Ok, well maybe we're not that far apart after all. I agree with what you've said above.

So, you must be a Cub fan too. ;) :p

+1

No, Phillies. And a Brewers 20-game plan holder. :D

And what's really funny to me is when I watch the D1 guys that I consider excellent officials, none of 'em seem to come in with the pre-conceived notions that I've been reading in the last few pages. They all seem to just call each play separately and individually on it's own merits without saying "Oh, he got the ball. That can't be a foul." If they feel the contact was illegal, they just call it. And the amazing part is they also call it before the ball goes in too, without worrying about "patient whistles", etc.


Novel idea, ain't it? :)

I believe in the patient whistle, but whether the ball goes in has no bearing whatsoever on whether I call a foul. The patient whistle, to me, has always meant that we don't anticipate calls. Let the play start, develop, finish, decide, call (or no call). I don't look at the ball going through the hoop and say, "Screw it, he scored anyway. Let's not stop the game with a pointless "and-one." And yet I have heard other officials say that they've had too many "and ones" whatever that means. I don't care if I have 0 or 10 as long as the foul called is one where the foul put the shooter at a disadvantage (which has nothing to do with the ball not going in the hole, IMO).

I certainly do think D1/NBA officials will see a clean, athletic block up top and will consider that as part of the decision making process, so I guess we'll have to disagree there. It's a great defensive play -- it doesn't give the player license to be out of control or flatten the shooter, but some contact on the way down isn't necessarily going to be a foul, either. We make fun of the NBA(E) all the time, but those guys are excellent play callers when it comes to fouls, IMO. YMMV.

Off to do a game.

Actually Rich my philosophy to call the game is pretty much the same in every game I work. I try not to worry too much about the talent of the players. I think that keeps me consistent when I work a small school game to a college game. Obviously the players do not handle contact the same, but the same philosophy applies to have a slow whistle and to call what needs to be called. And one of the reasons I stay away from girl's basketball as well. I cannot handle the crying for fouls when the defenders or the other players do nothing illegal. I had to give it up and stick with
Boy’s/men's basketball.

I was not taking it that way. Just stating what I do and what I have been doing for a long time. What others do is up to them.

I do not think you will ever get all officials to agree on anything. We all do not work the same kind of ball or the same type of athletes and certainly not at the high school level for sure. I think we should do what we feel is best and let those decide what works and if they like us they will hire us for bigger games. Not sure we can ever get everyone to call something a certain way when we are all not equally talented or have the same officiating backgrounds. It sounds great, but I still say it is impossible when there are thousands of officials that work games across a state or a region of the country.

Didn't we beat you this year? :p

I'm not a D1 guy you would see on TV. But I also do not have a pre-conceived notion. I said specifically on the NBA play that was posted that I have supervisors and observers who would not want that specific play called as a foul.

Whether they have pre-conceived notions or not, I have not see said play called a foul when there is a clean block in the conferences I watch. Again, I have seen fouls called when the block was not clean, but I have seen that play on SportsCenter many times not called a foul. So whatever you want to believe is up to you. But I go to camps where I have seen guys that we see on TV often and I know what they have said about plays that I have called when they are observing. No one here that disagrees with you as pulled this out of the air. ;)

Peace

I have...in every D1 conference I've watched. By the big dawgs too. And that includes your Chicago area big dawgs also btw.

The definition of a foul is illegal contact on an opponent. It doesn't say anywhere that the exact SAME illegal contact magically becomes legal if a defender touches the ball. If you think hammering an airborne shooter into the fifth row is always legal if the defender got the ball, hey, feel free to call it that way.

We've hit the usual logjam on this ever-recurring discussion. We just don't agree philosophically. :)

We all seem to be in agreement that as player skill increases, contact which would have been a foul at lower skill levels becomes incidental contact at the higher level.

I think what Rich is pointing out is it can take a while for officials to adjust their mindsets to what level of contact is incidental as they move higher skill level games. An official who routinely works small school ball is going to call a tighter game because small school players have a harder time playing through contact due to a generally lower skill level. If you take that official and put him in a big school game and he doesn't adjust his mindset, he's going to call fouls on contact that are incidental for that game but would not have been incidental in the games he usually works.

This is where having a patent whistle is important. Waiting to see if the contact puts the player off-balance or forces him to shoot awkwardly allows us to call fouls on contact that actually put the player at a disadvantage.

This is how I see it also. In one particularly brutal evaluation of one of my games by a college supervisor he said I was making "high school" calls. Basically that I was making calls on contact that college players can play through and that my veteran partners had been passing on.

This. Thanks for summing up (very well) what I was trying to say.

When you have to pick your *** up off of the floor, consider it a disadvantage.

Not if nothing illegal put you there. And round and round we go...