Intentional Lane Violations --- Good coaching?
 

Marist at Fairfield last night, Men's. Double OT, Fairfield shooting 2nd of 2 shots with 0.9 left, up by 1.

Marist calls TO preceding the 2nd FT. They come out of the TO, and have a player walk into the lane as the Fairfield shooter attempts his FT (which he misses on purpose). Lane violation occurs.

Same thing happens again. And again.

Finally, on the 4th attempt, the Fairfield player accidently made the free throw. Marist then had an opportunity to throw the ball up court and score to tie or win the game.

So, is there anything a ref can do to stop this seemingly unsportsmenlike behavior?

I don't think there is a darn thing... but I'll leave it to the experts. Has anyone seen this done before???

hmmm that is a good one. I think it is good coaching. that being said there might have to be some sort of limit. It just can't keep going and going. Five times max perhaps. i because I just saw more highlights of the great 2008 dunk contest at youtube I will refer to a past dunk contest where Chris Anderson and Nate Robinson kept trying to make dunks after minutes of missed dunks and fans were getting bored.

Intent and Purpose of the Rules
 

Read page 10 in your rule book.

"A player or team should not be permitted an advantage which is not intended by a rule."

As soon as it is obvious what the strategy is in this case, inform the players that it will not be tolerated and if it happens again, call a technical foul.

Right. IIRC, this was covered in one of the FED interps (and I realize the FED interps don't specifically apply to the game in the OP).

I had one I'd never run across as well the other night. Team A is down by 4 with 4 seconds left and has the ball OB at the far end after a made free throw. Coach A calls their last time out. Coming out A inbounds it, comes up the court, and a kid hits a three with right at 1 second left. I'm trail and as the ball goes in Coach A turns at me and starts screaming. I knew he had no timeouts so I wasn't going to give him one but he was so adamant that I had to turn and look at him wondering what he is going nuts over. He was screaming at me to call a foul. He had told his kids that if they make a shot to foul immediately. Obviously this would have been prior to the ball being taken OB for a throw in. His kids were pushing every B kid in sight. I called nothing and the horn blew and we left. But he screamed at us as we went. The best case for this numskull would have been an intentional foul, go to the other end, shoot 2 and then give B the ball....all with under a second left. I passed.

That would be an intentional T, right? ;)

Best scenario I can think of for calling the false multiple!!

Strategy or no, call the intentional foul. It's situations like this where kids really get hurt, and parents/coaches of the team being fouled get mad at you for allowing it. And they'd be right.

sj --

At last week's association meeting, we discussed the issue of granting/not-granting timeouts, when you know a team has none left (game management vs. game manipulation). Basically, if you are 100% sure the team is calling a timeout, you grant it, whether or not you're aware of how many they have left. In this case, you grant the timeout and give the T. It's between the coach and his book, as to how many timeouts are available - not the officials' responsibility. Refer to Chris Webber's infamous timeout call in the national championship years ago.

As far as not calling anything at the end of the game, if I knew a team was going to foul (albeit intentionally), I would call something, even if it was minor - seems to be the widely accepted practice, even at the collegiate level. More importantly, it's a safety issue.

My $.02.

That's NOT the reason to call it (and no, they wouldn't be right). The reason to call it is because that's what the rules are. Don't get into this idiotic mindset where we have any control over whether players are injured. We don't. In this situation, the behavior that might lead to injury is already going on, so a whistle isn't going to heal an injury. Further, calling it isn't going to prevent it in the future if that's the strategy their coach feels is in their best interest, so later, we are back to the same issue, called or uncalled. The proper thing to do is to call it because the rules say to call it, not because we care about what anyone thinks.

The only way I agree with the injury perspective is if you don't call contact that is a foul initially, it only encourages the players to escalate the contact to a level where the official will call it. I'm not advocating calling a foul where there isn't one, and I'm not even one who advocates calling a foul just because there is contact when they are trying to foul. But, if you have contact that legitimately a foul with 3 seconds left in the game, and you let it go to try to run the clock out, you're inaction forces the fouling team to escalate their contact to attempt to draw the call.

I know this is contrary to some opinions here, but when I know they want to foul and everyone else does too, any attempt that involves contact will get a quick whistle from me. I do not want players wondering "How much do I have to whack him to get a whistle?"

My points exactly.

I agree that's not the reason to call it. You never call a foul because you *expect* an injury to occur, nor are we directly responsible for the actions of the players on the court. My point was that once this person decided not to call it, they have, in fact, potentially put a team in harms way and it was totally avoidable. Imagine what the players on the team trying to foul are thinking: "Hmmm...I just tried to foul the kid, but the ref didn't call anything...maybe I didn't get him enough?" So next time they try to foul again, only this time they do it harder because it didn't get the ref's attention the 1st time. I'm no lawyer, but negligence is not something I'm willing to spend a small fortune to defend myself against. And in today's litigious society, don't think this wouldn't happen.

True, that the "whistle isn't going to heal an injury", but it could very well prevent one. And by consciously ignoring an intentional foul situation, this particular official is creating an atmosphere where they're allowing the potential for very bad things to happen.

Why'd A use their last timeout before the 3? He should've saved it for after the 3 went in.

Citation, Please ...
 

bob jenkins: Can you locate the NFHS interpretation that you mention? Thanks.