How to Keep a Basketball Scorebook

A basketball scorebook tracks four things: the running score, each player's points and fouls, the team fouls in each period, and the timeouts each team has used. Under high school rules the official scorer keeps it at the table, and when the book and the scoreboard disagree, the book wins and the referees settle it (NFHS Rule 2-11). Keeping it well is not hard, but it is a job with a deadline, a symbol set, and three or four traps that catch every new table volunteer in the first quarter. This page walks through all of it, with a filled page and a one-page cheat sheet you can keep beside the book.

Both teams must have their roster and five starters in the official book at least 10 minutes before the scheduled start (NFHS 3-2-1 and 3-2-2). A late list, or a starter changed after that moment, is an administrative technical foul charged to the team, with a cap of one such foul per team no matter how many infractions follow (NFHS 10-1-1 and 10-1-2). The only free changes to a starter after the deadline are forced ones: an injury or illness, illegal equipment, or shooting a technical-foul free throw before the game (NFHS 3-2-2a).

As the scorer, the routine is short. Write the date, site, level, both team names, and the referees' names in the header. Enter the home team on the upper half of the page and the visitors on the lower half, in jersey-number order, with the starters marked (most books use an asterisk or a circled number). Confirm that every number in the book is a number you can see on a jersey: NFHS 3-4-3 allows only the digits 0 to 5, one or two digits, and a team may not list both 0 and 00. Then put your own name in the scorer box. The sheet coaches hand you to make this fast is the scorebook lineup sheet; it carries exactly the fields you need and nothing else.

Every book uses the same handful of marks. Write them the same way every time, because the person reading the book after the game may not be you.

The example above is the home team through halftime. Read it the way a referee would: Riley has 11 points (2, 2, 1, 1 in the first quarter and 2, 3 in the second) and two fouls; Lena's second foul is a technical, so it sits in her P2 box as a T and also put an X in the team-foul row; the running score crosses 22 with a bar for the end of the first quarter; the team-foul row hit five in the second quarter, which means the Comets shot two free throws on every common foul for the rest of that period.

Every time a team scores, slash the next unslashed number on that team's strip: a two-point basket crosses two numbers, a three crosses three, a free throw crosses one. At the end of each period draw a bar after the last slashed number and copy the period total into the score-by-period box. Then, at every stoppage, read the last slashed number against the scoreboard. If the two disagree, raise it with the nearest official at the next dead ball rather than quietly "fixing" the book; the referee corrects the scoreboard to match the book, not the other way round.

The drift that bites most tables comes from doing the player column first and the running strip second. Do the strip first, because the strip is what the referee asks for; the player column can be caught up during the next free throw.

A personal foul gets an X in the player's next P box and an X in the team's period row. At the fourth personal, tell the coach and the nearest official; at the fifth, the player is disqualified and the official will want to know immediately. A technical foul on a player gets a T in the next P box and counts toward the team total; a technical charged to the coach or bench adds a team foul but no personal foul, so note it in the margin.

The bonus is where the rule sets diverge, and it is the one thing the scorer must announce without being asked.

High school dropped the one-and-one a few seasons ago and moved to the quarter reset, so if you learned the book under the old rules, the two things to relearn are that the count starts over every quarter and that the fifth foul sends the shooter to the line for two. Tell the official when a team reaches four, so nobody is surprised at five.

High school teams get three 60-second and two 30-second timeouts per game, plus one extra 60-second timeout for each overtime period; unused timeouts carry into overtime (NFHS 5-11). Mark each one in the team's timeout box with the period it was used in, and tell the coach when a team is down to one. The possession arrow belongs to the scorer's table too: set it toward the team that did not control the opening tip, and flip it every time it is used for a held ball or a period start.