How to proceed with possible book error?
 

During 4th quarter after a foul on h11 the v team questioned how many fouls h11 had. V book has 4 official book has 3. The R is sure he has 4 and together we can remember calling 4 on him. How do you precede?

The home team's book is the official book. So unless the home scorer admits to having it wrong, or you have definite knowledge that he is wrong, then that's what you should go with.

You have definite knowledge that he has four fouls, you tell the official scorer to correct the error. If you don't have definite knowledge, you go with the official scorer.

If the scorer doesn't want to do that, either have the scorer replaced or make the visiting book the official book.

I agree with this.

But, how do you simply add a foul to his count? What if they mistakenly marked a foul of his on a teammate? If it happens in the second half, how do you know when the foul was missed?

That's where having two books can help.

Also if a running audit of the fouls is kept on the bottom go thru that to try and find the missing foul.Sometimes a scorer may record the jersey # on the bottom line but forget to mark it in the personal foul column.

And look for someone else with a different number of fouls "in the other direction" -- if the officials know H11 has 4, then H1 or H12 or H21 has one foul "too many" and it can be switched.

What do you do if you can not pinpoint anyone who has an "extra" foul? Do you just add one to H11 and not worry about where the extra foul went? I would think then you can not add another to the team fouls because they should be correct.

I would probably argue that knowing the player who the "extra" foul was on should be required for definite knowledge but I guess I could be persuaded that adding a team foul without putting it on a player could be ok under some circumstances.

Not knowing that information would make it a hard sell, but if the officials have definite knowledge of the fouls that they called on a particular player, I could go along with adjusting the book to give that player the appropriate foul count and marking one of the other team fouls as unknown or miscellaneous.

If you know he has 4, he has 4. Either update the home book, or switch the official book to the visitors.

At this point, I'm doing a full "audit" with the visitors' book, and I have more confidence in their book. I'm going to check not only the other players' foul totals, but the team fouls. It's possible that the scorer just didn't add a foul, so the team fouls may have been wrong in the first or second half.

If it comes to it, I have no problem adding a player foul and not doing anything else. Accurate player foul counts are important here.

I make it a habit after the 3rd quarter to have each book check for any players in foul trouble (3 or 4 fouls) and make sure they are in agreement.

I don't keep a running total of who has what number of fouls in my head. If the discrepancy can't be figured out between the two books, I'm going with whatever the home book has

I don't keep a running total, but I look at the scoreboard after every foul and I have noticed discrepancies based on my memory of recent plays.