Messed One Up Tonight!!!!

[Raymond]

Originally Posted by walter

BV game. Team B hits a three point shot to go up three with 3 seconds left. Three person crew. Team A calls timeout. I am the old lead coming to new trail. I administer the throw in. Ball is caught by A1. A1 takes two dribles and launches a three point attempt and is knocked to the floor. Old trail, new lead calls foul. Clock reads 0.0, packed gym and I believe the horn has sounded. After calming Team B coach and players down, A1 steps to free throw line to shoot 3 shots with no one lined up on the lane. Hits the first two and misses the third. I am the R on the crew. Myself and the lead begin to head off the floor and the teams begin to head toward the handshake. The C blows his whistle and beckons us back to the floor. I look up and see 0.9 on the clock. The C tells me there was 0.9 on the clock at the time of the foul and he has no doubt about it. I pull the crew away from the teams and we discuss it and he says he is positive there are 0.9 seconds left and that is why he didn't leave the floor and he instructed the timer to add the time. As you can imagine, the team B coach goes crazy!!!! The team A coach wants A1 to get another shot because no one was lined up and wants a violation on B. I tell both coaches we are not going to reshoot any of the free throws because it is not a correctable error situation and A1 shot all three of his merited free throws. I know we are in deep yogurt at this point. The arrow is in favor of team B and we award team B a throw in on the endline because we had a missed free throw and no one played it believing the game was over. B1 throws the pass and, wouldn't you know it, hits a speaker near the ceiling trying to throw it the length of the floor. Team A inbounds and gets a clean shot off that goes in and out and since the basketball gods were with us, team B wins. A total crew screw up from many angles I know, and, as the R, I take that responsibility! Trust me, this situation will never happen again. Myself, the lead, and both teams thought time had expired and the game was over after the miss. Imagine my shock when the C blew his whistle and called us back out. Besides the obvious of get together after the foul call and sort everything out, time, shooter, # of shots, etc., once we screwed the pooch, is there any other way we could've handled this? What would you have done? I am just glad it was a high school game and not a college game...

Walter, only thing I'm interested in knowing is what was the C's explanation for allowing the free throws to be shot with the lane cleared if he knew time should have been on the clock?

[rwest]

Originally Posted by BadNewsRef

Walter, only thing I'm interested in knowing is what was the C's explanation for allowing the free throws to be shot with the lane cleared if he knew time should have been on the clock?

He should have known something was wrong when no one was lining up for the rebound! Furthermore, he should have held up play while talking to the table. The crew at that point should have seen him address the table and known something was up. Failing to do that he should have at least held up the free throws and got with the crew to inform him of what he did.

[walter]

The C had no good explanation as to why he did not inform us of his knowledge. He said he didn't realize we didn't know until he realized we were headed out of dodge. He had instructed the timer to put the .9 up as we were headed back to the floor to meet him. When he told us what he had, and after that OH S@#$ moment, I needed to process what we were going to do about it and quickly. That's where it was decided we weren't re-shooting any free throws and we were going to the arrow. After the game in the locker room, C's explanation was that he was caught off guard by the foul call and subsequent reaction by B's coach and bench that he lost focus. When we proceeded to shoot the free throws, he said he was focusing on the benches and players to decide whether a "T" might be needed given team B's reaction to the entire situation. Thank God he didn't do that!!! It wasn't until after the thrid free throw and myself and our third leaving that he looked up and saw that the clock was at 0.0 and he knew he saw 0.9 at the time of the call. Now, I did give thought to going with timer reaction time and ending the game but I know that was removed AND he was adamant that he saw 0.9 on the clock. He had clock responsibility.

As to what I intend to do in the future to prevent it, if I have a similar situation, before we shoot any free throws, I will get my crew together and go over exactly what we have and how we are going to handle it (i.e. foul before the horn confirmation, how much time do we have left, players lined up or not, etc.). Obviously, this was a crew error caused by failure to communicate by one member of said crew. As I said before, at least the basketball gods were smiling upon us and team B won the game. If they hadn't, the coach of team B may have ended up in the locker room looking to kill us!