Big Sky Suspends 3 Men's Officials

[lpneck]

I love this play, because of the inherent discussion of "game management" vs. "rulebook" officiating that always occurs on this website.

This is a great example of why it is important to know both.

Here are my points:

1.) If I can get away with ignoring a time-out request by a player on a team that doesn't have one with one second to go in a tie game 84 feet from their basket, you are darn right that good game management dictates to do so and allow the game to go to overtime. We always talk about patient whistles. If I can be patient for one second- bang, time is expired, we're going to OT, and nobody cares.

HOWEVER

2.) Once that discretion has not been utilized, and one of the officials has put air in the whistle, it is too late to take it back. You HAVE to go to the monitor now, and if the whistle blew before time expired, you HAVE to grant the timeout and assess the technical foul and put the appropriate time on the clock.

It seems to me like they tried to have it both ways here and got burned for it. They didn't manage the clock well as time expired, and once they made that mistake, they didn't manage the rule book well either.