More thoughts from John Adams

[Scrapper1]

Originally Posted by stripes

Only thing that stood out to me was the comment about watching the players and they will tell you if you got the play right.

This was one of the things that raised my eyebrows. This sounds, frankly, like a coach's perspective, not an official's perspective. I think that in the vast majority of cases, the players have no idea if you got the play right. Players and coaches almost always look astonished that you could have possibly called a foul on that play. There are, of course, obvious plays where everybody in the gym knows that there was a foul; but in those cases, why would we need to check to see if we got it right?

The other thing that I thought was a little off the mark was the comment that "anticipation" is helpful in high school, but not in college. His thinking seems to be that because the players are more skilled and athletic, they can do things that aren't seen in most high school games; so you can't (or shouldn't) anticipate what might happen. But this seems to show a misunderstanding of what we're anticipating. We're not anticipating that we're going to call a foul on the defender and then -- OOPS! -- he actually got to the spot first and it should've been a charge. We're anticipating that we're about to have a one-on-one drive with a possible crash, so we locate the defender. Anticipate the PLAY, not the CALL. I think that's just as valid at the college level as in high school.

Anybody think I'm way off-base?