Time Out Mania
 

I'm seeing some things around time outs that I'm not liking so much.

First did I miss the meeting where loose balls go to the first coach to call time out ? :confused: Ball pinballing around in the grey area of our PCA,2 man. In the middle of this we have tweet, and my partner has a TO for one of the teams. This wasn't a case of different angles this was a case of a recent phenom in my area of whoever calls a TO first gets the loose ball.

It's a little frustrating cause i don't give the TO till I see a player in control of the ball. Because i don't give the TO I get to continually have the following conversation of

Coach: I called time out.
Me: didn't have control of the ball yet coach
coach : but I called TO
me: shrug.

Here's one I would like to hear your thoughts on....

Visitors score. Visiting coach is asking for a time out. No one initally grants one. Home team brings ball in and is about 3/4 of the way to the division line when the visitors request is granted. So we have big racket over that by the home team.

So I talk to the 2 refs at half time to hear what they had to say.

Old Lead/NEw trail said ' I heard someone asking for timeout but didn't know who it was. When I figured it out I gave it to him. "

Old Trail/New Lead said" My bad I should have been paying attention but I wasn't."


Would you have granted the late TO in this Sitch ?

If they were 3/4 of the way to the division line as you say then no I would not have granted it....if I hear time-out, see that the ball is not yet at the disposal of the thrower, immediately turn around and confirm that it is the HC requesting it, then turn back and see that the ball is just now at the disposal of the thrower, I would still grant it in this situation, but there has to be some limit on this...there is some judgement involved....I agree with you on the loose ball situation though, I don't like it when a team gets bailed out or given an advantage by calling a TO when there is not yet control....this frustrates coaches to no end, but oh well too bad...

similar play last night - GV game. I am on baseline administering a throwin. A basket had been scored and on initial inbound there was a kicking violation. I gave ball to inbounder and backed away. Opponent in FC press. Inbounder moves down line facing away from me. I hear "time" but only see back. then I see her step onto court with ball and my whistle goes off - violation. Partner comes in and said TO explaining to me that she was facing him and he saw her signal and say TO but spit his whistle - then mine went off for the violation. We granted TO and gave the team the ball for throw in following the TO.

I have "spit the whistle" as well, that to me is a bit different than actually granting the TO late...in that case the official attempted to grant the TO, but just didn't get the whistle out, I think you did the right thing..easy enough to explain to the coach that you went to blew the whistle and spit it out..

Speaking of spitting the whistle, anybody have any good stories? You know somebody goes up and gets killed, you spit the whistle, your partners don't bail you out and they are halfway up the court going the other way before you blow it and bring them back - anybody ever just pass on a foul b/c they spit the whistle? I'm sure I have probably done both over the years...

Sorry, first one to hit the whistle gets to make the call.:D

Seriously, I had a partner have this happen in a game earlier this year. It caused the crew some serious grief. My feeling is that mistakes happen and calls get missed during the course of a game. There is a point when it is too late.

Had this last night BV 3man. B1 brings ball up court A1 & A2 set half court trap. B1 gets flustered and tries to make a desperate pass to teammate, ball in air B coach hollers "time out" I am T, ignore coach, A3 intercepts pass & go's in for uncontested lay-up & scores. B coach goes ballistic! Hollers you got to give me the time out! I says "you can have one now if you want" He starts telling me how wrong I was not grant his time out request. Tried to explain no player control onhis time out request, he don't get it. I swear some of these coaches just like to listen to themselves.

You should have put him in time-out. This is properly administered by awarding the opposing team 2FTs and the ball at the division line opposite the table, plus the coach no longer has the right to the coaching box.

The sooner they disallow coaches from requesting TO's the better, would make life so much easier...all of the action is ON the court, it is completely counterintuitive that we should be expected to turn our back on the court in order to verify a TO request....makes no sense to me..

Where's My Whistle
 

Early season game. My partner, the referee, passes on a blocked shot/foul call, at the buzzer, that ended the first period. No complaints from the coach. My partner is at the division line, across from the table, waiting to inbound the ball to start the second poriod. Players start walking onto the court to start the period. I am standing, in front of the above mentioned coach, with the whistle in my mouth, counting players. The coach politely asks me about the call, whether my partner passed, or whether the buzzer came before the foul. I drop the whistle from my mouth to answer the coach, who thanks me for the information. Satisfied that there are the correct ten players on the court, and the clock is set at 8:00, I point to my partner to start the period. Within a few seconds there is an intentional kick in my primary. I blow the whistle for the violation, to find that it's not in my mouth. My partner comes to my aid with a quack whistle, and we move on, looking at each other and smilling as we move up the court after the inbounds, after the violation.

That must be the new one that sounds like a duck. :D

A few years ago doing a very small school girl's game ball goes out on my line. After watching it bounce twice out of bounds my partner saved me from across the court. I have no idea where my head was...

Obviously it wasn't a Dolphin.

My situation was slightly different. I had a cold during one game, and was fighting the sniffles and sneezes. At one point, after trying to hold back a sneeze, it finally came out: pttthhh....<font size=1>tweet</font size>...pppttt. Of course, play stops and everyone looks at me for the call. I just mutter something about an inadvertant whistle, and put the ball back in play. I think it took me a couple of plays to get the stuff wiped off my whistle.

The dreaded AFLAC violation?

My story is similar....My first or second year as an official, I'm doing some Saturday afternoon games at the local Boys and Girls Club league. We have a time out and I am talking with the club director about something or the other. Time out ends and I yell some final comments to him as I retreat to my postion as lead on the baseline. Ball is put in play, Team A is passing the ball looking for an opening, team A player drives to the hole and is fouled going up, not hammered, but enough to make the call. My fist goes up and I blow some air....and nobody stops playing....shot is missed, team B rebounds and is off to the other end when I realize that my whistle is hanging around my neck...Oh well...off to the other end. Nobody says a word about the "missed" foul.

In my case, I was the R and had to toss the jump ball. Drive went directly to the basket on my side of the court. As T, I had the foul call. Did the fist, blew out, did the whole thing; except that I never put the whistle back in my mouth after the toss. :(

Have had two unusual situations.

Twice in one game a kick happens right in front of me and I spit out the whistle and shout "KICK!" Then I have to find my whistle and blow it. Have no idea why this happened. Never happened any other time.

JVB early this season, only a few seconds remaining in a 1 point game. H is pressing and ties up the ball in back court. I blow my whistle and signal jump ball. Suddenly my partner comes across the floor tweet-tweeting. V coach had requested a time out. But my partner had not entirely broken the football habit of not having his whistle in his mouth. We granted the TO, but H coach wasn't happy about it.

I think I shared this earlier, but here's mine:

It's my first year this year: JHB, I'm administering a throw-in after a timeout. Defender breaks the plane of the OOB line and whacks the thrower on the arm. I get my fist up and go to blow the whistle and....pthuh. No sound except my whistle banging against my shirt. My partner blew his whistle for it, chuckling down the court as he reported it. Coach asked why he was making that (obvious) call from so far away; you could her the slap from a mile away.:rolleyes:

SI Cover ???
 

First a thread appears about spitting out a whistle, and then it happens to me last night.

Girls varsity game. Four minutes left. White is down by about ten points. White coach takes a time out, probably to tell her players to foul Blue, to stop the clock. Blue brings ball into the front court in my primary, and White reaches in, slapping Blue on the wrist. I try to blow my whistle to call a common foul, but I spit out my whistle, the first time that I can remember doing that in many, many, many, years, although it might have something to do with a recent change from several years of using the Mini Fox whistle to now using the regular Fox 40 whistle. White "hacks" on Blue's wrist at least twice more before I have time to get the whistle in my mouth to blow it for the common foul. The Blue player looks at me like "Why are you letting them beat me up?" and I explain to her that I split my whistle out and couldn't blow it fast enough to stop the additional fouls. She nods and smiles at me.

Here's the kicker. On the next Blue possession, White must have figured out that they "really" have to foul Blue for me to blow my whistle, so White grabs Blue by the jersey. Other than reaching across a boundary to foul an inbounder, there are only a few "automatic" intentional fouls that I call, the "bear hug" foul, the "grabbing the jersey" foul, and the "two handed push from behind" foul, because these are not "basketball plays", so I call an intentional foul on White. The White coach doesn't like my call, and I felt badly because I'm sure that the intentional foul wouldn't have occurred if I had not spit out my whistle on the first foul, but intentional was the call.

My partner said that I could have passed on the intentional, knowing that I was partly to blame. Comments?

In this case, I'd agree with your partner.

I don't. The kid made a poor play. Call the intentional foul.

Partner's off base. The jersey grab is easy. Coach may not like it, but they agree with it (quietly, of course). Have someone grab his player's jersey and see what call he asks for.

Agreed -- but an explanation to White about the spit whistle, and / or a reminder to "keep making basketball plays" could help prevent the intentional foul (if they thought they "had" to do so based on the previous late whistle)

Case in point:

It happens. It would have been better had the players learned when to call TO. But these are HS varsity kids.

this is the first year of fiba for me after many years of ncaa and nfhs reffing. I cannot tell you how much easier it is to have the fiba rule that timeouts must be requested through the scorers table and then granted at the next whistle after notifying the ref by sounding the horn (like subs). All this silliness that coaches and players get involved with (falling/leaping out of bounds, no control, can't hear the requests...etc.) asking for a timeout has been eliminated. I love it, and it makes the game outcome more centered on the players rather than a coaching call. Interesting that most of the FIBA rules have this overriding principle: the players shall determine the outcome of the game (not refs, coaches or spectators) and the rules are built on this simple principle.