Mr. Rookie,

Welcome to basketball and good luck. It's unfortunate that there exists such a disparate cornucopia of opinion. Let me attempt to clarify the issue for you while trying to keep my ego in tact.

While it's certainly true that you need to stay in your primary and concentrate on the business in front of you, it is likewise true that a PC/block call at one end needs to be the same at the other end. Hopefully you and your crew has pre-gamed the type of consistency you will have that night. This helps tremendously.

If your partner kicks a call, should you then kick one b/c of that...of course not. There are certain critical calls that have to be consistent for the game to run smoothly...b/c, illegal picks, hand checks, etc.). Talk about those situations in your pre-game and try to apply that to your game. Establish the critical calls early so you don't have to "make it up" in the last two minutes.

If your partner doesn't want to officiate the ball game, then I would agree you still have to take care of business in your primary. But don't confuse a no blood no foul with advantage/disadvantage and a patient whistle. It will be tough for a while, but it gets better!

I'm surprised that one topic doesn't seem to have been emphasized on this thread---pregame!

I'm still working lower levels, so I haven't had many opportunities for extensive pregame talks with my partners, but the talks I've had have helped with consistency. At the lower levels, I like to go easy on travels but call fouls tight. It helps a lot to go over this with my P before the game starts.

However, as Rut pointed out, once I'm on the floor, I'm trying very hard to <b>not</b> focus on my P's calls. I'm concentrating on my game and trying to do my best. I've got to trust my P to do his/her best.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by JRutledge

Quote:

Consistency? I am suppose to make up calls for the effort of consistnecy? So if my partner makes a handcheck call and another player does not make a handcheck, I am suppose to call something in the effort of consistency.

Nowhere did I say that calls should be made if they are not there. What I did say was that being consistent within the crew is necessary. Apparently you have no idea what that means. I will not waste my typing to explain it to you, since you have consistently shown an unwillingness to ever take positive criticism to anything said on this board and possibly apply it to your games. Now I do realize that you will make a very long post trying to justify how great things are in Illinois and that you hobnob with bigdogs.

Quote:

I have worked for a lot of different assignors. I have have been to many different camps. I have worked with guys that are at the D1 level all the way down to the State Finals level, and I have never had any of those officials suggest doing any such thing. So I will conclude from that and that alone that no one in their right mind would suggest doing such a thing. If officials that are much more successful than I am are not suggesting doing something like this, than I can assume that they reached those levels not doing anything like this in the name of the almighty "consistency."

It occurs to me that you are probably not listening to what the experienced officials you work with are saying. If you don't believe that consistency is a part of the good crew's game, so be it.

I think I need to be a little more clear when I ask about "consistency." By consistency, I mean that the criteria we are using to make our decisions on what fouls/violations to call and what to let slide. I don't care if one team has 12 fouls and one has 2. If that's what is happening, then that is what I call. But if I am calling hand check fouls and my partner is not, then that is not consistent and I want to avoid that situation.

I think (maybe a bad idea to be thinking) that the best idea is to set expectations before the game as to how it will be called and then adjust accordingly. Then call what I see and not worry about what my partner is calling. Is that a strategy that seems to work?

I had a similar situation on Friday night. JUCO game, one partner in the league for several years the other's very first college game. Rookie has 3-4 travel calls in 1st half, I had one and #3 has none. At halftime (I'm the R), I ask my crew if we are on the same page with travels. Are we seeing the same plays the same ways? I wasn't pointing a finger at the rookie or at the vets, but I wanted to make wure that we saw the same thing and ruled on it the same way. Second half, the rook has 3-4 more travels and the other 2 of us had none. After the game we talked about what happened with travel calls and we all felt good about our individaul calls (or no calls). Moral of the story...I'm not sure what it is. We tried to make sure we were doing the same things, but to the average observer, I'm sure it appeared like only one of us had a clue what the travel signal was. Do what you can, but make sure you get your calls right.

Trust your partner
 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by bigwhistle


Nowhere did I say that calls should be made if they are not there. What I did say was that being consistent within the crew is necessary. Apparently you have no idea what that means. I will not waste my typing to explain it to you, since you have consistently shown an unwillingness to ever take positive criticism to anything said on this board and possibly apply it to your games. Now I do realize that you will make a very long post trying to justify how great things are in Illinois and that you hobnob with bigdogs.

[QUOTE]

If it is a travel, you call a travel? If it is out of bounds you call it out of bounds? So what you are telling me, is that if an official misses a travel, you go to the other end or do not call a travel if it took place under the rules? So I throw out the rulebook in order to be "consistent" with my partner? So I guess when my partner is totally wrong in making a call, I have to strive to be equally as wrong? Interesting, I have not heard that before.

Considering that I am a veteran, I do not spend my time telling other veterans how to call the game and they certainly do not spend that kind of time an energy doing that with me. Not expected by our assignors at the college nor HS levels. Not expected by our fellow officials. If you cannot be consistent, you will not be there. Consistency starts with you. It is called trusting your partner.

Peace

Pregame does help us get on the same page and focus in on
what we're about to do. But IMO you're making a mistake
by not paying attention to what your partner is calling
and not calling. There's nothing wrong with getting
together during timeouts and going over things like how
the game is progressing, how well we're sticking to our
game plan discussed in pregame or even how we should adjust
from our plan, go over calls/no calls that were not so
routine, where trouble might be brewing, general court
coverage, etc etc. Kinda hard to do this if you're not
paying attention to your partner.

By and large, that should be the bottom line. Call what you see.

In terms of fouls, you have to call what you see, you can't make up for your partners mistakes. I think what people are talking about when they talk about consistency are more along the lines of violations. Are you both going to call hand checks, are you both going to call the offense for using their forearm to guard the ball, are you both going to call the carry the same way? Those types of things need to be consistant or you are putting teams at a very big disadvantage by not letting them know what they can and cannot do.

The only foul situation that I would see needs consistency would be the charge or player control fouls. There are still some refs out there that won't call a charge or pcf under the basket, some will. That is something that needs to be consistant so player know where they can set up to get that call. They shouldn't have to look back to see which ref is back before they set up.

Hmmmmm :confused:

In terms of fouls, you have to call what you see, you can't make up for your partners mistakes. I think what people are talking about when they talk about consistency are more along the lines of violations. Are you both going to call hand checks, are you both going to call the offense for using their forearm to guard the ball, are you both going to call the carry the same way? Those types of things need to be consistant or you are putting teams at a very big disadvantage by not letting them know what they can and cannot do.

The only foul situation that I would see needs consistency would be the charge or player control fouls. There are still some refs out there that won't call a charge or pcf under the basket, some will. That is something that needs to be consistant so player know where they can set up to get that call. They shouldn't have to look back to see which ref is back before they set up.

I don't think that clarifies what you said in your previous post :)

Chuck

Along with my refereeing I'm also playing in a 4-team Juvenile (16-17 yrs) house league that's just a step above pickup. Our league is not exactly high-priority when it comes to getting refs so usually I'll ref the game I'm not playing in, with a teammate, and the game I play in will be reffed by an older but inexperienced official and another high-school kid that's had a couple years of experience or an experienced ref that's also a coach and the same high-school kid. The first crew usually refrains from blowing the whistle unless there is a painfully obvious foul. The second crew is dominated by the experienced official who will call the game tightly. While the league is not particularly serious the talent level is quite high (most partcipants play high school ball at either varsity or JV level) and the competetive juices get flowing. We can adjust to either style of play with little complaint, the only problems occur when there's a crash under one basket with no call from the young official and then a little bump is penalized at the other end or an obvious travel is ignored at one end and a little pivot foot slide gets called at the other end. Consistency does matter. The game is for the players, they expect and deserve some consistency especially with respect to violations. If you polled 100 players, I would be willing to bet that 95% would care more about consistency and less about the relative tightness or looseness of the calls. That should be the only opinion that matters.

You have me a little confused (which some say is easy to do). You say
Are you saying these are not fouls. I think those are two examples of fouls you have to get right and be consistent.

yeah...I messed up the terminology on those. My bad. I was thinking of traveling and cary's and those types of things and those two popped into my head as things I've seen problems with.

[Edited by gsf23 on Nov 13th, 2002 at 08:54 AM]