Was my partner too quick on the trigger?

[Mark Padgett]

OK - maybe I should have rephrased that. Last night, boys 8th grade A competitive game. Not much coming from the benches at all. Middle of Q3, home team ahead by 7 and there's a timeout. My partner is at the table reporting it and I'm going over with the ball to the throw in spot. Suddenly, he turns to me and says that there's a "bench technical" on white and we'll come out of the TO with two shots and the ball. I start to walk towards him to ask what happened but he tells me he'll tell me later. Meanwhile, the home HC has his arms up and is saying "What was that for? Can I please get an explanation?"

We shoot the T and continue the game. After the quarter, he tells me what happened. When he went to report the TO, the HC said to him, "You're missing a lot of calls out there." My partner turned and said, "What did you say?". The AC then said, "He said you're missing a lot of calls out there." WHACK! That was it. He called a T on the AC.

As I said, neither bench had been a problem prior to that point. Do you think a T was justified? Upon my inquiry, my partner said their tone wasn't particularly sarcastic or nasty but pretty straight forward.

I should mention that this guy is in his second year of officiating, if that makes any difference.

As you guys know, I'm usually not one to complain about giving out technicals, but I don't think even I would have done it then. I think a warning would have been sufficient. Oh yeah, the fun part was that I informed the HC he was seat belted. That went over really well.