technical foul question

[bballrefinks]

Hey all, been on the forum for a while but haven't posted in a very long time, been having a lot of personal issues (depression, anxiety, injuries, health) just starting to get back into posting on forums and what not.

Had an interesting play in a middle school game the other night. key player on visiting team, with 4 fouls, penetrates hard to the basket. As he is going up, a defender is coming his way to try and block the shot. Offensive player clearly extends his arm to push the defensive player back and hold him off. I call the offensive foul. His 5th foul, he is out of the game. The play happened in the second half, so his coach has a good look at it, has no problem with the call.

Here's where things get testy. As I am walking to the table to report the offensive foul, the young man proceeds to tell me in no uncertain terms how lousy he thinks the call was. TWEET! technical foul. Partner and I get together and talk about it, and can't agree on how to enforce it. The situation is that the disqualification had not been reported to the coach and a sub was not at the table. According to the book, the player does not become bench personnel until either, a sub enters the game, or the disqualification is reported to the coach. So technically the player can't be bench personnel. What we ended up doing is just charging the technical foul directly to the player, which actually gave him 6 personal fouls. Is that right? I have studied the book and just can't seem to come up with a logical answer to the question.

My partner and I both agree that the answer has to be so obvious we will kick ourselves once we get the correct answer. So, thoughts? opinions?