Recap, Saturday, March 4, 2006
This one was interesting, really interesting ...When I met with my partner at his house, I learned that we would have an evaluator at our game, or a referee coach as they call'em nowadays.
We arrived at the game site early enough to have a coffee and a little snack with our coach ... then we proceeded to the locker room where we changed, had a loooong pre-game, and a short warm-up.
The game started with the gym almost full. First call was an offensive foul (moving screen) against the visiting team. A good way to start things (we had played about 20 seconds, so far) ;-) We continued to call it that way: travel on one side, then the same move on the other side. These Americans need to adjust to the FIBA rules ;-) 3 calls in less than a minute tells you a bit about the game and how ready we were! So far, no problem ...
But then ... I wish I could take that one back ... actually, I did! But that didn't solve the problem it just created an entirely different game. Are you confused now? So was everybody in the gym.
Here is what happened:
Visitors on offense, wide-open center catches a pass 5 feet from the basket with no defender close enough to challenge the layup. Yet, somehow he is surprised enough to travel ... good call from my partner who is lead in this situation. I turn around to get in position as new lead, before the home team inbounds the ball from the baseline. As I pass the scorers table (getting closer to the home bench) home coach stands in front of his bench yelling something in Serbo-Croatian (his native language) in my direction, and flails his arms like a windmill .... Whack! There is a T. In the same moment I realize something is wrong here. My partner just made a call against the visiting team, his defense didn't click (probably a rotation was missed by someone), but they have the ball now .... What the hell am I doing here? I blow the whistle again. Signal that it was my fault. Take the call back. Of course, this brings coach B to his feet, immediately. He asks for an explanation, to use a euphemistic description ... I give him a polite answer, taking responsibility for a very bad call, and taking this call back. ... He's not happy, not at all. Sais I can't do that, and that he has never seen a referee take back a T ... I think I completely lost his respect in this moment. But ok, I would have to deal with it.
Now, I had to make sure, that I could leave it as it was, and continue to call the game the way it's supposed to be called. I had to climb out of that hole that I just digged for myself ... I used a lot of self talk to focus on the things that were going on on the court after that incident. It helped to get through it, even though I didn't feel too excited about it. I knew I was back when I called an unsportsmanlike foul on a player from the home team, who gave an opposing player a big hug to prevent him from passing the ball for a breakaway layup. After the game my partner and the referee coach told me that they could only tell from the expression on my face how I felt, not from the calls I made.
We had 4 more (!) technical fouls during the game, 2 for players expressing a feeling of being robbed by the referees (visiting team), and 2 in one situation for players who tried to tell each other face-to-face how they felt about such pressing matters as family, religion, ethnical background ...
I forgot to mention that both teams played ball, too. Home won by 20-something points.
Wrap-up
- Good start, strong finish, and very good team work with my partner. Our coach, who is a veteran referee with 30 years of experiemce on the highest level, was very happy. He just asked about my feelings and gave me a good advice how to avoid such situations in the future. He said we had good control throughout the game.
- Very bad decision to call the T on coach A, but good thing to take it back. I would do it again (Please comment on that, everybody!!!)
- It seems I was able to refocuse pretty fast. That's good, but I have to tell you the truth, I didn't feel like it for 10 minutes (until that unsportsmalike foul), not at all.
- I learned a lot tonight, with the most important lesson to wait just a splitsecond before calling a T. It shouldn't be a reflex ... I'll try to just stop for a moment and then make a decision.
posted by BBallRef @ 3/05/2006 10:39:00 AM
2 Comments:
Yes, I would have taken back the T.
99% of the time, if the coach is hollering at you, he is also looking at you. I would imagine that this coach's windmill-arm hollering was at his team and not at you, so I would imagine that he wasn't looking at you.
Sounds like you got back into the game pretty quickly. Work for a patient whistle on a T and move along.
I chose American players for the sole reason that many of them seem to have trouble adjusting to the FIBA rules on travelling. Most teams over here employ Americans, most of them for a role as a team leader. Obviously, not many countries (if any) are home an equally large number of talented basketball players!
Anyways, I find it kind of interesting that there are problems adjusting to the travelling rules, because I can't remember NCAA rules being so different here, and most certainly most of these players have never seen NBA playing time, probably not even an NBA training camp.
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