Correctable Error Situation....First Part...
 

Situation: A1 drives to the basket and is fouled by B1 before taking a shot. Scorer indicates that the foul is the 6th team foul on B for the half. A1 is given the ball under Team A's basket. A2 scores on the inbounds play. As soon as the ball goes through the basket, the horn sounds. The home team scorer had failed to count a technical foul on B4 during the quarter. Therefore, the foul was the 7th team foul.

Realizing that a correctable error situation has presented itself (2-10-1a):
Rule 2
SECTION 10 CORRECTABLE ERRORS
ART. 1 . . . Officials may correct an error if a rule is inadvertently set aside and results in:
a. Failure to award a merited free throw.
b. Awarding an unmerited free throw.
c. Permitting a wrong player to attempt a free throw.
d. Attempting a free throw at the wrong basket.
e. Erroneously counting or canceling a score.

The officials realize the time to be right via 2-10-2:
ART. 2 . . . In order to correct any of the officials' errors listed in Article 1, such error must be recognized by an official no later than during the first dead ball after the clock has properly started.

The officials award A1 a 1 and 1 free throw situation.

A1 makes the first free throw, but misses the second. A2 gets the rebound and scores the basket.

Was this situation handled correctly?

The game was interrupted with a change of possession, so we go back to that point.

A1 should have shot the 1+1 with the lane and the subsequent throw-in an endline running throw-in for B.

I agree with the above

-Josh

Yup....JR nailed it.

Yep, yep. Good job Jug (and Josh for fixing the typo). :)

That basket stays on the board, correct?

Correctable Error Situation....Second Part...
 

OK, the handling of the free throws error was just to add an extra step. I have a real concern with Correctable Errors. In the scenario that I just posed, Team A gained a tremendous advantage due to the Correctable Error which has always seemed to me to be unfair.

If A1 is fouled resulting in a common foul, Team A would be entitled to EITHER:
A. the ball -- if the foul would have been the 1st to 6th Team B committed in the half OR
B. a 1+1 FT situation for A1 -- if the foul would have been the 7th to 9th Team B committed in the half OR
C. a 2 shot situation for A1 -- if the foul would have been the 10th or more committed by Team B in the half.

In the case where the scorer's table has blundered, Team A can get BOTH A. AND B. above. This seems to be an unfair outcome.

I can see how one could conclude that Team A is entitled to FTs IF they failed to score on the subsequent possession, BUT, once the team has scored on that possession, it would seem that the error should no longer be correctable since the team already received the full benefit of the foul.

Thoughts???

Yes.

The philosophy of the CE rule has been debated many times. Either BktBallRef or Bob Jenkins put it very elegantly. The comment was that the rule is not designed to be fair. It is designed such that each team has an incentive to prevent the error from occurring and get the situation right in the first place. Otherwise, what at first looks to be a potential benefit to their team may well come back to hurt them later. That can clearly be seen in the situation which you have posed.

The team which committed the technical foul earlier should have pointed out to the officials that this foul was incorrectly not being counted as a team foul. There was significant time to do this prior to the 7th team foul of the half being committed. Instead it is possible that this team thought, "Oh good, they aren't counting the T as a team foul. That's good for us." However, later it came back to cost them.

That's exactly what the FIBA rule says on this case: if the team which should have been credited the free throws scores, the error is ignored (44.3.2).

Ciao

Nevadaref,
First of all, I always appreciate the views and recollections that you, BktBallRef and Bob have to share.

I do have a couple concerns with this. First of all, I am never in favor of a situation that is not designed to be fair. Secondly, as long as the gamble can work, I don't think that creating a punitive scenario is the best way to handle the situation. In many cases, the two scorekeepers consider themselves to be a "team" throughout the game. In these cases, they would be making an error as a team -- completely by accident. Yet, the team is faced with double jeopardy (being penalized twice). Regardless how eloquently stated, I think the NFHS implementation here is poor at best.

The rule is the same in NCAA, so it's not just FED.

That said, rules change requests are due to NCAA on 2/1 (I think). I don't know the date they are neeeded to FED, but you can submit one. Based on the recent rules interps (more of a "go back and do it over" result), some in FED agree with you, so it might have a chance of passing.

Bob,
Thanks.....

And I totally disagree with this line of thinking. Team A is more likely to have known that they were supposed to shoot and purposely waited until after its possession to point out the error.

I'm of the opinion that once Team A scores a basket they should no longer be allowed to go back an shoot free throws.

CMHCoach:

I got into a really good debate with BBR and Woody a year or two ago on the Federation message board over this very issue. Wish I still had the link to that thread at hand. The case I posed was the same as yours, except that I had Team A hitting a 3 before the error was discovered. My argument was that, in fairness, we should try to come up with a way to rule that it is too late to remedy the error of failing to award the merited free throws. I said I would rule that after the 3 was made, the ball was available to team B for the throw-in and was thus alive, making it too late to correct the error. The veterans pounced on me, and in retrospect, I think rightly so.

Hard to understand why the Fed wouldn't amend the rule to state that in the case of failing to award a merited free throw, if team A scores on the ensuing possession, the error can no longer be corrected.

In the play you posted, the officials were right to correct the error, but wrong to allow play to resume from the missed free throw. Should have gone to Team B for an endline throw. Since A scores off the missed FT, if coach B asks us what is up with that, can we cancel that goal? Seems to me argument can be made that we have set aside a rule and thus erroneously failed to cancel a goal. Thoughts, everyone?