NCAA back court rule - meaning of "caused the ball"

[bearclause]

Having an interesting discussion about this.

NCAA 2008-9 rules. Situations have been seen in Pac-10 play. Here's the exact rule, but there seem to be differing opinions on what exactly this means. I underlined the point in question.

Rule 9. Section 12. Ball in Back Court
Art. 1. A player shall not be the first to touch the ball in his or her back court
(with any part of his or her body, voluntarily or involuntarily) when the ball
came from the front court while the player’s team was in team control and
the player or a teammate caused the ball to go into the back court.

So A1 clearly establishes team control in the front court by walking it up. He gets careless with the ball and B1 pokes it away where it gets barely deflected off of A2 (didn't do anything but just happened to be there) and into the back court. After the poke, no player on either team has individual control of the ball until A3 touches the ball in the back court. Ref calls a backcourt violation.

We understand that technically team control continues, but are confused as to what "caused the ball to go into the back court" means. Does is strictly mean the last player to touch the ball before it goes into the back court or just a player somehow (intentionally or not) directing the ball into the back court? We hear some arguments that defender B1 batting the ball means that team A can't be called for a back court violation if it just glances off a team A player.

Just last night I saw a ref signal that the ball had been tipped, but some thought that it was supposed to signal that the ball had been last touched by the defender before the team picked up the ball in the back court.

[Jurassic Referee]

Originally Posted by bearclause

Does it strictly mean the last player to touch the ball before it goes into the back court .....

Yes.

[Lotto]

Originally Posted by bearclause

We understand that technically team control continues, but are confused as to what "caused the ball to go into the back court" means. Does is strictly mean the last player to touch the ball before it goes into the back court or just a player somehow (intentionally or not) directing the ball into the back court? We hear some arguments that defender B1 batting the ball means that team A can't be called for a back court violation if it just glances off a team A player.

Here's another NCAA rule (9-3.1): A player shall not cause the ball to go out of bounds.

No one would argue that a ball tipped by B1 that glances off A2 and goes out of bounds is a violation on B1. A2 has caused the ball to go out of bounds by virtue of being the last player to touch the ball. The same understanding applied to the backcourt violation: A1 dribbling in the FC, B1 bats the ball away, ball glances off A2 in the FC, A3 retrieves in the BC---violation.

[Scrapper1]

Somehow, there was no backcourt quiz this season. . .