Situational Officiating
 

Girls JV.. Rivalry game. With 26.9 left in game, and game is tied at 30. A1 dribbling up the sideline and B1 makes body contact with her 5 feet past midcourt line.

I come in hard with a block call and sell it. 1 and 1 and A1 makes front end and missed 2nd. A up 1 and ends up winning the game 31-30!

D2 official was observing said with the game tied late in game, you need to keep the situation in mind before making the block call.

Her Advice: Pass on the call and let game be decided in OT

Comments please.....

How did you judge similar contact earlier in the game? If you passed on it earlier then your observer was likely correct. If you called similar contact a foul earlier than good for you for being consistent.

She probably has about 2 years of experience. :D

I don't buy that nonsense, regardless of who it comes from. If it's a foul early, it's a foul late. And vice versa.

Would the crew have made this call mid-third quarter? If so, it's a foul at the end of the game.

Or, possibly the point was that this contact could easily be ignored at any time, but since the call was made in this situation where the resulting free throw provided the winning margin, the questionable call is even more questionable.

As Rich & Billy said: if you and your partner hadn't made a call like that the entire game, under 30 seconds in a tie game wasn't the time to do it. If you had - and since it was a girls' JV game my guess is it probably came up a time or two - then you did what you needed to do. If it was a foul 30 seconds into the game, it's a foul with 30 seconds left in the game.

I officiate college basketball as well (D3) and I understand what the person who observed you is saying but only to a point. In my conference we're told the same thing I wrote earlier: call your game. If we're consistent then our assignor will back us up.

Sometimes It's A Chess Game At The End ...
 

Good advice. Possible exceptions are those late game intentional unintentional fouls, or unintentional intentional fouls.

If that contact was called earlier in the game, then it's a foul now as well. If it wasn't called earlier on, then pass on it now as well.

You mentioned "sell it". Why did you feel that you needed to sell this call? Was it close? Was it a situation not called yet in this game?

If you determined that there was sufficient contact to cause dribbler to lose balance, lose the ball, you made the right call. Defense has to know when to back off. Im saying good call.

:eek:

Did B coach say anything? i.e. "That wasn't a foul in the first quarter?"

Lots of things besides OT can happen in 26.9 seconds.

Can you be more specific about what you mean by body contact? Did the dribbler lose her balance or was she hindered in any way because of the contact? Or did she continue to dribble past the contact without any problems?

Felony or misdemeanor? If it's a felony, that's easy...you made the right call regardless of the observer's opinion. If it's a misdemeanor...she may have a point, but the others here that have mentioned consistency have very valid points too.

I'm not a big fan of "passing" on anything in the last minutes of a close game. Making those tough calls are the reason we get a paycheck.

Calling fouls and being an official is usually a thankless job. The association wants stuff called one way, the coaches another, the fans want you to 'let them play' until someone leaves the floor on a stretcher. The theme here is consistency and some people (fans, coaches) might understand the crew on Friday night is going to be different than the crew seen on Tuesday night and that they will have differing philosophies on what they will call and when. What it boils down to me though is being able to make the tough call in such a situation. Not offering excuses but in a one point loss, people might remember the close call late in the game but how many free throws were missed by the losing team? How many layups? Did someone mouth off and earn a T that gave the winning team the margin of victory? Those are all part of the game, not just one single solitary call towards the end.

+1

I touched on this recently. One of the biggest myths (and the biggest in my book) is, "you don't make that call at that point in the game." This sounds like the advice Rook was given, and I think it's wrong.

I've been taught that time and score do not affect the way we call games, ever. (Okay, maybe middle school games with 30-point margins.) The game is decided by the totality of the score, never by one late call (despite our memory capacities).

While that may be mostly true (I don't agree with it being the biggest myth), it doesn't mean the call was correct - we'd need to see video to know if he should have made that call or not. The advice, however, was horrible. If the observer had said something to the affect of he shouldn't have made the call because it didn't disadvantage the dribbler, that I could understand.

I think it's better let the game be decided in regulation than OT. If the foul occured with :30 seconds left the other team had plenty of time and opporutnity to score and in the game in regulation. The game was decided by the fact that THEY couldn't get it done, not because YOU blew a whistle with 30 seconds to go.