Well that certainly answers the question then, doesn't it? ;)

It seems that everyone had been anticipating moving the rebounders up a space for the past few years; almost since they eliminated the last space. While the NFHS denied it a couple of times, it just felt inevitable. It would have been foolish to remove it until more time had passed anyway.

Aside from that, while I've seen the X at all varsity gyms I've worked, I can't say the same for middle school and JV gyms. Wouldn't expect many changes in the MS gyms.

Well, I worked my first MS girls double header yesterday & boy was it brutal!
A team: 14 - 6
B team: 12 - 2
Yes those were the final scores.

The kids had fun & that's really what it's all about at that level. I just worked on getting back in the habit of using HS mechanics & posititoning. Play calling was very selective :D
Both games, neither team reached the one & one.

At that level it's usually none-and-none. ;)

MS & Milestones
 

My middle school season started bak on Septmeber 18th and marks my 25th year in basketball.

Most of our local middle schools merged with an adjoining league, so we are trying to adjust to the new rules. The biggest differences being:

(1) We now have a single 7th grade game and a single 8th grade game. No more A & B teams.

(2) We now play 5 periods. First half is three 4:00 periods where every player must appear at least once in the first half (barring injury, etc) and that no player can appear in more than 3 periods.

Yesterday we traveled to a (new to us) team in our new league that only has black uniforms that they wear home and away. I sure hope nobody else in our league wears black road jersies or that will be a disaster waiting to happen. :eek:

Also, yesterday, my friend got his first direct T in his MS coaching career. He went almost 3+1/3 seasons without one, so I'm impressed. :D

In terms of interesting scores so far, our 7th grade team won a game 28-3 Tuesday and then lost Thursday, 11-8.

Just curious as to what was the reason?

One of the referees warned him about partially being on the floor and warned if he got on the floor again he'd make him sit the rest of the game. Coach said 'whatever' and walked back to his seat and the referee whacked him without whistling it.

[sidebar]
Not quite the way to end a T-free streak, but after starting his coaching career 10 years ago as a screamer and getting his fair share of whacks, I believe this is only his second direct T in about 6 years, so he's mellowed out quite a bit. I have to give him some credit for that. Part of it also goes to his assistant for our 10 years together -- an older gentleman who has coached for 25+ years who finally let him know that if he got a reputation as a hothead, it would hurt him in the long run.
[/sidebar]

Kinda interesting though that later in this game, the home coach was on the floor arguing a call, yet he wasn't whacked. :rolleyes:

Edit: I'm not saying my friend didn't deserve the T. But I do think nothing good comes from an official and a coach verbally sparring from 50+ feet (15¼ m) apart. I would think, though, that an official, although human, should know that yelling at a coach from that far away may not be good game management.

When I do the public MS games, I make sure there's an X in front of me, especially since I have 5 different colors of tape to choose from now ;). Of course, the janitors always remove my X at the end of the day, so I gotta put another one down for the next home game.

For CYO season, since I got tired of coaches in front of the table and blocking my line of sight (my #1 peeve when I'm the official scorer), I took time to put an X down and mark the 14' boxes. Since nobody else was using our gym facility, those markings stayed all season long. We'll see if they are still there if I return for another year and we use the same gym. :D