Requirement or Courtesy?

[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Originally Posted by M&M Guy

Since the table crew is considered part of the officiating crew, I took care of the rest and highlighted my answer.

Maybe many officials still operate under the assumption it is their duty to inform the coaches, and perhaps many coaches still operate under the assumption that the officials have to give them this information. If it is widely done that way in your area, then, of course, you do not want to be the maverick that does it differently.

But, as Mark pointed out, having the official inform the coach is only required under NCAA rules; it is part of the scorer's duties under NFHS rules. It seems as though this falls under the same category as counting players before putting the ball in play. If a team has too many players on the court, we might be able to prevent it if we have the chance, but it is not our fault if it needs to be penalized. The same way it not our fault if a player fouls out and we didn't tell the coach that player had 4 fouls before then...

M&M:

Red Question: What information do you mean? That the team has no more "free" timeouts left, or the number of "free" timeouts the team has left?

Blue Statement: With regard to informing a team that it does not have any more "free" timeouts left, the duties of the Officials and the Scorer are the same under both NFHS and NCAA Rules. The Article (NFHS R2-S11-A6 and NCAA R2-S9-A9) pertaining to the Scorer's duties pre-dates the NHFS and NCAA Rules Committees, going back to the days of the National Basketball Committee of the United States and Canada. NCAA R2-S7-A15 was added as a clarification to accompany NCAA R2-S9-A9.

The fact is that it has always (my apologies to the late J. Dallas Shirley) been an Official's duty to inform a team when it has used its last "free" timeout. And that the only way that this can be done is when the Scorer notifies an Official that a team has used its last "free" timeout.

MTD, Sr.