Substitution question for an Official.

[deputydog]

Say a team starts a game with five(5) players and one of the players gets in foul trouble. The Coach takes the player out for a quarter to keep them from fouling out. Can this be done? Can you take a player out of the game with no one to sub in for him? I know that you have to start a game with five(5) players but you can finish with however many you have left, but I'm not sure about the substitution rules? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[paintwatcher]

The only rule in this is that you have to start with 5. After that you are free to substitute as you wish. Hope this helps.

[deputydog]

Thanks for the response paintwatcher. So you are saying that you can take a player out even if you have no one to put in for them? And then put them back into the game at a later time?

[BigReno]

Yes, you can play with four, but not three. I saw in happen in a TSSAA girls game. Three girls fouled out and they had to play with four. However, when another girl fouled out, the officials stopped the game and said that you could play with four on the court, but not three.

[paintwatcher]

Yes you can take a player out, play with four, and then put them back in. Now as for what Big Reno is taking about I'm not sure. I have refereed for a while now but never been faced with that rule. I was under the impression that you can play with 1 as long as u started with 5. It is possible that the referees stopped the game in that situation for another reason. But as I said before I'm not sure.

[pistachio]

I believe you can continue with only one player if the officials think the game can still be desided. Makes it pretty hard to inbound the ball, but after you pass it to the other team you better play good defense.

[dabookie]

Say a team starts a game with five(5) players and one of the players gets in foul trouble. The Coach takes the player out for a quarter to keep them from fouling out. Can this be done? Can you take a player out of the game with no one to sub in for him? I know that you have to start a game with five(5) players but you can finish with however many you have left, but I'm not sure about the substitution rules? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Ruling: This is not permissible. The team must have five players participating as long as it has that number available. Rule 3.1.1

Edited March 9, 2004 by dabookie

[mkhhawk]

TSSAA may have different rules than NAIA. I once played in a college game in which 8 of our 10 available players fouled out. The game continued. We were told that we would have to forfeit if we only had 1 player left. I'll never forget our coach during a timeout when we were down to 4 players. He looked at us and said, "I guess we need to play a 2-2 zone". That was reduced to a 2-1 zone soon thereafter. The other team showed good sportsmanship in only using the same amount of players as we had available; with the other players just standing near center court while they were on offense. Oh. in case you were wondering, we did lose the game.

[Port_Vol]

I've been told that as long as two players are remaining you can play.

 

You can't play with one, as you can't inbound the ball to yourself

[pistachio]

Rule 3; Section 1; Article 1 ... Each team consist of five players, one of whom is the captain. Note: A team must begin the game with five players, but if a team has no substitutes to replace disqualified or injured players, it must continue with fewer than five. When there is only one player participating for a team, the team shall forfeit the game, unless the referee believes that team has an opportunity to win the game.

[supervisor]

The key statement here is there must be five on floor IF players are avilable.

Your situation has a player that has not fouled out, but coach only wants to save the other foul. As rule 3.1.1 states this is not allowed.

The player with the fouls is still eligible to play.