To T or Not to T, that is the Question

[Nevadaref]

Yes, Ron, that's correct.

Your play is the reason that what Camron wrote is doesn't work.

I even posted the official NFHS case play. This is a TEAM technical foul. It does not get charged to any individual or the coach.

Everything that OHBBREF has written is merely his opinion. Unfortunately, he is incorrect about the rules. If he would simply read the case play that I posted, he would be better off. He advocates giving a technical foul to a substitute, but this team member is a player. This player never left the game. He was never replaced during the time-out and therefore, continues to be a player. He is simply confused and failed to come out with everyone else. How can one insist that a player must check in at the table and adhere to the substitution rules when he is already legally in the game? That's not right. Remember that players remain players during time-outs!

This play was much discussed a couple of years ago and the NFHS issued a formal interp. That interp has since become two separate case plays. I've already posted one of them, and Indianaref cited the other. Reading the original NFHS interp and the reasoning behind it will convince you that what others have posted in this thread does not properly follow NFHS direction.

2007-08 Basketball Rules Interpretations

SITUATION 12: Following a (a) charged time-out; or (b) a lengthy substitution process involving multiple substitutions for both teams, A5 goes to the bench and remains there mistakenly believing he/she has been replaced by a substitute. The ball is put in play even though Team A has only four players on the court. Team A is bringing the ball into A's frontcourt when the coach of Team A realizes they have only four players. The coach yells for A5 to return, and he/she sprints onto the court and catches up with play. RULING: In (a), the officials shall stop play and assess a team technical foul for not having all players return to the court at approximately the same time after a time-out. The technical foul counts toward the team-foul count. In (b), the officials may permit play to continue without penalty. A5's return to the court was not deceitful, nor did it provide A5 an unfair positioning advantage on the court. COMMENT: Even though neither situation provided A5 or Team A with an advantage, teams are expected to return to the court at approximately the same time following a time-out. The officials should have also followed the prescribed mechanics and counted the number of players on the court, ensuring each team has the legal number of players. (10-1-9; 10-3-3)

[JugglingReferee]

Originally Posted by bob jenkins

Was your hand still up in the '"stop sign" to your partner. If so, you can easily support the fact that the ball didn't properly become live, allow the player to enter, put any time back on the clock and now properly administer the throw-in.

Originally Posted by OHBBREF

There are several issues here, all of which fall first on the officials.
if there were only four players on the floor their should have been a stop sign up for your partner because if a team has five eligable players they need to have them on the floor - so you need to stop the game until that happens

+1.

I'm doing absolutely whatever I can do to prevent this T. Even as the administering official, I do a quick head count. 5 + 5, not 10.

The girl accepted a statement from a person who is seemingly in an authoratative position when the scorekeeper, a member of the officiating staff, said, "...go ahead and go in..."

The word beckon (language used in the rulebook) seems to demand a signal, and it could be argued that verbal instruction is different that a hand signal. However, sometimes table crew are dressed in stripes, giving the impression that the table crew are at an authority level higher than expected, if not on-court.

Is it the substitutes' fault that (s)he doesn't know to wait for an signal (a beckoning) from an on-court official?

There was no intent to deceive here. Do what you can to avoid calling the T. Nevada's 10.1.9 situation is post #3 clearly has a deception act to it. There is no such deceptive element in the OP.

Furthermore, the OP says that the girl came to the table while the throw-in was not yet complete. And came in after the clock started. How much time elapsed between these two events? Maybe the girl thought she was told by her coach that she was taken out, and then found out she wasn't. Do we really want to penalize such events with a technical foul?

I am heavily going to interpret "approximately the same time" to be liberal in this case.

Sounds like an OOO to me, to stick with a T.

Originally Posted by OHBBREF

The timer does not have the authority to send a player into the game - and since the player did not arrive at the table prior to the warning horn - they can not enter the game until the next available oportunity. So a Technical for the Illegal substitution is waranted.

If the player was originally on the court they s/he is not a substitute, so then it goes back to my original point of an OOO. I know it happens all the time that one player is later than others. Tell me, how many of us have issued this technical foul?

In the end, I think issuing the T is a bad call.

Ref Ump Welsch, I think you did the right thing.

How did the coaches handle your explanation? Did you include the fact that the scorekeeper, a neutral party and part of the officiating staff, went outside their authority, and then even gave faulty information?

Originally Posted by JugglingReferee

How did the coaches handle your explanation? Did you include the fact that the scorekeeper, a neutral party and part of the officiating staff, went outside their authority, and then even gave faulty information?

Both coaches were receptive to my explanation. My explanation did include the fact the timer was the person involved, etc. The "home" coach was glad to avoid the T, while the "visiting" coach didn't care one way or the other (she was getting killed and it was during the 2nd half somewhere where it wouldn't have made a difference). This game was a very sloppy game. I think we called more violations (traveling and double dribbles) than there were points and fouls combined.

I think the coaches were just glad to get the game in, because one team had a 3-hour drive home, while the other was going to play the "neutral" school later that night, and hope they could make their 6-hour drive the next morning without hitting bad weather.

[just another ref]

Originally Posted by Ref Ump Welsch

..... the timer, who is the AD at the "neutral" school, indicates that it was his fault because he told her to go ahead and enter.

A side note to this situation. This particular situation was not a substitution but the point is the same. It should be stressed over and over to coaches and players that the timer is not authorized in this capacity. I try to mention this in every pregame conference to the coaches. No sub may enter the court until beckoned by the official. No sub will be beckoned until they report to the X. The horn is a signal to get the officials attention. It is not a green light.

[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Originally Posted by Ref Ump Welsch

Had a game this past weekend, two schools playing at a neutral site. Timeout called. Teams come back out on the floor. "Home" team only has 4 players, and I was double-checking my count when partner went ahead and gave the "visiting" team the ball for the throw-in. I see the 5th player for "home" go to the table during the throw-in, and then lo and behold, she enters the game while the clock is running. I blow my whistle and give the T sign. When I went to report it, the timer, who is the AD at the "neutral" school, indicates that it was his fault because he told her to go ahead and enter. After conferring with my partner, I waved off the T, with explanation to both teams. Good handle or bad? How would you have handled it differently? I know one way I would have handled it differently would have been to hold partner up for a moment while I was double-checking the count, but he was wanting the pace of the game to go quicker because the teams were slow coming out of their timeouts.

Ref Ump Welsch:

You do not say if your crew was a two- or three-person crew, but I am getting the impression that it was a two-person crew. In any case, let us look how this situation should be handled and go from there.

1) PRE-GAME!! PRE-GAME!! PRE-GAME!! PRE-GAME!! PRE-GAME!!

2) Crew communication!! Crew communication!! Crew communication!!

3) When your partner gave the ball to V1 for the throw-in before you were done with your player count, put great quanities of air into your whistle for as long as it takes to get your partner's attention while moving toward him while showing the Stop Sign. Your whistle will kill everything.

4) There are ways to get teams out of the huddle and in this situation your partner's action was not the way to do it.

5) When you get into the dressing room for half-time (if this situation took place in the first half) or after the game (if this situation took place in the second half) I would be having a very serious chat with my partner about eye contact and partner communication.

In the final analysis, you should have taken control of the situation: Get together with your partner in private and make the decision that there is not going to be a TF because, as an officiating crew, you screwed up by not communicating. Get the player into the game. And move on.

MTD, Sr.