New Rules: Time to Upgrade NCAA Basketball

Fans, coaches and players have been looking for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Rules Committee to update the game rules for College basketball for some time now; that time has come.

NCAA Men’s Basketball Rules Committee met May 12-15 in Indianapolis and has been hard at work reviewing and approving rule change proposals.  According to the NCAA.com article on the subject their goal is to “significantly improve the pace of play, better balance offense with defense and reduce the physicality in the sport.”

The Chair of the committee is Rick Byrd who is also the men’s basketball coach at Belmont University. Rick stated, “We have spent the past year collecting data, opinions and considering proposals that will help our game. Our anticipation is that dedicated officiating enforcement, along with this package of changes, will help balance the offense and defense in our game.”

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On June 8th, via conference call, the recommendations must be approved by the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel.

Even though most of the discussion has been regarding reducing the shot clock down to 30 seconds or less, the committee was focussed on the physicality of play,  a major concern for coaches. The NCAA rules committee feels they have addressed this issue with an emphasis on perimeter defense and post play.

Here are the rule changes, via AZWildcat (@Wildcat_Country)

Rule change explanations and breakdown from via NCAA.com:

"Restricted-area arc: To continue the focus on reducing the number of collisions at the basket, the committee approved the expansion of the restricted area arc from the current 3 feet to 4 feet,"

"Pace of Play: With an eye on reducing inaction and improving pace of play, the committee approved several proposals. The most significant of the changes is to reduce the shot clock to 30 seconds. The shot clock period was last reduced for the 1993-94 season when the clock was reduced from 45 seconds to 35.The committee also voted to remove one team timeout in the second half and strictly focus on resuming play more quickly after a timeout, which would now include a delay of game warning when a team does not comply and a one-shot technical foul on subsequent violations."

"Faking Fouls: The committee discussed the growing issue of players attempting to draw fouls by deceiving officials."

"• Adjusting the media timeout procedures to allow a timeout called within 30 seconds of a break (e.g., 16:30) or at any time after the scheduled media timeout becomes the media timeout.• Removing the ability for a coach to call timeout when the ball is live.• Allowing only a total of 10 seconds to advance the ball to the front court (with a few exceptions).• Reducing the amount of time available to replace a disqualified player."

In my opinion the shot clock change should have been more drastic and closer to the NBA’s 24 second shot clock.  They basically split the difference of 11 seconds and settled on 30 seconds. I would have thought maybe 28 seconds would have helped the game even more.

On the rule about coming out of a huddle and getting punished if the teams don’t come back to the court fast enough, that screams “referee pet peeves.” One point for the referee’s, not sure how much this will change the game much but the reduction of one team timeout in the second half will definitely affect game strategy for coaches.

Other Rules being proposed:

Time will tell, hopefully we all will get used to the new rules and the game will be even more enjoyable that it already is, if that’s even possible.

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