Timeout situation

[Jurassic Referee]

Originally Posted by slow whistle

Had a similar situation several years ago where Team A down by three, scores with approx 5 seconds left to go down by a point. I am C opposite and right away I am looking for Team A HC to request a TO. I look and he is jumping up and down with his hands over his head and appearing to me to be signalling a TO, although it was so loud I could not hear what he was screaming. So I run in and grant a TO.....BUT....he was out of timeouts!!! Of course he swore up and down that he was signalling to his team what defense to set-up. We huddled and decided that since I didn't know for sure this is what he was doing we could not tech them so we went with IW and gave Team B the ball for throw-in.

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.

[slow whistle]

Originally Posted by Jurassic Referee

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.

Agreed I totally screwed up and did learn from it as I said. IMO there is a gray area here - what are the approved "visual signals" (8-3) that a coach can use to signal TO? Is it just the "T"? Is it the "double foul" signal? Is it the "30-second timeout" signal? I think in regular situations we all grant timeouts based on any one of these without issue. The problem comes in in a situation like mine where you have what looks to be a "T" signal is claimed not to be by the coach. Would you have issued the technical? What if the signal he was giving at the time was his "T" signal, just slightly sloppy? To me this is where knowing how many time-outs are left is important. Agree with you by rule it doesn't matter in terms of whether or not to grant it, however, whether or not to grant the TO requires judgement, and knowing all of the pieces of the puzzle is important to exercise good judgement. Again, not to beat a dead horse, but I feel like officials are really hung out to dry by this rule.

[Jurassic Referee]

Originally Posted by slow whistle

IMO there is a gray area here - what are the approved "visual signals" (8-3) that a coach can use to signal TO? Is it just the "T"? Is it the "double foul" signal? Is it the "30-second timeout" signal? I think in regular situations we all grant timeouts based on any one of these without issue. The problem comes in in a situation like mine where you have what looks to be a "T" signal is claimed not to be by the coach. Would you have issued the technical? What if the signal he was giving at the time was his "T" signal, just slightly sloppy? To me this is where knowing how many time-outs are left is important. Agree with you by rule it doesn't matter in terms of whether or not to grant it, however, whether or not to grant the TO requires judgement, and knowing all of the pieces of the puzzle is important to exercise good judgement.

Make it part of your pre-game. Agree amongst yourself that you will all accept any of the 3 signals noted above as being valid TO signals. And then have the R mention that to both head coaches, also pre-game. Just tell the head coaches that if they want a TO granted, we need an unambiguous request either verbally or by approved signal. And if there's any doubt at all, they ain't getting one.

And as for the # of TO's remaining, the scorer by rule(2-11-6) has to let one of the officials know when a team has taken their last TO. That official then has to inform that team and it's head coach that he's out of TO's, and the official should also let his partners know that at the same time. Make sure pre-game that the scorer knows that this is his duty and he has to do it.

An ounce of prevention yada yada yada......