Best finish this year, thus far
 

JVB on Saturday night, small schools. The home team only had six players, and it was rather clear that at least two were swinging down. It was easily the most athletic JV game I've had this year, and it was played on a college court. (The home team's gym just does middle school games. They rent a community college court for high school.)

Close game all the way. Home team leads mostly, but the visitors fight hard and tie it up several times.

Tie game in the last 30 seconds. V gets an open shot that is off the mark, H chases down the rebound. I start to move from T to L (2 man), Coach H requests time out. Five seconds left. Coach asks for throw-in location(please don't ask to advance it, I'm thinking), and partner indicates the sideline spot (opposite side), about 12 feet from the backcourt endline.

After the time out, players are spread out on the big court, including H-24 and V-32 about 10 feet from the frontcourt endline, opposite side. I take the L spot at the B position on the endline. Throw-in goes from H-1 to H-2 in the backcourt, H-24 gets open and receives the long pass. He starts his drive and gathers just as V-32 tries to defend, but gets to the spot a bit late. V-32 tries to oversell by doing a flying pirouette. Tweet, block, 0.5 seconds left.

H-24 hits the first free throw, then intentionally misses perfectly with the line drive free throw that hits the rim and goes right to V-1, but time expires quickly before their time-out request.

Truth be told, had V-32 not tried to sell any contact, it's hard to say whether I'd have a foul at all. I believe his oversell backfired. Could I have gone with a flop? Maybe, but this is one case where a block is just as effective.

Sorry Mark
 

So far, I've had two OT's and a 2 OT.

My best = last Tues when a girl hit a three with 1.6 secs left in regulation. They had come back from ten down in the last three minutes. Gym went crazy..... or, at least half of it. :(

Good fun.

:confused:

At the risk of revealing my approximate age, can you help me understand what this means? You already said it was a boys' game, so I'm completely perplexed . . .

Just as effective for what? I'm confused by that statement. Sounds like you are saying there really wasn't a foul. :confused:

My guess is that since it was a JVB game, 2 players "swinging down" is meaning 2 varsity players playing down to the JV team.

Old Dogs, New Lingo
 

Oh, OK. I get that.

Just when I, learning all this "texting" stuff with the new phone I just got and all the abbreviations people use (had to Google "lol" and "lmao" to find out what that meant), realize I've gotta catch up on the ol' basketball officiating lingo a little as well. :o

I'm young and I don't even definitively know what it means. That was just my best shot based on context and it seemed semi-reasonable.

Right. "Swinging up/down" is a term we use for a player that appears on both varsity and JV rosters, typically starting JV games and riding the bench with the varsity. I guess that term is more local that I had thought. My apologies to Freddy and others for not being clear.

Sorry if I confused here, too. We've had a few discussions here about calling a block in lieu of T-ing the flop. Some here say they do that, while I've gone on the record as being dead set against that.

This time, the defender clearly got to his spot late and caused contact. As soon as the defender made himself airborne, my focus got away from the contact itself, and my thoughts were something to the effect of, "don't insult me with that sell job." Did I call the flop? No, but considering I got the block, and the home team got their free throws in a tie game with a half second left, I'd say the penalty was still facilitated effectively.

This sounds a bit like the 8th-grade girls game I had last week. Visitors were losing 8-0 midway through the THIRD quarter. Then tied 8-8 with two minutes left in game. Home gets a bucket with a minute left to go up 10-8. The last chance for visitors was after a timeout with 11 seconds left. After a loose ball it squirts out to the visitors' point guard who drills a 25-footer--nothing but net at the horn. I don't think that either team made a shot outside three feet the entire game until then.