The clock kept running...and running...

[A Pennsylvania Coach]

Good boys tripleheader for me last night (9th, 8th, JV). For the two junior high games, I worked with a good, experienced veteran I hadn't worked with before. He gave me a lot of good feedback. I stuck around for the varsity game (it was close so I stayed the whole time) then went home.

After I got home, I watched a girls' varsity game in our area that was on local cable. There was one crazy incident late in the game I wanted to share. There was a timeout with 51 seconds left and the visiting team down by 4. It was home ball on the endline under their opponents' basket. Visitors pressing full court. Home passes it in and the girl goes right up and lays it in! Wrong hoop! Clock was at 48-something when it passed through. The lead from midcourt hits his whistle, but a real short tweet, and gives the "basket counts" signal. The clock stops momentarily at 44.4. Somehow the ball ended up in the trail's hands. The clock restarted (I guess the clock operator figured that after a basket it should keep running, which sounds right except that there was a whistle) while the visitors were trying to tell the trail to give the home team the ball. Meanwhile no one from the home team was trying to get the ball, because they were understandably confused. The visiting coach started to lose his mind, and finally the lead whistled and stopped everything at 32.4. After an animated four-man discussion at the table (two officials, two coaches), they resumed play with home inbounding back on the endline with no time put back on the clock!

I'm sure if they didn't add any time, it was because neither of them looked up at the clock during the whole thing, which was the "correct" thing to do, since they had no definite knowledge. It was awfully bizarre though!

[cmhjordan23]

Sounds correct to me. As far as time on clock goes. But if there was that much confusion, the referee should have stopped the game to clear everything up. If a referee does not visually see how much time was on the clock when whistle was blown, clock stand as is.