Opening Tipoff went wrong way

[crosscountry55]

Yup. APG's case play is spot on. Soooooo...the officials should have recognized that they allowed the teams to line up the wrong way after the first basket by Team 2. So stop the game there, give the points to Team 2, and then march all the way to the other end of the court and give Team 1 an endline throw-in under Team 1's basket.

Instead, the officials essentially failed to acknowledge that they had erred, stating that Team 2 erred by scoring at the opponent's basket and crediting the points to Team 1. And they compounded the problem by giving the ball right back to Team 2 under Team 2's basket.

I guess it's sorta good that they eventually agreed to the option of re-starting the game, even though technically they should not have done so (there's no rule provision for this). It meant they recognized that they had messed up to begin the game by lining up the teams the wrong way. But this error should have been corrected immediately upon recognition after that first Team 2 basket; that would have saved a lot of additional embarrassment.

But the crew shouldn't feel too bad. A Karl Hess crew messed up this same rule at a game at Marquette a few years ago.