how many fouls is too many?
 

I did a JV game and in the first half we called 42 fouls. 5th year officiating for both me and my partner. Both teams were pressing hard. Lots of arm barring, hand checking, reaching. I was banging them everytime to send a message. Lost of displacement and redirecting by defenders with body hands, elbow forearms.

At half time my partner was saying that some of those fouls should be let go because the offensive player would of not lost the ball or would of gone pass the defender.

There were some officials in the locker room getting ready for the varsity game after and was telling us that we called way too many fouls. The guy said he was counting them. It seems the discussion was like let things go, calling to many fouls extends the game etc. Needless to say, 2nd half not that much pressing.

Maybe I am over thinking this but I get on the floor and if it is a long game I am there to call it no matter how many fouls or how long. I read somewhere in the NHFS rule book, that we are suppose to call the game regardless of score or situation in the game. After each game I work, I wont to come out of it that I call the perfect game.

very hard to say without actually being there, although it does seem like a lot

Sometimes games can be a train wreck. As officials, you call what you see. The players should adjust to how you call the game - that is, if they want to continue to play in the game. If the D is too tight and players continue to press, play D right up against the offense, or continue to trap and reach, etc., there may be problems.

I did a GV game a few yrs back where one team was in the bonus ~ 4:00 into the the 1st qtr. It happens. :(

That being said, there's nothing wrong with asking yourself the question. Every game is a live and learn opportunity. Would you do anything different if you could?

Keep control...
 

Can't remember whose motto "What you permit, you promote" is, but it is accurate. When we allow too much (whatever that is) physical play, that can lead to much worse than a "long game".

Some times there are situations when the offensive player is driving by the defender and he is bumped/pushed/hand checked or whatever, BUT the player continues his drive to the basket and scores. If you called a foul on a play like that (before he began his shooting motion), then you are effectively helping the defender and penalizing the offense.

The same thing can happen on a fast break, where you could ignor a little defensive contact if the offensive player can continue down the court and score.

I seriously hope that you didnt use the term "reaching" while doing that game.

First of all pay no attention to those varsity guys. They are worried about one thing and one thing only...their game starting on time and you are holding them up. You partner I would pay more attention to but only to a point, was he sincere or did it seem like you we're keeping him from beer:30?

Without being there we can't have a opinion that means anything but in and of itself the numbers don't mean anything. If the players aren't adjusting so be it. Sounds like they did for the second half.

What you need to recollect is was RSBQ affected? Were your calls matching your partners? (From your post this is the only thing I would question, but at the same time maybe he wasn't calling enough). Only you can answer that.

I would say get a mentor that you trust and have him give you an opinion

I join those who say "had to be there."
Had an early season game with two very aggressive teams a while back. We called 41 total and were criticized by some over that. Went to the video and learned something valuable.
11 "no-calls" which one from one team or the other could argue they'd have wanted a foul on any of those particular plays.
11 "light fouls" some might argue were merely incidental contact and shouldn't have been called.
I don't know that those two stats wash each other out.
Our crew assessed that "keeping it under control" between two very aggressive teams led to the "light fouls", but we agreed upon review that more judicious use of a slower whistle on the part of all of us could've curbed those fouls we could maybe have passed on.
All of this intends to lead up to this question: do you have tape you could review? I know JV doesn't usually do video, which is too bad, because valuable lessons one way or the other come from review.
One such lesson is the analysis of whether there were a lot of whistles on incidental contact.
Still, had to be there.

Without video who knows what you should have done. I do know younger officials feel like they need to blow the whistle every time there is some level of contact. That being said I have been in games where I had to call many more fouls than you would think is needed, but if we did not call those fouls we will have more problems.

There is no one-size-fits-all standard. At some point the players should adjust and if they don't, they will not be in the game anymore.

Peace

Two things that caught my eye.

You said you were calling fouls to send a message. Don't make a habit of that. Call the fouls to be sure but don't whistle contact just to send a message.

That brings me to the second point that caught my attention, your partner indicating there were some plays where you called a foul as the offense was getting around. Possession itself isn't a good indicator, but if the dribbler is getting around the defender, you possibly don't have a foul.

Your mention of "reaching" is another possible issue.

Just food for thought.

Maroon,
A few thoughts:
1. HTBT is clearly true, BUT...
2. I think your partner had a good point in terms of "letting kids try to play through some things."
3. If you call the "perfect game", it will be the first.
4. #3 can be your BIGGEST enemy. EXPERIENCE will allow you to make a decision as to whether the "contact=a foul or contact is incidental and not a foul".
5. You indicated you were "sending a message, every time". Was the message being received?

As a previous poster asked, is there anything you could have done differently?

The game of basketball can be very difficult to officiate. As officials, we have to keep the game safe for the players. At the same time, we want the players to feel that they were playing the game of basketball and not a free throw competition. Sometimes, the players act as though they would really prefer a free throw competition. Did you call too many fouls? Without seeing the game, I cannot say for sure. At the same time, there are some questions you can ask yourself that can make you a better referee. As a fifth year official, you are experienced, but you will continue to get better over time -- if you are willing to review your performance after each game and make adjustments when (and only when) needed.

Good luck!!!

I will only say this:

I can't remember a single JV game I've watched in the last two years where I thought the officials didn't call enough fouls.

I can think of a few where the crew was calling as many as my partners and I would've called.

In all other occasions, there just wasn't good judgment on advantage/disadvantage, IMO, and the end result is more fouls than is needed to manage the game. Unfortunately, the coaches at the lower levels tend to get used to the game being called that way and expect it, too.

I'm another in the "had to be there" camp but sometimes it happens. I had a GV game two years ago where we shot 80 FTs (!!!) and six girls fouled out. However, when I thought about it on the way home I didn't think we called anything that didn't need to be called since the girls were playing aggresively to the point of being rough. If kids were being displaced then you and your partner had to do something and it appears the players eventualy figured things out.

I agree with the "don't pay attention to the varsity guys" comment. They're concerned with getting home and they probably did the same thing when they were JV officials. If they gave you some feedback other than they were counting fouls then by all means listen. Telling you they were counting the fouls - which you and your partner could've done if you really wanted to - isn't constructive.

I also agree with the earlier comment: don't call fouls to "send a message." You're already sending a message when you call a foul: what that player did put his/her opponent at a disadvantage not intended by the rules.

All this being said, your partner had a point. Remember, even though these were JV players they're still in high school which means there's a certain amount of contact they should be able to deal with. You call the obvious of course, but you'll learn there are times you can let the play work itself out. Maybe A1 gets bumped a little out top but plays through it at gets to the hoop and scores. Play continues, A's coach is happy because his team got the two points and you've set a standard regarding what kind of contact will be allowed.

I agree with this, too. We just want to get started on time so we can be off the floor by the time the JV guys are getting in bed. The post-game beer doesn't drink itself. ;)

Doesn't matter what we think anyway -- once the JV guys start calling fouls for merely breathing on the opponent, we get up and go to the locker room to slowly get dressed.

(Usually accompanied by one of us turning to the other(s) and saying, "I've seen enough of this (crap).")

:D :D :D

Game Interrupter ???
 

Lots of good reasons to pass on some fouls. This (above) is not one of them.

...are you serious?

...if so, let me know how that works out for you?

There, all better now.

42 in a half seems like a lot, but without seeing the game I can't say for sure it is too many.

Things to consider:

- It is your job to call the game and manage the game not decide how it is played or send "messages". If there is llegal contact that is more then incidental and leading to adv/disadv. situation you call the foul. Don't worry about how teams are playing or "cleaning it up" just call the fouls you see.

- If both teams are pressing, both teams are probably experienced and capable of playing through pressure. In a JV game you might have some disparate levels of size and athleticism but if both teams are playing this hard, then they may have the capability to play through the contact you are finding excessive in a JV game. Be patient and call the game and play that is infront of you.

- Officiate the defense but don't hold them responsible for everything that happens. If a defender is putting his hands in and on/ forearms in and on the the offense doesn't like the contact so they stop or change their direction, that is very different (imo) then the offense getting directed or moved off their path by hands/forearms. The ball handler also has no expectation of time and space so there will be some contact and maintaining of space by both that will be required as the game moves on. If it is not clearly hurting the ball carriers ability to perform their current action or is not rough play you don't have to call that just because you don't like the action.

- We are not the arbitors of what is and is not good defense. You get to determine if it is legal or illegal and if there are fouls taking place. Just because positionally they do different things, or they have more active hands then we were coached or like to see doesn't make it wrong. You just have to call the game in front of you.

The only real issue I have is with "I was banging them every time to send a message". If they were fouls, they were fouls. (And based on what some of the others here said, maybe they weren't). No need for a motive. Call what you see.

I started this thread at about this time last year and we had a good little discussion. You may find it useful.

http://forum.officiating.com/basketb...eter-play.html

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.)

I don't disagree. Just saying I have a bigger issue with the admitted existence of a motive for calling the fouls.

I don't know about other locations, but I don't believe we play 8 minute quarters at JV levels here (could be wrong though, been a while). Which, of course makes your point even more!

Quick questions for maroons...

Of those 42 fouls in the first half, how many did you call? How many did your partner call? Was it 50-50 or close to that? Or more like you called 30+ and he only had about 10 or so?

Just trying to find out a little more info on the "message" you were sending...

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.

Didn't think of that -- we're about half and half. Thrills me when a school plays 7 minute quarters -- it's the only way the V game starts on time!

At 7 minute quarters, it's a foul every 20 seconds on the button.

And never forget that getting the V game started on time is all we care about.

Right?

Right???:D

There are few people that appreciate a 7:30PM game starting at 8:02PM.

Parents? Nope.

Coaches? Nope.

Support staff? Nope.

Officials? Nope.

Radio/TV? Certainly not.

So let's stop talking about starting on time as if it's some kind of evil. It behooves everyone to stay on schedule, when possible.

I watch a lot of JV basketball and sometimes the thing that's missing is PACE. Officials don't hustle during dead balls, don't start play promptly, dawdle during substitutions and free throws. And they call 42 fouls in a half.

We're scheduled for 7:15 tip tonight. These extra-special early tips never start before the usual start time of 7:30PM. But we need to show 15 minutes earlier anyway, just in case. Sigh.

Honestly, that's on the schools. Schedule accordingly.

Not always. If a school starts a JV game with 7 minute quarters at 5:50PM, there's no reason a V game can't start by 7:30PM. Sometimes, the officials *can* help keep things moving.

Tonight? I agree. The 7:15PM listed time is a joke. I'll find out what time the JV game was scheduled for and report back tomorrow. Wouldn't shock me if it was 5:45PM or even 6PM. You can't put any of that on the officials, especially since there's a minimum of 20 minutes between the JV and varsity games.

But if history is consistent....

Last year I worked a F/JV DH, three OTs between them, plus it was senior night. 7:30 V didn't start til close to 9.

Most times, the V games start on time around here, though, and the JV games are 8 min quarters scheduled 90 minutes prior to V tip.

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.

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! :(

This is bad advice.

Do varsity officials want to start on time? Of course. But to say that is the ONLY motivation for their comments is a bad assumption.

My association takes evaluations of JV officials pretty seriously. Most of us make a concerted effort to give constructive feedback.

As far as the OP I think you should consider a few things:

42 fouls in one half of basketball is not "a lot" of fouls its is a RIDICULOUSLY high amount. Hard to imagine even in the most physical of contests at the JV level that that many fouls was warranted.

Your partner AND the varsity officials watching ALL thought you had too many whistles. Maybe you were right and they were all wrong but I've usually found that when it's me vs three, four other people maybe I should reconsider my position.

You said you were "banging them every time to send a message." What message are you trying to send? You called a enough fouls to put both teams in the double bonus TWICE. If they don't get the message when the other team is shooting two FTs for every foul then again, what message are you trying to send.

Basketball is a contact sport. There is going to be some level of contact. You have to get some of the things you mentioned but you can also allow players to play through some contact if it's not advantageous.

Calling fouls when someone breaths on someone else isn't exclusive to JV officials. There are plenty of varsity officials that do the same.

At what level do you think it is more prevalent?

Here the order of "eliteness" is BV, GV, BJV, GJV. So as a general rule of thumb your BV games are going to have the top crew for any particular set of games.

I remember one day waiting to do my BV game watching the GV crew loligag for an entire game. Not getting teams out of huddles, taking forever to get them lined up for free throws, talking to each other during an injury stoppage and not realizing the injured player had been long ago removed from the court, etc. This was after their game started late b/c they BOTH got the start time wrong (even though the GV games had a standard start time and both officials were veterans).

I'm not denying that it's more prevalent at the lower levels. Around here we don't have separate JV/V officials. The schools play doubleheaders and we work both games. You'll occasionally get a varsity game by itself because one of the teams doesn't have enough players for a JV game, but otherwise we work two games. We have separate freshmen games, and I'm sure that is where it is more prevalent in my area.

DHs for public school games are rare around here. Usually just done for single-A (smallest schools). So most times we have a crew waiting on another crew to finish up.

This thread has turned in to a "bash on other crews" thread for some reason...every single one of us posting on this forum has had games where we didn't do a very good job. Let's quit b!tching about other crews and find something that we can learn from from our own games.

Example: had a GV game two weeks ago where we were shooting double bonus both ways with 1:23 to go in the FIRST quarter. At the end of the quarter we got together and we certainly did not discuss whether the boys game was going to start on time or not. We talked about the fact that we really could not pass on these calls. They literally were playing rugby out there. Rest of the game went smoothly because the players adapted and stopped being stupid.

Boys game started about 20 minutes late. But since we were doing the doubleheader that night we really didn't care that much. We were able to keep that first game under control and nothing stupid happened.

That I doubt, but the point is well taken.

It's not our responsibility to make sure the next game starts on time. Someone is always going to razz you if your game runs long, but that could just be camaraderie. Any official worth his salt will not blame you for doing your job correctly.

42 1st half fouls!!!
 

Way too much. This doesn't even allow players to absorb contact and see if they can play through it. Based on the key words: reaching, handchecking, and arm bars - it sounds like these were all on ball calls. Players were not getting a chance to be players.

At some point the crew needs to let them play.

Last Friday night--BV. We had to have called 50 fouls. Nobody was adapting at all. Coaches were yelling at their teams for poor defense.

Saturday afternoon--BV--Same officials. First foul called 5 minutes into the game.

I think how the teams want to play will dictate to us how many fouls to call. Play rough and out of control--the scorer will be busy writing down fouls. Play better--less fouls.

To clarify, you don't mean handchecking is never a foul, do you?

Why do people type 'literally' when they literally don't mean literally? It's like they need a word for emphasis and just pick one at random - choosing one that means the opposite of what they mean.

Pet peeve? Yes.

"Literally" is used to tell the reader that the seemingly impossible thing I'm about to say is not meant metaphorically and is not exaggeration ... but is, in fact, EXACTLY true, believe it or not.

They were not, LITERALLY, playing rugby out there.

of course not

If you had seen the three scrums and several of the cross body blocks we had, you would have used the word literally also.

Take a deep breath and get off that soapbox...

Or should I say "Sit down and be quiet?":)

You're going to have to T me up if you want me to sit down OR be quiet.

(And I promise, I would NOT have used the word literally to mean figuratively! :) )

Maybe they really were trying to play rugby and that is why there were so many fouls????

Gig 'Em, Aggies.:)

Curious....with 42 fouls in the first half, how many players were DQ'd for having five fouls?

Whack, get out!

BV tonight. Remembering this thread:

(1) We started at exactly 7:30PM. The JV game started late (visitors arrived late) and we technically started 15 minutes after the 7:15PM posted start time. I considered it a victory.

(2) The JV officials called fewer fouls than I would've. I said that never happened and so now I'm a liar. They called 2 the entire third quarter and there was a pretty good hack that they no called I hope I would've gotten. IIRC, they never got close to the bonus either half. Then again, there wasn't a whole lotta defense going on.

(3) The first foul I called tonight was not the strongest call I've made this season. Player caught the ball in the post, got bumped from behind and stepped forward to balance himself with what became a non-pivot foot. Slower whistle, I could've (and should've easily) passed. Probably.

Still, nice game tonight and one of the players passed the 1000 point threshold with his 20th point early in the fourth quarter.

Visiting coach used a line I had to Google -- the fouls were 10 to 2 (visiting team jacking up threes and playing very aggressive defense, not well). Coach said, "Where's Doyle Brunson, it's 10-2!" Now, I know who Doyle Brunson is, but had no clue his favorite hand to play is 10-2. Coach got me, I guess. I think he was joking around a bit...maybe.

I've known JV/Sophomore/Prelim officials to brag about not calling a lot of fouls. It just depends on how is working and why they are there.

Peace

For the record, it is not his "favorite" hand, but rather one that he famously played once that worked out very well for him in the WSOP (or it's precursor)

Funny you should say that. I called a girls JV game last night, not a lot of fouls or offense for that matter. Final was 25-13, but we got done at 6:38.

The varsity officials told us they appreciated that because it meant the game was going to start on time and they also didn't have to rush what they were doing and they also got a chance to offer some feedback for us as opposed to having to run on the floor for the start of their game.

Picky, picky lately. :D

motive
 

only motive that the contact was illegal.

Which was only questioned because of your expressed motive "to send a message." Combined with the reference to "reaching," and it understandably drew questions. Let me ask this:

Did the dribblers play through it without being affected?