Hi Guys (and gals),

First off, let me say THANK YOU for sharing your expertise with the world. I am a first year high school official and I have been "leaning" on this site to answer many questions as I learn much more about a sport that I have loved to compete in for years and thought that I knew "in and out", but am learning that I have a long, long way to go. Anyway, I experienced my first scrimmage recently and had the following situation arrise:

Player A-1 completes throw-in to player A-2. Player A-1 waits for about 5 seconds to come back inbounds (designed play?). My partner called a Technical Foul and stated that the thrower must enter the court immediately following the pass. After discussion at our chapter meeting this week, the feeling was that this was not a violation. Comments??

RR

By rule, a player may not delay his return to the court after being legally out of bounds (like, making a throw-in). See 10-3-4. I think that most of the time, I would not call a technical here unless I felt that the delay was intentional in order to gain an advantage. An example would be if A1 inbounded the ball and then ran all the way down the endline OOB before coming inbounds to receive a pass.

Technically, your partner was right, but I would be very slow to call it unless something else happened that you left out of the story.

Chuck

By the way, <font color = red size = +4>Welcome!!</font>

Our 8th grade coach has an inbounds play where the inbounder delays momentarily while the ball is swung to the top of the key. He then releases to the baseline, the ball is reversed to him, and he puts up a 3. The delay works because attention is directed to the ball. Never thought about that being a violation. Never been called, though. Its a pretty short delay - maybe a second.