Foul without contact?

[bob jenkins]

Originally Posted by parrot

Just a layman with a question here;

In a state game this weekend, a girl from my daughter's team was guarding a ball handler from the other team. The girl drives and tries to jump stop, gathering the ball in front of her while in the air, then rams into our girl with the ball as she lands. It looked clearly to be player control to me, but was called a block. That's neither here nor there really though. My question concerns the fact that the ball acted as a buffer between the two players and there didn't appear to be any actual physical contact between the two players involved in the play;

SECTION 7 BLOCKING, CHARGING

ART. 1 . . . Blocking is illegal personal contact which impedes the progress of
an opponent with or without the ball.

I know it's a bit of a technicality, and you certainly can't have players running around using the ball as a weapon, but I'm just curious what the general view is on this. Do you have a foul if there is no player to player contact?

IF (and I wasn't there) the defender didn't give the offensive player a spot to land (and wasn't in the spot before the offensive player left the floor), and if the contact caused a disadvantage, then I'm likely to see the contact as occurring on the body and get a blocking foul, even if others see the contact as only with the ball.