brain cramp

[Mark Padgett]

Had one yesterday during a girls JV game. We just start second half and there is a scramble for the ball. A red player starts dribbling all the way down to the other end of the court. No one goes after her, in fact, all the other nine players just stop and stare. I immediately think she's going the wrong way. By now, she is at the FT line and I blow whistle for over and back. She continues and lays the ball in. I then look over and realize she's in front of her own bench and there is no violation. DUH!

I call an inadvertant whistle but I also rule that because the ball was out of her hand when I blew it that the basket counted and it was now just white's ball OOB on the baseline.

Of course, the ball wasn't anywhere near out of her hand when I blew the whistle but this is summer league and I decided to apply a little "rough justice."

Neither coach had a problem, but when I reported this to the table, the volunteer dad who was running the clock said, "Yeah, sure it was."

His daughter plays on white.

When I got home and told my wife, she said it wasn't a brain cramp but just another senior moment. I told her most of the girls were sophomores and juniors, not seniors, but she didn't laugh. She tries not to encourage me.

BTW - my partner called at least 30 fouls per game in the three games we did together and I was about to get a sleeping bag out of the car because the games were taking so long. Why they play stop clock in summer league is beyond me. When I kept mentioning this to him, he said that he is in his second year in the local association and that his first year he was told he wasn't calling enough fouls, so he is making sure that doesn't happen again. YIKES!!!