Coach told us about puzzling call from other game

[Mark Padgett]

Last night, before our game started, one of the coaches came over and asked about a rule interpretation. He said that in their last game (NF rules), they wanted to get called for a delay of game warning after a basket to stop the clock. When the other team grabbed the ball and stepped OOB, his player put one foot OOB to break the plane. The official did nothing. So his player put both feet OOB and just stood there with his hands up.

To the coach's credit, he knew that if the official felt they were doing it intentionally to gain an advantage, he is supposed to ignore it. However, he said the official called a technical on his team for having only four players on the court during a live ball! The coach said he'd never heard of that before and besides, if that was true, the other team had only four on the "court" also because the inbounder was OOB.

We both scratched our heads (our own, not each other's) and said there must have been something else going on. We really had no explanation, but we assured him that if the same situation came up in our game, that would not be our call.

Anybody have any idea what might have happened to cause such a call, giving the official the benefit of the doubt that he didn't just make something up?