USA basketball game - 8/12
 

Team USA plays Angola tomorrow at 8 am Eastern time. If anybody is up and wants to talk about it, here's the link to the chat room that we used for March Madness:

http://tinyurl.com/2jbppt

Nobody showed up to chat, which is not a surprise, considering the hour. There's a female official on the game. Maybe she's the Canadian official that somebody mentioned in another thread? IMHO, she's calling a terrific game today. The overall officiating has been very good in the first half.

I noticed that one of the officials uses the stop clock signal on out of bounds calls, but the other 2 do not. Also, when the USA was shooting a free throw, there was no Angolan player in the low block on one side. Seemed like they didn't care because it was only the first free throw. Is that true for FIBA rules?

sorry, scrappy, I thought I would, but then realized that the game is on cable, which I don't get. And a female official on a men's game! Sorry I missed it. Darn networks anyway.....

Yup, that's her. She also works the table for Raptor games. Official scorer, timer, or something like that.

PS: I did try to log in to the ParaChat, but Windoze said it blocked the ActiveX plugin becuase it couldn't verify the publisher. I'm too busy to try to fix that, otherwise I'd be there.

:D

Sure enough, it gets mentioned: the broadcast team for the Canadian feed just mentioned that she works the table for the Raps, where of course CB4 plays. (CB4 = Chris Bosch.) They were wondering if he noticed something like that. She scores his home games, and now is refereeing him in the biggest international stage.

I wonder if any woman has ever officiated a men's Olympic final.

Scrapper,

Regarding the free throw rules, FIBA is quite different.

1. Low block does not need to be filled.
2. As someone asked a few days ago, there is no automatic violation for a teammate stepping in too early. So you will see players for both teams step in early (sometimes very early) and the official will wait to see if the free throw is good. If the FT is made, violations for either teams are ignored. If the FT is missed, apply proper penalty for lane violation.
3. Only a violation by the FT shooter will erase a made free throw.
4. No signal for a delayed violation.

Jay R - Thanks for answering my earlier question. With the trapezoidal shaped lane, and no one in the low block, it was interesting to see so many players step in the lane so early as the chances of anyone other than the players in the first space getting a free throw rebound seemed slim.

The U.S. Olympic team beat Angola 97-76 to wrap up the easy portion of its Olympic schedule......let's see how the games against Greece and Spain go.......

I like that rule.

I think this whole set of rules make the more sense than what the NFHS/NCAA/NBA use.

Juulie - just give Josh a call and he'll set you up. You know he's a sales manager at Comcast. Plus - with his commission, he can buy me something!