max number of timeouts

[Stat-Man]

Originally Posted by AremRed

All I know is they need to reduce the number of timeouts for 3rd grade girls games. I did one today (6 minute quarters) that took an hour and 10 minutes. Each coach called all five of their timeouts and the teams were notoriously slow getting out of timeouts needing a mid-court matchup each time and then the throw-in team ran the opposite direction of their throw-in and then had to be called back to their throw-in spot. The final score of this barn-burner? 10-8.

/rant

I think that's par for the course at this level. I had a CYO JV Girls #3 game (4th graders with possibly a couple of third graders) this afternoon. The visiting coach thought she got 3 full and 1 partial time out per half until my partner and I corrected her.

For the first couple of timeouts, the teams were slow to come out. Thankfully, though, they got better as the game progressed. Our game went scoreless until there were 4 1/2 minutes left in the 4th quarter. The final score: 2-1.

Our game took about an hour; it might still be going if we called everything the officials in the stands wanted called.

To stay on topic, I've never been aware of any cap on timeouts since I first became involved with basketball in the mid-80s. In fact, I remember a CYO game from about 2004 (before I officiated) where the game went into double OT and the home coach had yet to call a timeout, leaving her with 7--5 fulls and 2 partials--to use at her discretion.