04/24/24
March 31, 2015
SportsFilter: The Tuesday Huddle:
A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.
The funny thing is I forgot to add a comment in my weekend round up of my visit to Columbus for the NCAA tournament saying that in the middle of the second game on the first day, I had the epiphany of noticing that nobody on the lineup cards for any of the 8 teams had a 6/7/8/9 in their digits (after frantically scanning the program to confirm it). I made the assumption that it was for the hand signals, and I'm glad I was right.
What the article doesn't mention is that a team can have a "0" or a "00" on their roster, but not both.
posted by grum@work at 09:51 PM on March 31, 2015
It's an idiotic rule. On occasion I worked on a flight line testing one or another aircraft system. Often we were working with engines turning and no access to any communication with the pilot in the cockpit. We usually had to relay numbers for switch settings. The way we communicated single digit numbers from 6 - 9 was to hold up 5 fingers on one hand, place the other hand in front with the first knuckles even with the heel of the rear hand, and hold up the required number of fingers to add to the number required. It was a system that was well understood by all. The other part of this was always to flash the digits one at a time. For example, the number 17 would be flashed by first holding up a single finger and then holding up the 5 and 2 digits using both hands as described above. Do you think that NCAA referees and scorekeepers might be able to figure out such a system?
posted by Howard_T at 11:07 PM on March 31, 2015
Back in the day (but not as far back as Howard), in Australia we played under the international basketball rules. They used to state the team could only have numbers between 4-15. I played at school and on weekends, and also managed to qualify as a referee.
The singlet number rules were absolutely to do with referee hand signals (one point/free throw, two points/free throws, three seconds in the key). No three pointers in those days. Double digit numbers were signaled with a closed fist (ten) plus the remaining numbers on the other hand.
When Australian TV finally showed NBA games sometime in the mid to late 70s, we were very confused. For a whole lot of reasons.
posted by owlhouse at 01:10 AM on April 01, 2015
NCAA uniform rules - numb, number, numbest.