I have knowledge.....
 

A few seconds left in the thrird quarter. White has the ball after green makes basket. I'm new trail.

Ball is passed from just in front of me to near the division line. Player makes a try for the basket. It falls short. Rebound is by her teammate. She goes up for a shot and is fouled.

At this point I have just made it to the division line. I clearly have 1.2 seconds left on the clock at the time of the foul. Both C and L have whistled. Turns out L and C have both forgotten pregame and that C was supposed to have clock in this situation. L has signalled no shot because time ran out. (How he thought that, I don't know. He was under the clock.)

White team coach is wanting the foul call and is talking to my partners. Neither of them look my way.

My partners and I discussed the situation in the locker room after the game and we worked out what should have happened and where we went wrong as a team. The question I am putting up for discussion is this: How do you, as the third, let your partners know you have knowledge that can help get the call right without throwing your partners under a bus or fueling an already excited coach? That was my dilemma.

Rita

Huddle privately with your partners and tell them what you saw. Final decision rests with the referee. Your partner said the buzzer was before the foul, or before the release? Yet you had over a second on the foul? Big discrepancy.

I'm with j.a.r. here.

As the official with some important information, I would initiate the private huddle. To do this, you could give a quick tweet on the whistle, but definitely run in and initiate a conversation before anything gets reported to the table or anyone else.

JAR is correct that ultimately, the decisions rests with the Referee. If you have definite knowledge that there is 1.2s left on the clock, you could stress that your job as the non-calling official is to look at the clock when your partners have a whistle. At that point, if the R really doesn't want to keep the 1.2s, well, I will let you draw your own conclusions about what the R is really saying.

Sometimes I word things in a way that makes it a stretch for a coach to deem it reasonable to continue *****ing about something. End the conversation with the factual information that will benefit the team of the coach to whom you're speaking.

To the green coach: "Coach, the best way to ensure that we ruled correctly on a close play near the end of a quarter is a quick conference and share information. The foul happened clearly before the buzzer, therefore white will shoot two fouls shots. However, we know that there is still 1.2s left in the quarter."

To the white coach: "Coach, the best way to ensure that we ruled correctly on a close play near the end of a quarter is a quick conference and share information. We have definite knowledge that there was 1.2s left when the foul was whistled. Your player A14 will shoot two foul shots."

Just my 2 cents.