how many fouls is too many?

[Moosie74]

Originally Posted by Rich

42 in a half is a lot of fouls. I'm not saying it's too many in this instance, but *others that were there did*.

(42 in 16 minutes means a foul every 22.85 seconds. That's a lot of fouls.)

My partner and I called a boys JV game the other night and called 22 fouls the entire night.

We had the rough stuff, the hand checking and all that, once there were a couple of calls for each offense, the players figured it out and stopped.

The players will adjust to the officials style if you let them but there has to be a consistency established for that to happen.

As a second year official I very rarely feel that I have passed on too many calls in a game.

You need to find a balance in your game and in your ability to judge what is a foul, what is contact and what is really going to affect the game. The players and coaches don't want to spend the game shooting foul shots.

Using Rich's numbers at 1 every 22 seconds, you're essentially calling a foul every other trip down the floor.

I think I can safely say part of the reason we officiate is that we do it for fun, blowing the whistle every other trip down the floor is not fun for us and it is especially not fun for the people involved.

[bainsey]

Originally Posted by Moosie74

The players will adjust to the officials style if you let them but there has to be a consistency established for that to happen.

I've heard for years, "Call the fouls; the players will adapt."

However, this isn't always the case.

I had a JVG last Friday night that had about 50 fouls. It wasn't really an overly aggressive game. It was what I call "players trying to play above their level." Consequently, there's a fair amount of bumping, handchecking, and simply unnecessarily advantageous contact. What's more, the girls weren't learning from the calls. They just kept going at the same pace, and it was working for the home team, who won 46-22 (even though three home players fouled out).

Cut to Monday afternoon, MS girls. These players learned. One example was a first-quarter rebounding displacement foul I called. The girl looked at her coach and said, "but I was boxing out!" (Sound familiar?) I didn't have a displacement foul on that team the rest of the game. In fact, the contact cleaned up so much, we didn't have a bonus situation until overtime, and it was a well-played game for that level, so I enjoyed the extra frame.

Oh, the only time I see 7 minute quarters here is in middle school. About half of middle schools do 8 minute quarters. All HS levels here do 8 minutes.

[grunewar]

Continuing with the hijack.....

I've had several games this season already with an announced starting time of 7:45 - which pushes us even later than normal of course.

The other night I had a great 2 x OT thriller!

Of course, getting home at 1015 (with a wake-up call of 0400) is NOT so great!