Last year one of my columns dealt with this subject. I suggested in my opinion that in Western Maine it is called like Basketbrawl, In Central Maine it is called like Bullyball, in Eastern Maine and Downeast Maine it is called by the Rule Book..Rule 10-6-1 (advantage-disadvantage). . In Aroostook County it is called Really, Really by the Rule Book.
I noticed today on MBR Basketball Posts On, Report the Scores for January 21 column about how the officiaiting in the Ellsworth at Caribou game where it was stated that Caribou shot 53 foul shots and Ellsworth shot 40 foul shots.
Evidently the game was called very tight.
There was alot of complaining on Ellsworth’s posts and alot of defending by Caribou posters.
The game is called differently in all 5 of the Boards. It is no different now then it was when I played in High School and College or when I coached in High School for 29 years. The game is called differently and that is the real problem.
However, when coaches are playing out of their Board’s areas they should expect and anticipate the situation and have a game plan to counter and adapt to the officiaiting. When my teams played out of our Boards area we played at 3 different speeds depending how the whistle was being blown and how fouls were called.
We went 1. slow, 2. very slow and 3. very damn slow depending on how the game was being called as far as rule 10-6-1 was concerned.
The slower the game pace the easier it is for the officials to call the game and the faster it is the harder it is to call.
You can’t blame officiating, teams (players and coaches) have to adjust and we had great success playing in the “County” by playing very damn slow, thus we were able to control the tempo of the game and it made it much easier for the officials to call the game…You can control officials calls by the pace and tempo of the game.
The real question is why is the officiating different as far as rule 10-6-1 is concerned in the 5 different Board Areas?
However, Just my opinion.