Shooting at wrong basket.
 

Following a timeout in a 5th grade girls game. Girls were quite skilled by the way. Yellow has possession of the ball under the basekt at the far end line. Black coachs yell for them to be in 3-2 defense. Black sets up their defense in the back court but I believe they thought they were in the front court. I at first thought they were pressing as they had been the whole game. As I hand the ball to yellow for the throw in, black's coach yells for them to get back into 3-2. They turn and head the other way. Yellow then passes the ball in and shoots at the wrong basket. While the flight is in the air everyone is yelling "wrong basket." The only two who don't relize this are the shooter and the teammate who passed the ball in. The first shot is missed and the teammate who passed the ball in gets the "rebound" and sticks it back in. These two head down the floor now. As they ran away I whistled the play dead and instucted them it was still yellow's ball and instucted the table to give 2 pts to black.

Question: Should have I blown the play dead or should I have began a 5 second count on the yellow team since it was still their ball? What if the play had been higher level? I know that doesn't really matter according to the rules but in the spirt of the game perhaps it does?

Why should you have blown it dead? You said the players were highly skilled.

I don't understand this question.

No reason to blow it dead until and unless they commit a backcourt violation. And yes, you should be counting... although I'm not sure why FIVE is the number you chose. 8 or 10 depending on which ruleset your 5th graders are using. Most likely 10.

I believe he means "5" second throw in count after the made points at wrong basket. Is that right?

Correct, once yellow made the basket they ran down the floor to join the other 8 players thinking they were going to be playing defense.

The reason I blown it dead was that there was no one there to inbounds the ball and with it being a younger level I wanted to help them out. I later questioned that since there is no rule backing this up.

Highly skilled is relative to their age level.

I don't know that I should have. I felt it was best to get everyone back on the same page as it was younger kids. Perhaps I should have just counted the five second violation.

I would do it as you did.

Ah. Now I see what you are saying. I'm not sure I'd be real quick on beginning the 2nd throw in count here. My first priority would be glancing over at the table to make sure they scored the basket for the correct team. (If not, you could stop things right there and fix it). If so - with 5th graders, at this point I'd be rather vocal. You said that SOME people were saying wrong way - hopefully a coach was one of them. Something like "Yellow throw in, right here" trying to get the coach's attention might be enough.

If not, yeah, I guess you have to start a new 5-second count.

The very first "wrong basket" play I ever had was a long time ago with a pretty good partner - the "wrong team" was even defending the play - and my on-the-ball partner had a 10-second count going that he may have rushed a bit - which expired before a shot was made. So luckily, all we had was a 10-second backcourt violation and not a basket.

At this age level I would have done the same.

Me too. They paid the price for dumb play, now fix it and go on with the game.

Anytime players successfully shoot it in the wrong basket, the play should be blown dead and the scorer instructed to count the points for the "team" who's basket the shot was scored in. They play will resume with an throwin anywhere along the endline for the team who didn't score.

I was just about to type something similar.

50 shades...
 

Also, do not give ball back to "yellow"...give it to "gold":)

Rabble Rouser ...
 

Pot stirrer.

I see where you are going with this. Why do some officials not want to say the colors that have more than one syllable? Is it just due to the ease of saying the word or is there some other reason? I come from a school which has purple as one of their colors so maybe that is why it doesn't bother me. Although we were called blue much more than purple.