Both teams wearing blue road uniforms
 

This was a girls sectional game in Indiana. Both teams come out in their road uniforms. Team A has on royal blue (which was correct because they were the official visiting team by the brackets) Team B who was the designated home team has on their road navy blue uniforms. Should there have been a technical foul for wearing the wrong uniforms? There was none called but it sure was awkward for the officials.

Especially For Tournament Games, Check Your Local Listings First ...
 

The head coach shall not permit a team member to participate while wearing an illegal uniform. Head coach direct technical foul. Penalized when discovered. A maximum of one technical foul shall be charged directly to the head coach regardless of the number of offenders. The team members with the illegal uniforms may participate without further penalty and are not required to change.

If this game was in Illinois and they didn't start with a T, they would probably receive a stern talking to from the state.

Shocked that this is posted. I was the R on this game.

One of the teams playing in the game was the school hosting the tournament. Both teams came out in visiting blue uniforms. (One royal blue and one navy blue.) Neither team had another set of uniforms on the premises.

I know the rule, and our crew talked about assessing a technical foul to the team that was scheduled to be the home team for having illegal uniforms (however, we were not sure which team that was supposed to be.)

After discussing the situation with the head coaches from both teams and the tournament director (the AD from the host school), the two teams could not agree on who the home team was supposed to be.

At that point I felt that our hands were tied as I was unable to determine which team should be penalized. We weren't about to postpone a state tournament game that had already been postponed by 3 days because of weather, and did the best that we could with both teams wearing different shades of blue. (We called one team "gold" because their uniforms had quite a bit of gold trim, and gold numbers as well.)

It went fairly smoothly- one of my partners pointed the wrong way after an off-ball foul due to confusion, and the biggest problem seemed to be the possession arrow (which we had to fix 3(!) times during the game.)

The schools receive a "winter bulletin" that dictates rules like who the home team is supposed to be. I looked at it online this morning and the host school is the one that should have been the visiting team (they lost the game by 11), but I did not have that information at the game site last night. I sent an email this morning to the state office describing the situation so they would be aware of it.

Simple solution. You make the team with the illegal uniforms take them off and play topless. Use a marking pen to write their numbers on their chest and on their back.

Oh wait - this was a girl's game. Um, what color were their bras? :p

OK - I'll go take my meds now.

This makes no sense
 

This was the third game of the tournament. So surely it would be easy to determine if the top or bottom bracket was the home team ( it was the bottom bracket team, it took 30 seconds to look it up on the IHSAA site) I have a feeling the IHSAA is not going to be to happy with everyone when they hear about this fiasco. You are SHOCKED this is posted. WHY?

At our sectionals in Indy both teams in game #3 wore dark. Fortunately, one of the teams jersey's were reversable. :) Oh yes, they were the home team listed.

The official book has a Home team and a Visitors team...which one was listed under Home? Another simple question...how was the scorer supposed to add points to the scoreboard?

That doesn't help at all. The "official book" is typically determined by who is the home team. And most scorekeepers I see write thier team on the left and the other team on the right. So, you have to determine who was home before you could determine who was home by how the books had the teams listed.

So, I'm sure they ultimately, and arbitrarily, designated someone as home.

I have a hard time believing the tournament director didn't know which team was the home team. It's tournament time, these things are taken a little more seriously than summer ball.

1.) Unfortunately, I don't have a laptop with me on the court to go to the website when we discovered the problem 14 minutes before the start of the game.

2.) The confusion stemmed from whether an exception was to be made when the host school is designated as the visiting team (according to the winter bulletin- which is not provided to officials- an exception is made that the host school gets to choose the "home bench." My guess is that this is where the confusion occurred.) Both teams claimed that they had received different sets of instructions. I don't have a copy of either one, and neither did anyone else there. I am not about to arbitrarily say, "well, the team on the bottom of the bracket in the little paper program handout was the home team for the first game, so we're going to do the same for this game and start assessing penalties." You know, a little saying about assuming things and all. Without someone providing me concrete evidence which team was supposed to be the home team (which no one was able to do,) I am not going to start guessing. THAT would have made the situation a fiasco.

3.) Neither team wanted the other to be penalized to start the game. (Not that it affected my decision. If I was 100% sure who was not wearing the incorrect uniforms, we would have issued a technical foul whether the teams wanted it or not... I am just clarifying that this was not a controversial decision in the eyes of either team/coach.)

4.) I was shocked because it's not often that I work a game and then find it the discussion of a topic on a national message board the following morning. I am not shocked that this topic in and of itself is being discussed.

You made the best of a bad situation
 

What a can of worms. In reading all the information you have given. I think you did the sensible and right thing. I don't think I have even heard of this in a State Tournament and I bet you hope you don't come across this again.

Thanks- I appreciate it. Hoping we have a great game in the championship on Monday night. (And that the weather stays to the south so we don't have any more delays!)

PS- Can a mod delete these garbage attacks on RichMSN?

Rich will still be here tomorrow. You other guys may or may not be if you don't let this go.

jmo

Wow, looks like I missed a flame war in the middle of all this. Regardless, it sounds like you did what you could, lp. Tough position to be in. My guess is the state will find a way to ensure the officials know who the home team is.