mbcrowder wroteAgain, I'm an official in other sports, but not basketball. I have to ask, though, how this is possible (assuming we're not in a running clock game).
Either the foul happened before the buzzer, thus leaving SOME time on the clock... or it didn't, thus there was no foul.
Human reaction time, to be blunt. 🙂
There's the reaction time of the person running the clock. Then there's the reaction time of the non-calling officials hearing the whistle then looking at the clock.
Even if we know there was a short time lag, if we don't see how much time to put back on the clock, by rule we can't guess.
Also, as has been pointed out, 99% of the time, there will be a lag between the actual foul and the whistle. The contact/foul could happen with a second remaining. The whistle could blow with .2 second remaining. The timer's reaction time takes .2 second, and so does the off-ball official's.
In NFHS, we don't get to use video replays for this.