Timeout situation
 

Varsity girls last night:

There was a loose ball on the floor and one of the girls pounced on it and her bench quickly called for a timeout before an opponent could tie her up. One official blew his whistle and granted the timeout, and then another official ran in and said that it wasn't the head coach calling for the timeout. A brief huddle and then they decided to go to the possession arrow. Was this handled correctly?

By rule, correct about the TO not being called by the HC. Once whistle is blown, you must still grant the TO if HC wants it.

POI instead of AP on "Accidental Whistle." In this sitch POI does not sound like AP.

POI for inadvertant whistle.

Not AP, but POI
 

I'll take a stab.
No.
Accidental whistles always go to point of interruption -- 4-36-1. If there had been no team control, then AP arrow would apply, but not here, if it happened as your sitch describes.
BTW, just another of the long line of reasons I wish they'd change it so that only a player on the floor may request a timeout. I don't think that'll happen, though.

As a side note is anyone else running in in that situation to tell your partner that the HC is not the one who called the TO if the whole bench is yelling for it? Unless the HC is adamant that he didn't call it (which I'm guessing he would not be in this situation because he keeps the ball and probably wouldn't be quick enough on his feet to consider the whole IW/POI) and I know for sure that that is the case, I'm letting my partner go ahead with granting the TO. Otherwise you basically give them what they wanted without charging them the TO. Agree with others though that this is an awful rule (HC allowed to request TO) that I wish they would change immediately!

There wasn't another official signalling the held ball at approximately the same time that the other official was granting the TO was there? Just wondering if they didn't huddle and decide that we had a held ball at approximately the same time as the IW, so let's go with the held ball. I would hope that one of three varsity officials would know that you go to POI on an IW.

Agreed, although I don't like the idea of allowing them to benefit and not get charged the TO even if he does insist he didn't call it.

Similar, but Different . . .
 

Happened last nite: From T (2 person) across the court, I hear the head coach yell, "Time! Time!", but had just whistled to bust that coach's girl for an obvious 3 seconds. Killing the play, I, facing the coach from between the circles, asked, "Coach, were you asking for a timeout?" I thought there was a chance she was requesting a TO to avoid a 3 second violation, which I've never really seen before. She responded, "No"; (she was apparently telling her players they had time on the clock before needing to shoot). I said, "Okay", then called the three seconds, and we went the other way with an OOB.
She would have been better off to just say, "Yes." But I guess she didn't know what I had when I whistled.
Goofy. But I'm the last person to say I've seen it all.

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. Fortunately they got it in and ended up winning, but I learned two valuable lessons that day:

1) Late in the game ALWAYS know how many timeouts each team has left - one of my partners had just granted Team A their last a few moments before and didn't tell his partners, but now I make it a point to find out for myself.

2) Do not grant a time-out unless you are 100% (or at least 83.216% IF they have TO's remaining) that this is what they are signalling/calling for!

I agree with SlowWhistle and Snaqs about making sure that it wasn't the HC that requested the TO. I would be very surprised if one of my partners came in to try and change my call in this situation.

But Snaqs, this situation is different from most situations where you have voiced your opinion about not getting charged the TO. In this sitch, the coach hasn't done anything that you are allowing him to benefit from. He was just standing there "minding his own business."

I agree with you about not letting them off the hook when the HC calls a TO without possession and is erroneously granted that TO. But I am not sure I agree in this sitch. IMO, I would consider it an IW and only grant a TO if either coach (or player) requested one.

Of course, I've had time to think about. :)

1 shouldn't matter, other than awareness. If you know he's out you're less likely to grant a phantom timeout. But if he's requesting it, grant it regardless of what he has left.

2. I want to be 100% sure anyway, because I don't want to have any doubt when he tells me he didn't want one. There are lots of situations in a game where a coach would just love to have you kill the ball and not charge him a TO.

You're right. I don't like it, but you're right. This one is on the officials for granting a TO requested by the wrong person. This is one you just have to eat, I think, and if the coach doesn't want the TO, put it back in play POI.

BTW, judging from this thread and a few others, I think the NFHS needs to make POI a POE next year. Drive it home that an IW does not necessarily mean AP. Good grief.

But 1) does matter for the very reason you give yourself - the phantom timeout which is what I had - or allegedly had, still not 100% convinced that he wasn't signalling timeout, but I digress. If you know he is out you are only going to grant it if you are positive that is what he is calling for. Agree if he calls it give it to him regardless, but there will be no question that is what he wanted.

+1

I can't remember who's byline it is but I love the,

"AP is almost never the right answer" statement.

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.

The only signal I recognize in this situation is the "T." That's it.

And I'll grant that knowing whether he has any TOs left will affect whether I'm looking for him to signal it. But either way, if I see something that looks like it might possibly be a timeout signal; I'm not granting anything. If I see a timeout signal and see his lips moving something similar to "time out," I'm granting it. I'll deal with the consequences (T-fouls, for example) from there.

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.

So you would assess the tech? It is definitely something that we considered.

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......

If I granted a TO using the criteria in the post above, yes, I would then call a "T" for an excess TO.

Agreed - and prevention was the lesson learned no doubt.

I also really like the idea of pre-gaming this with coaches, it is actually one of the only things that I can think of that is useful to mention in the coach/captain pre-game!!

Unless I'm misreading the play, I disagree.

Time running out, coach yells for play "Five Out," official blows whistle, team is out of time outs. Ruling: IW.

I'd have the same where he's signalling for play "upside down V" with his hands. ;)

To clarify, I said "T" for an unambiguous request as per my previous post.

If there was ambiguity, I agree with the IW.

As for the OP, the bench requested a timeout, which was granted. Why is this any different than when the HC whose team doesn't have the ball makes the request? Even if it was improperly granted, it was still granted, and according to 5.8.3, once granted it cannot be revoked.

Do you hold to this when the coach says "Side out!" and a TO is granted? What if a spectator behind the bench says it? They have as much authority here as anyone on the bench.

In these cases no one who mattered asked for a timeout. Totally different.

Next you say that nobody else on the bench has this authority. True. But the HC is responsible for the actions of the bench, so if he didn't want them asking for timeouts, he should have let them know.

And the official is responsible to make sure it's requested by someone who has the authority to do so. This is a completely different scenario than a player or HC requesting it at the wrong time; they have the authority to request it, so if should be held responsible if you accidentally grant it.

I didn't realize which guy on the bench actually made the request.

I didn't realize the other team had the ball.

One doesn't seem a lot worse than the other to me.

One's by a "proper" person at an "improper" time.

The other's by an "improper person" which, by definition, also is at an "improper" time. It's 2x bad. ;)

I think they're both equal mistakes by the officials.

They are not both equal mistakes by the teams, however.

Last week, in the now famous "Vote of Confidence" game, I was passing the home bench and heard "Timeout." I blew the whistle and made the signal just as I realized that it was the ac who had actually spoken the words. What would you have done in this situation?

I'd have asked the HC if he wanted one. If not, IW and play on (unless the other coach requests one at this point). If so, grant it and move on.

Another approach
 

I thought I'd read it somewhere on this site, but it was offered that how many TOs a team has left isn't important. It's only important to know when they have used their last one.

That way, I can inform the team and HC at the same time (in their huddle, or as it breaks up) "COACH, NO TIMEOUTS LEFT."*

I like the idea of pre-gaming/reminding the scorer's table to notify the officials when a team uses it's last timeout. I can check the book, confirm the side, and inform the coach - and his team - immediately of that fact.

*and of course relay all of this to my partners

If the situation developed as the OP described, I would also warn the HC to get control of his bench. The AssCoach gave his team an unwarranted advantage by trying to trick the officials into stopping the clock/play before the other team has a chance to tie up the girl. This is unsporting behvior.

I'm not so sure. They could easily have been talking to the player on the court instructing her to call timeout. To me, that's morel likely what happened. There's no rule against them telling a player to call timeout, even for the bench. ACs call out plays all the time.

I'm don't know about warning the bench in a situation where I screwed up like this.

Morel support?

http://www.samcooks.com/graphics/vegetables/morel.jpg

This made me think about a sit from last Sunday. HC was a very petite, lovely woman with a very, very soft voice. Late in the game (closely contested) she was trying to request time out, but frankly neither I nor my partner could hear her above the crowd and finally her male assistant got my attention by yelling time out. Since I saw the HC standing next to him and she affirmed the request by nodding her head I granted the time out. Thought everything was fine, but the opposing HC runs over and says "HE can't request time out". Told him what I saw, but even after the game he was still insisting that we erred in granting the time out. Should this be handled differently? Frankly in almost any gym I don't see her being heard when the crowd gets into it. I thought it kind of petty for the opposing HC to complain and then not let it go.

T the opposing HC for leaving his bench area to attempt to influence an official's decision; or (just thought) charge him a TO for a failed attempt at correcting an error (2-10). Yes, it was petty, and if he doesn't let it go, he's getting a T from me.

What was he doing talking to you after the game?

In this league local school buildings are used on weekends. Typically the janitor in the school opens the gym and whatever hallway leads to the mens/womens rooms. Officials usually end up leaving a gym bag with their belongings somewhere near the table. Other than emergency doors, it's one way in and one way out. Also we're usually doing multiple games in the same gym so unless it's the last game and you can bolt out of there you are going to have some discussion. Usually I don't mind, it's the 80/20 rule. 80% of the coaches shake your hand, say thank you and set a good example for their teams. The others, well not so much, you learn to make yourself scarce somehow.

I like to think of it as; We can only grant a timeout requested by a player/HC. I do not think it is against the TO rules for someone else to request a TO, we just can't grant it. Once we confrim that the HC wants a TO, grant it.

The only way I can see penalizing an AC/bench player for requesting a TO, is if I determined it was unsporting and could apply 10-4. Which in most cases would be a stretch for me.

If granted a time-out based on thinking it was him and it was someone on the bench he is eating the time-out. What would make this interesting is if he didn't have any left. Anyone?

Already discussed in this thread. If I grant a timeout thinking it's the HC and it's not, and he doesn't want it, I'm eating crow and moving on with the game.

There is more than one way for a HC to request a T-O. You used non-verbals and judgement to determine that the HC had requested a T-O. I see no problem with it as long as you can explain it. And you explained it. Handled appropriately IMO.

I had a G Fr/JV DH a couple of weeks ago with the previously mentioned in another thread hottest coach in Cleveland. Very soft spoken lady. Her partner is a very imposing 6'5" guy with who could replace James Earl Jones on the "This Is CNN" voice over.

She wanted a timeout. No one could hear her. AssCoach/bodyguard yells time out. I look over, and she is making the T sign. Time out granted. I went over to her after the TO was over and advised her, since her voice doesn't carry that its ok to have her Assistant Coach yell it, but to be sure she does make that sign everytime, as she is the only one allowed to call timoeouts from the bench.