What's the correct call
 

Watching my son's Varsity game last night .... Our player has the ball just above the key and the defensive player is attempting to tie up the ball. Our player pivots and swings his arms/elbows through unbelivably fast, but does not create contact. The official called a technical foul on him .

My question(s) are:

1. I believe the correct call would be a violation due to excessive swinging of the elbows (if the official believed that occurred) from my vantage point it wasn't b/c he swung through as he was pivoting. Am I correct ?

2) What is the call if he had made contact with the defensive player ?

3) My real concern was for the defensive player, if he had been hit with this motion it really would have caused injury , is there anything we as officials can do ?

Thanks

1. Correct

2. Player control unless the official believed it to be INT or Flagrant.

3. Officials blow the whistle AFTER illegal contact occurs.

If he thought the player was excessively swinging his elbows (without contact), then it would be a violation rather than a T

Player control foul, intentional foul, or flagrant foul though realistically, you'd probably gonna have at the least an intentional foul for excessive contact.

If it's an isolated instance, then no...if you call it the first time it happens, it hopefully curtails the chances of it happening again.

Sounds like it should have been a violation, because no contact was made. Calling a T is a previous ruling.

If illegal contact was made, I see a PC foul. If I suspected anything else, INT and flagrant are possible.

Thanks for the reply,

I called another official this morning and explained it to him and asked what he thought. He responded that if the elbow was above the shoulder then he would call an intentional. I told him that it didn't matter the location but he disagreed. So I told him I was going to come here .

Thanks again

Not a problem, an elbow above the shoulder is the NCAA ruling.

That's (sort of) the NCAA rule.

Note that the violation is for swinging the elbows faster than the torso. If it's an entire pivot (and the elbows stay in the same relative spot to the torso), then it's no violation, and can only be a foul (if contact is made).

I Went To A Fight And A Basketball Game Broke Out ...
 

It's a stretch, but can't a hard swinging, but no contact, elbow be construed as a "punch that misses" in a fight that might break out, thus the noncontact technical foul? Again, it's a stretch, but I'm trying to figure out why there was a technical foul in this live ball, noncontact, situation. Or, maybe there were some "bad" words exchanged between the players, like some kind of taunt?

I'm not sure, but wasn't the noncontact excessive elbow swing a technical foul (NFHS) several years ago? Hasn't this changed back and forth a few times (violation, technical foul, violation)? Now, where are my house keys?

I was sitting behind our bench (unbelievably small gym) and heard our coach ask why it was a technical .. the response was " it was flagrant swinging of his elbow coach ".

Well then someone's getting ejected (sorry, disqualified) in your scenario. No one was ejected in the OP's play.

What is the violation? "Excessive swinging of the arms"? So this would be just like a traveling violation?

Correct ... if no contact was made.

Excessive swinging of the elbows...ball is awarded to the offended team at the OOB spot closest to where the violation occurred. If this occurs, while a try is in flight, by the team who shot the ball, the ball becomes dead and no basket can be scored.

If it was flagrant (e.g., an attempt to strike the opponent), then the player should have been disqualified.

The official in your play is using old rules and incorrect terminology.

Well, At Least I Gave It A Shot ...
 

Good point AllPurposeGamer.

Was He BillyMac ???
 

Bingo. Was he bald, or did he have gray hair? Was he using a noose lanyard, and wearing a belt? Was he Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.?

Billy:

You are correct that it could be judged a non-contact FTF. I had such a call in the 1994 AAU Girls' 18U Nationals in Cleveland, Ohio. A1 got the ball in the high post with her back to the basket and B1 defender her from behind. A1 pivots a little bit to her left (enough to see where B1 was) and then swung her left elbow directly for B1's head. B1 saw the elbow coming and pulled back just in time to avoid being slammed in the face with A1's elbow. If A1's elbow had made contact with B1's face, B1 would have gone down for the count.

A1's coach didn't like the call, the two Army assistant coaches who were there scouting A1 didn't like the call, and the Official Scorer (who was on the Colgate Univ. men's team at the time) didn't like the call. The smart aleck from Colgate went so far as to tell me that if I disqualified A1 he wouldn't record it in the book. The Site Manager instantly became the new Official Scorer.

MTD, Sr.

It was not me; I wear beltless pants. LOL

And I think it was a stupid mistake when the NFHS did make excessive swinging of the elbows a TF when no contact was made. Why? We had officials not calling it when it was a violation (I was not one of the spineless officials.) but the NFHS logic at the time was to make it a TF insuring that nobody would call it.

I will admit that once it became a TF, whenever I had such a situation I had a PCF; with apologies to Lou Costello: "I was a baaad boy." LOL

One time a girls' H.S. varsity HC complained that there was no contact; I told her I could correct call to a TF, to which she replied: "Great call."

But I did make the TF call just once in a girls H.S. varsity game: A1 was about 6'-00" and she got a defensive rebound and started swinging away while B1 (5'-06") tried to guard her. It was obvious that there was no contact but A1's actions where a casebook example of the infraction and I really had no choice but to charge her with a TF. And yes, her HC came close to getting one too, LOL.

MTD, Sr.

So he made the incorrect call and used incorrect terminology to explain the incorrect call.

At least he was consistent.

Who Can Ask For Anything More ???
 

Isn't that what we all strive for as officials.