bad deal

[Ralph Stubenthal]

Just got home from a Class 1A boys game that decided second place in district. Here in South Texas both the 1st and 2nd place teams go on to the playoffs. The home team won by 2 points clinching 2nd place. The problem was that with just over a minute to play, while setting up to shoot a 1 and 1 at the visitor's end, the visiting coach calls us over to the table. The board showed it was the 7th foul. They had just discovered at the table that it was actually the 8th foul. The ball had been thrown in after the previous (6th but actually 7th) foul and then gone dead on an OOB, and then been thrown in again at which time the present foul came up. After much discussion, we finally convinced the coach that it was no longer correctable even though it was a table mistake. It was a real shame for a game of this caliber to be possibly decided by this type of thing. It was the third time this season that these 2 teams had met and all 3 games had been 2 point games. I'm sure that the visiting coach will be filing a report to TASO complaining about the table officials and I'm wondering if I maybe should file an incident report as well to make sure that they know my side of the story. I just wish that we had gone over to the table when the board said 6 fouls and asked them to double check the book count. The next close game of this significance I do, I will.

[ace]

Yeah - you were right- It was no longer a correctable error. I wouldnt worry about filing a report to TASO because there was no incident. The table is just as much of an official we are on the court. We make mistakes and they make mistakes. I think the home team (if they supplied the bookkeeper) should be tunred into TASO and taken care of there. I wouldnt worry about it too much. If u get a call from ur chapter just explain what happened.

[canuckrefguy]

Don't file a report. You handled the situation correctly.

"Don't trust the table" is one of the more memorable comments I heard from a clinician at a camp I went to three years ago. He didn't mean that you shouldn't trust the table, but that in the end, we have to have a handle on cruicial things like the bonus situation.

I always make a habit of occasionally going to the table during a TO, and visually confirming the count for myself, just to be sure. But this isn't always possible. We also have to be able to expect that when we ask the table "how many fouls" and they say "six", that they are correct.

Not knocking your table crew. Just bad luck all the way around. Mistakes happen, this one just happened to have bigger-than-usual consequences. Too bad.