Unusual situation
 

I am a first year official and had an unusual situation happen in a game Friday. Both teams were coming out of a timeout. As we come out of the timeout, we count 10 players (5 from each team) on the court and deem the ball ready for play. At that time, a player from the blue team sits down on the bench.

The ball was handed to the white team (W1) and inbounded to his teammate (W2). As this point, the blue coach realizes he only has four players on the court and screams for a timeout. The timeout is not rewarded and the game continues. The white team attempts a shot and misses, but they get the rebound and start their offense over again. At this point, the blue coach grabs a player (B5) and sends B5 into the game on defense without checking in at the table.

The game was stopped, and the other official I was working with deemed it an "illegal substitution" and assessed the blue team a technical foul. Is this the correct call?

If all five players don't come onto the court after a timeout, you can inbound the ball to the white team and five guys can rush onto the court for defense without anything being called. Shouldn't the illegal substitution only be called had B5 gone in during the offensive possession?

White team was given two technical foul free throws and also given possession of the ball while the blue coach still maintained he had done no wrong.

Any clarification?

Was B5 one of the ten players on the court when you started?

B5 had already entered game earlier. B5 was not one of the original 5 on the court coming out of time-out, but had entered the game earlier.

If you recognized this before the ball was handed to W, then you should fix it then.

Otherwise, see 10.1.9 (and compare it to 10.3.2).

Then this was called correctly. B5 is not in the game... he can't just rush in. And you can't make a substitution by having one of your 5 sit, and then sending someone else into the game.

If B5 had been one of the 5 on the court (i.e. HE was the one who erroneously left the court and sat down), and they weren't (in the referee's opinion) doing this to gain an advantage or trick the other team - they should have simply played on.

Which is a terrible ruling from the NFHS. :(

Why?

I agree with you, even if I think that starting with a number other than 10 is really something that shouldn't happen.

How am I supposed to know if a random player coming off the bench is a player that was in the game or not in the game at that particular time?

And there's no way that a scorer is going to be on the ball to know the difference. If a player comes in and it seems to meet this criteria, I'm not stopping play -- they might just get away with one.

This isn't hockey.

Rich pointed out how this will normally cause confusion as most scorers don't keep track of which five are currently in the game.

Okay, I'll buy that.

A Line Change ...
 

10.1.9 SITUATION: Following a charged time-out Team B is still with their
coach on the sideline when the official sounds the whistle to indicate play will
resume. Four players of B return to the court just in time to play defense as A1
attempts an unsuccessful three-pointer. B1 rebounds and throws a long pass to
B5 who enters the court just in time to catch the pass. RULING: A technical foul
is immediately charged to Team B for failing to have all players return to the court
at approximately the same time following a time-out or intermission. While it is
true the entire team may be off the court while the procedure is being used, once
a team responds, all players must enter the court at approximately the same time.

10.3.2 SITUATION B: After a lengthy substitution process involving multiple
substitutions for both Team A and Team B, A5 goes to the bench and remains
there, mistakenly believing he/she has been replaced. The ball is put in play even
though Team A has only four players on the court. Team A is bringing the ball into
A’s frontcourt when the coach of Team A realizes they have only four players. The
coach yells for A5 to return and he/she sprints directly onto the court and catches
up with the play. RULING: No technical foul is charged to A5. A5’s return to
the court was not deceitful, nor did it provide A5 an unfair positioning advantage
on the court.

The OP is a mix of the two situations, if B5 had been one of the five playing prior to the timeout (or had reported prior to the first horn).

Since the OP involved a sub who had not reported running onto the court, it's a technical foul. No different than if, during the course of play no where near a timeout, B5 had just decided to sit down because he was tired of the coach's (or the officials') BS and the coach proceeded to send B6 into the game.

Had a similar situation last year. Team A only had 5 players. At one point during play, the coach from team A took one player aside sat her down and was instructing her. We let play go on. She came back in after the next whistle. A little while later the same girl drove to the basket, got fouled and sprained her ankle real bad--she had to be taken out of the game. Since there were no subs to come in to shoot the ft's who do you suppose, by rule, gets to shoot those free throws?

He doesn't get to do this (stringency may be determined by game level).

I'll bet the opposing coach wanted to pick.

Why can he not do this?