Playoff brawl (Video)
 

Had a pretty serious incident involving one of the local teams here.

Epps High School Player gets Assaulted by Plainview Fans during Playoff Game 02/27/2014 - YouTube

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The serious part is at the end of the video, after the 3:00 mark.

Couple of newspaper accounts:

http://www.thetowntalk.com/article/2...tory-over-Epps

http://www.thetowntalk.com/article/2...l-playoff-game

Unfortunate that the fan (woman in white/green) had to get up and start causing trouble with the visiting team's player.

Seemed like the game was going just fine until that (or at least it seemed so from the video). The girl that stepped out of bounds may have caught a hand across the face just after she stepped out but it was not intentional...and wasn't a foul since the ball has just become dead due to the OOB call. That stuff is going to happen. It is part of the game.

Can't seem much else after that since people are in the way and the video ends.

Shame on that woman for causing this mess.

While the fan is clearly the main culprit from what I see the player is not squeaky clean either. She accelerates the situation by sticking her hand in the woman's face. The hand get's slapped away and then it's on. I had two questions. First, as you say, based on the reaction of the player on the last possession, she was struck in the face. Did this occur before or after she stepped out of bounds? Second, do we penalize a player for becoming involved in an altercation with a fan when the fan is clearly the initial aggressor? The player didn't even have to retreat. If she had just waited a couple of seconds and kept her hands to herself, the official was already stepping in and calling for help, presumably from police or game management.

Naturally, some will blame the officials. One of the articles said something about the fans blaming the officials for "allowing the game to get out of hand."

And a couple of the youtube commenters agreed that the official should not have allowed the fan to approach the player.

wow

The only thing - by rule - you could consider getting the player for is 10-3-6b (Using profane or inappropriate language or obscene gestures) but I think that would be a stretch and this comes from someone dealing with a "no tolerance" rule regarding profanity in his public school games. There's nothing in the rule book covering player interactions with fans.

I agree the player could've walked away but the hand came up because the "fan" tried to get in her face or might even have said something. If I'm assessing blame I'm going 95/5 in favor of the fan.

To echo Camron, the game didn't look out of hand from what we can see. The team that was more aggressive - and trailing - picked up lots of fouls. Not unusual. Everything goes into the toilet when the knucklehead gets up and confronts a player. I'd like to see the entire game to find out whether the "fan" had been a problem child earlier on. Regardless, I'm not getting involved with a fan if I can help it. That's game management's headache.

If you really want to start throwing people under the bus, how about those who scheduled a state 1/4 in that gym and on top of it allowed people to sit in the front row knowing the tight confines.

From what I can see in the video, I'm tossing the fan and nothing to the player.

I'm not faulting the player for defending herself.

Really? What do you propose. A game in a stadium with barbed wire around the court :rolleyes:

A bigger gym?

But that appears to be the higher seed's homecourt.

From the news article: "All of the fans were forced to leave by local authorities, but the game’s officials did not assess any technical fouls or eject any players, despite the fact that punches were thrown and several Epps players left the bench to participate in the brawl."

So many questions pop into my head if I think about what I would have done:
- I want to say I'd have been noting jersey numbers for all players fighting and leaving bench. Given that it was instigated by the crowd, I think in conferencing I'd be open to not issuing Ts or ejections, but would be hard to convince me.
- After the gym is cleared, what is the discussion like on whether or not to continue the game/T's/ejections?
- It took 10 minutes to get it under control. Wearing stripes makes you a target from some knucklehead. Do you stay in the gym when the stands are emptying for a brawl?

Given the accounts, it seems this crew did about as well as they could. I commend them.

I pray none of us ever has to deal with this in any of our games!

The players could be called "cagers". Oh, wait.

Why not?

I mean if we're going to start blaming people other than parties involved like the officials. I was being halfway facetious in my OP, but then again I've seen a lot worse arguments for a lawsuit than this.

I don't know how Louisiana does things but in Missouri and I' sure most states the venues go to progressively larger neutral sites as their state tourney goes deeper. This wasn't some district/regional play-in game. This was a state 1/4 final, winner goes to state final four. In MO even in lowly district play, if a host schools rotation comes up and doesn't have enough accommodations, they could be force to go to a different site. The state hosts games at big high schools and small colleges for state tourney play beyond districts and before the final four.

A (weak) argument could be made that the state was negligent in hosting a game in an inadequate venue. A (weak) argument could be made that game management did not do due diligence and did not created a proper buffer zone with the font row.

At first, I thought this was a college game based on the officials reporting mechanics. But, I'm with you, this venue is a cracker box - a powder keg waiting to blow. There isn't any room for anyone to even breathe in that place.

Conditions were ripe for what happened, imo.

A hypothetical question: Is there any action by a player directed towards a fan that would warrant a T or ejection? I'm thinking a player spitting on a fan or threatening a fan.

It's really the same situation as the Marcus Smart scenario. I'm sure 2-3 could be invoked and an official could come up with something but in this case I wouldn't simply because it was the fan who started it. If anything I'd be more likely to ring up the home team for not controlling the crowd.

I called a T on the kid last month in a BV game for responding to the crowd but that's because he dropped an F-bomb, meaning he violated NYC public schools' "no tolerance" rule for profanity (plus he yelled said F-bomb to the opposite side of the gym while he was sitting on the bench...with two minutes left in a tie game). If he didn't swear I would've told his coach to tell him to keep his mouth shut.