I see your point, and I agree. However, I try to apply that to all situations regardless. If I'm not 100% sure it's the HC, I'm not granting it until I'm sure.

The girl on the floor was signalling for a timeout, too, but it was the bench that was recognized. I can only guess what was talked about in the huddle, but, the only thing that makes sense is that they decided a held ball was "imminent", if he didn't blow his whistle. Not supported by the rules, but maybe the most fair.

The refs were put in a bad spot, when that one ref ran in saying that wasn't the head coach. If I hear everyone on here correctly, by rule, they shouldn't have gotten charged a timeout, and they should have kept the ball. Not really fair.

If he had one timeout left, would you have granted him his "phantom" time-out?

IMO you shouldn't have, because you didn't grant one when he had zero.

Snaqs is right: the number of TOs should not matter. Be 100% sure every time.

That is a pretty important piece of information! In this sitch, I do not think I would have allowed anyone to change my call and would have granted the TO.

If he had one time out left do you think he would be adamant that he didn't call one with 4 seconds left, clock running, opponent with the ball out of bounds and his team down 1? Sort of irrelevant.

What do you do then in a packed gym when you can't hear and you have a coach jumping up and down signalling and you aren't "100% sure" whether he is calling TO or signalling to his defense? B/C a lot of signals look a lot like a "T" signal - are you going to say "coach I couldn't discern with 100% certainty that you really wanted a timeout so I didn't grant you one?" Or do you grant it when you are "almost certain" especially given the game situation? It is nice to say be 100% sure, but in reality that is not possible.

Agree completely. If officials saw this it is unbelievable to me that they didn't grant the TO.

It was all very quick, but I think the ref saw her jump on the ball, heard the bench, turned to the bench and pointed and blew his whistle. She may have been a fraction of a second later than the bench in calling the timeout. He may not have seen it if he turned quickly. Not sure. I think this ref got over-ruled by a more assertive/experienced partner.

Also - it was a 3-man crew. Don't know if the third ref had any insight during the huddle. He seemed to want no part of it.

It hasn't been addressed here, but it may depend on when the whistle actually came.

As many (but not all) of us agree, a timeout can be granted prior to the whistle sounding. It happens a lot in these type of situations. A1 dives on the ball, Coach A requests timeout, B1 gains simultaneous possession creating a held ball, official whistles to grant timeout.

Even though the whistle came after the held ball, most of us agree that if we are certain the request came before the held ball we will still grant the timeout.

In this situation, if my whistle is actually an accidental whistle and not for the granting of a timeout, an argument could be made to go with the POI being at the time of the whistle which was a held ball.

The alternative argument would be that you can't have both. Either officials are able to grant a timeout prior to the whistle in which case an accidental whistle must also be applied to the time prior to the held ball, or a timeout isn't actually granted until the whistle blows in which case a timeout shouldn't have been granted anyway.

Thoughts from the peanut gallery?

Frankly, if he's not signalling with his hands and saying it, he's not likely to get it in a noisy gym. It's on him to make it obvious to everyone; precisely because there are too many plays that sound like "timeout."

I've had this happen.. coach standing there in the "double foul" pose. It turned out he wanted a full timeout. My partner got an earful, but his response was: Coach, Neither of us knew you wanted a timeout. I'm sorry. Would you like one now?

Am I always 100% absolutely sure? No, probably not. But hands together over the top of the head and jumping doesn't give me enough certainty. Maybe its a HTBT, but I don't see granting this one.

What doesthe number of TO's a team has left got to do with anything?

If you didn't know for sure that a head coach wanted a TO, whatintheheck were you doing granting him one in the first place? That's the question!

You screwed up. It happens. Learn from it and move on.

Call nothing, exactly the same as you should do for any call of any kind at any time during the game that you aren't sure of.

If you call something under those circumstances, it's called "guessing" and that's really not recommended.

The "double foul" pose is not even the correct full-time out signal so I can definitely understand why you wouldn't grant one there - and I don't picture a coach who wants a TO in the situation I described jumping up and down with the double foul pose although I would love to see it!

I think it is a HTBT - I guess I am biased though b/c I was there:). It came down to my expectation since I didn't realize that he was out of TO's (my bad) therefore I expected that he would be calling one in that situation. And the hands over the head signal that he was doing was similar to what I would call a two-minute drill football signal that QB's often use with their WR's - you know with the two hands coming together like a "grouping" signal. You see that signal in that situation when you are expecting a timeout, believe me it looks a heck of a lot like "TIMEOUT". If he thought this all out ahead of time then more power to him - just another reason why they should eliminate this stupid rule.

You blew the whistle to grant a TO. That fact doesn't change. Just follow the rules from thereon. Thinking too much can be dangerous. Don't make things any more difficult than they actually are.

+1

Few things harder to sell than a guess.