....no excuse for this coach, however...the thing is he was a pretty nice guy it seemed, he just had no idea what he was allowed to do....

My only additional feedback to others above would be that if I would have given the T in this situation, it probably would have been for the assistant's comment, not for him going to the end of the bench for water.

If they have a big jug at the end of the bench and that's where the only water is, I'm just not going to ding anyone on that bench for going down there for a drink. If they go down there for a drink, and then coach or make comments or don't immediately return to the box, then it would seem appropriate to whack them.

I guess it wasn't entirely clear to me why you gave the T - was it for the comment, for leaving the box, or for the combination?

IMHO situations like this are a problem in high school basketball - probably college too.
There was more than enough reason to give a T in this situation and the OP still questions whether the T was appropriate. Also, the OP mentioned more than once how rare it is to give a T. Given the reason for starting this thread, I would guess the OP has had other situations where someone earned a T and it wasn't given. So what happens when another official does the right thing and gives a T? What happens when another official doesn't give a T? Where was the rest of the crew or other official? Did this only happen when the OP was near the coach or did it happen all game but his partner(s) didn't do anything?

The T was for the culmination of events.....they basically thought the bench area was a free for all so after giving them more than enough rope I thought they had finally hung themselves..

I'm not Mr. T, even though this year I have already wacked 4 players. But I am always concerned when I hear an official talk with pride about how few Technicals he's issued.

Are officials proud of how few illegal dribbles they call? Its a point of emphasis this year you know. I called a player for an illegal dribble last night. It was plain as day and not even debatable. Right in fromt of his own bench. The coach complained that I was the first official to call that all season:eek: . ON A POINT OF EMPHASIS?????? Thanks to all my collegues for being right there on a situation that the NFHS and the OHSAA wants us to address. I'm all for trying to get a flow to the game, but if the players don't cooperate, we need to handle it.:mad: :mad: :mad:

RANT OVER. Thank you.

ANyway, back to my point. Not calling technicals doesn't demonstrate how good of an official anyone is. It doesn't mean you are a bad one either. But it sure raises a red flag to me.

Honestly I can't remember the last time I had a situation with a coach who really didn't know what he was allowed to do like this one did. First of all I haven't worked a ton of 2-person ball in a while, but it does make it much more difficult because there are not as many situations where an official is in a position to tallk to a coach or warn a coach without stopping the game. I have never had this issue in a varsity game...honestly I have been on a really good run with varsity coaches the last couple of years in terms of behavior, it has probably been 3 yrs since I banged a coach in a varsity game..

Well I'm finding I am in the minority in dealing with bad behavior. So my experience is the coaches are SHOCKED when they get a T. I ran into a coach , who i had given a T to earlier that week,at a local tourney and he asked me if we could talk about it. He asked politely and I wasn't working that day-so what the heck. He, 1st year Frosh coach told me he had been acting like that in his previous 5 or so games and no one said a word about his behavior. :( He lasted about 1min 20 seconds with me before he got himself dinged. I know it\'s a coach so take that FWIW but he seemed sincere about his behavior and no one addressing it.

He said he would "tighten his act up." :rolleyes: