It’s Missouri, no one cares.

This has been making the rounds for a couple of days on the four or five officiating Facebook discussion boards I frequent. Quite crass. Rule 10-4-6f ascribes a player technical foul for "...knowingly attempting a free throw...to which the player was not entitled." Of course, the official has to know this is being done. There's a lot of things going on after a foul is called and most just trust the right player is going to be going to the line, like happens 9999 out of 10000 times. Only two area coaches have pulled this, and both times we suckered for it. One is the boys' coach of a team that rhymes with redacted and the other a girls' of a team that rhymes with redacted


It's typically pregamed that the partners of the calling official vocalize "I've got your shooter" while the calling official goes to report.

The free-throw shooter is gamesmanship.

The jersey-changing is just flat-out cheating.

Both flat out cheating. Both trying to get one over on the ref. One of them just goes to an extreme.

Is the free throw switch really unheard of? We'd try that frequently as long as the better shooter was close to the foul. That shooter would go to the line "assuming" the foul was against him.

It would work from time to time.

If the ref can't keep the number of the guy that got fouled straight, that's on the ref. No different than taking advantage of a ref making a bad call.

It is a lot different. If a ref makes a bad call, that is 100% his call and it is out of the coaches hands. On the other hand, if ref makes a call and the coach or players purposely tries to deceive him by sneaking the wrong player to the line, that is an attempt at cheating, no matter how hard you try to deflect it by saying "the ref should be paying better attention". The refs do the best they can to keep it all straight despite all the distractions, and to have coaches and players purposely trying to take advantage of these distractions to gain an advantage is certainly an attempt at cheating.