What I Learned This Weekend

[Yakivegas]

President's Day AAU Tournament, watched a lot of basketball, and learned these fascinating facts:

1) "Over the back" and "Reaching" are honest to goodness fouls! I know this is true because I heard three officials use either or both terms.

2) Having a 5'6" 5th grade girl camp in the lane and score on 5 straight possessions does not constitute an advantage that warrants calling the violation. The official told the coach "Girls at this level don't understand the rule, and I don't see any advantage gained".

3) When half of a two man crew shows up 2 minutes before game time, that crew does not work well together. At one point in the game, the tardy official turns to the benches and asks "Hey, what's the rule on zone defense here?"

There were also multiple episodes of disagreement about possession and throw-in location. The most unusual was:

Official A: "Red ball, baseline"
Official B: "Black ball, sideline"

[shishstripes]

I must admit I hate seeing officials late to games but also understand there may be circumstances that may cause an official to be late (traffic because of an accident, not sure of directions, limited parking, etc.) Was working a state tournament and two different individuals were late to their games because they didn't pay attention to game times and were up in the hospitality room stuffing their faces.

One of them was my partner for a major semi-final game, he came out with under 6 minutes left in warmups. I had done the captains meeting by myself at 12 (as we were told to do at 12, not by myself). Absolutely embarrassing. When I went to check the books at 10, both coaches came to me (both knew me from previous tournaments) at the same time and asked if I was working alone, I assured them I wouldn't.

Fact was, he didn't call a very good game I felt because he wasn't prepared mentally and hadn't stretched (but he was a young and athletic). It was a good thing we had worked together the night before and we did a good pre-game otherwise it could have been uglier than it was.

[deecee]

The only thing on these boards that crack me up more that the usual 3-4 topics that are covered over the poor beaten horses corpse is the complaints over officials in non NFHS tournaments.

Just take what you get and learn to live with it. A decent amount of officials take pride in what they do and put in a bit of effort in these types of scenarios but there are a decent amount that dont as well as those that just plain are not good.

[youngref33]

Originally Posted by Yakivegas

President's Day AAU Tournament, watched a lot of basketball, and learned these fascinating facts:

Where was this tournament?

[Yakivegas]

Issaquah, WA