I have no idea why he was in the huddle. I'm sure he was doing a good job of trying to communicate with the coaching staff. I'm just saying, from my perspective, I think it looks bad when officials are in the middle of the huddle like that. The same conversation can take place outside of the huddle.

Right or wrong, what you think is really not important. What I think is really not important. It is really not important when I do not have all the details and I have been in situations where things are said that not even my partners know what was said to me. I am not going to justify my actions to anyone unless that is my supervisor and he takes a position on the issue.

Peace

And that's the point that I've been trying to make(without be labelled lewd, crude & rude again :)). As Jeff said, we don't have all of the details. There might have been a very good reason for Stuart to go into the huddle.I don't see how anybody can say it looks bad when nobody seems to know why Stuart was in there in ther first place.

I also don't think that you can make a hard -and-fast statement that officials should stay out of huddles. They are legitimate times that we do have to go into one. And if we do and somebody asks a question, we have to respond.

I have no problem with somebody saying it looks bad.

But you can't conclude that it was bad without knowing the reason he did it AND being in a position to judge whether the reason was good or bad. I for one am missing BOTH of those pieces.

Example which may or may not apply (I haven't seen the video):
We're told to get into the huddles at the first horn and get them out. Normally, this means we're standing about 2 feet from the players with a hand in the air. We're wide open for questions at this point, so things could go south quickly.

Im just asking this in total sincerity... What reason is there to go into a team's huddle??

My opinion is to rarely, if ever, go (never say never, but darn close- 1%). If the coach was yelling at you and now he is back in his huddle coaching, fine, we are back to business as usual. If you wanna relay something to the HC or AC that is not time critical and can absolutely wait, I think it is appropriate to do so after the horn and the huddle is broken. You're interrupting their time. Granted I didn't see the Huggins' incident nor do I remotely know the reason in which he went into the huddle, but my opinion is to almost never go.

The only time I can think that I have walked in on a huddle is to relay to a coach that there wasn't possession of the ball and the clock will not be at 23, but instead at 6. That is immediate pertinent info. The coach might have been drawing up a set that takes 15-20 sec. but he only has 6, so now we have not done a good job of managing the game.

I am honestly up for hearing more reasons of why you would enter a huddle during a TO cause I will use them if I need to.

1) Agree personally with that opinion. Most things can wait. But maybe not all.

2) And right there might be a reason why we sometimes do have to go into a huddle. If you discover the shot clock was wrongly re-set and there are now 3 seconds on the clock rather than 32, the coach should have that info before he's done setting his offense/defense.Or if a 2 was changed to a 3, and a team now needs a three for a late tie, the respective coaches should also know that immediately. Time added or deducted late in a game can be critical also to a coaching decision. Wrong information on a scoreboard should be relayed also. If a team has 6 fouls in the book and the scoreboard shows 5, the coach might want to change mind about whether to foul immediately or play defense.

And there might also be a completely different but equally valid reason to go into the huddle. The point that I was making was that I don't know why Stuart went into the huddle at that particular time during that game and therefore I hate to see people second-guessing him for doing so.

Fair enough