Only four players

[zm1283]

Had a GV game the other night that went about as smoothly as a game can go for about 31 minutes....then...

V leads 50-40 and has a throw-in in the backcourt on the endline after a made basket by the H team. The V team gets the ball in, and their player immediately shoots in the wrong basket. H calls a timeout, now down eight. V has the ball again after the timeout (A 60-second timeout) with about 10-12 seconds left in the game. Both teams return to the court, my partner counts and gives me the all good, and V throws the ball in, advances it past the division line, and gets fouled with about four seconds left. At this point, H's coach is going nuts behind me (I was Trail). I turn around and he's flipping out because he only has four players on the court and he is insistent that he would have gotten a T if he sent the fifth player on the court. I tell him that as long as it isn't deceitful and gains an advantage, he could have sent his fifth player onto the court, and that it's up to him to get his team on the court after a timeout.

V shoots their two bonus free throws, H throws the ball in, and the game ends. H's coach tries to plead with me as we leave the court, but I just tell him the same thing again: that he could have sent the last girl on the court. We get in the locker room and he comes by after the game (Still debating whether or not I should have reported this part...I didn't yet because he was calm and wasn't making a scene) and tells us that the first horn for the timeout never went off during the last timeout. (The V team came back on the court before the horn, and the H team did as well, save for the "missing" girl who was standing in front of the bench talking to the coach. That's why we counted five players on the court for them) I tell him that 1) His players and V's players were on the court, so the timeout ended early, hence the reason for no horn, and 2) He could have sent the missing girl into the game without a technical (10.3.2b). His assistant comes and escorts him to the locker room as we tell him we're done talking, and that was the end of it.

I know it's a mess of a story, but would you guys have handled it any differently? Looking back, we shouldn't have even answered the door when he came by the locker room, but he wasn't raising his voice and was calm, so we did. I guess we could have counted players more closely coming out of the timeout, but his fifth player was standing right in front of the bench talking to him and he just wasn't paying attention that the rest of his team and the other team were ready to go. I gave a loud whistle before giving the ball to the thrower, so it isn't like he didn't hear that at the very least.