Pac-12: Western Consortium Basketball Officiating needs help
The referees officiating the Arizona vs. Gonzaga game did not seem familiar with the new alterations to rules for the 2016 season made by the Western Consortium. Or they just plain ignored them.
Contrary to popular opinion, there is no such thing as Pac-12 referees. Nope, the Pac-12 basketball games are officiated by the Western Consortium organization of officiating.
What is the Western Consortium you ask?
The Western Consortium is a pool of referee’s who officiate games for six Division 1 conferences in the West. This last summer, the Big Sky Conference joined the Western Officiating Consortium.
- Pac-12
- Big Sky
- Western Athletic Conference (WAC)
- Mountain West Conference (MWC)
- Mountain Athletic Conference (MAC)
- Western Coast Conference (WCC)
Arizona Wildcats
This season, 2017, is a non-rule year for the WC. That means that there were no rules added to the list this year. What they could do and did do, is to decide which ‘alterations’ they felt needed to be done to the existing rules.
The input for the new rules and alterations to rules comes from surveys, from officials, coordinators, coaches, through the agency, and through the media according to Coordinator of Men’s Basketball Officials Bobby Dibler.
In addition to that, one of the things they are currently doing in this ‘off year,’ is to think about the rule changes for the following season, which will be a year from now.
Dibler explained to the media on Pac-12 Media day 2015 that the “Rules Committee finally said, okay, we’ve got to take the physicality out of the game.”
What? Apparently, the physicality was not taken out of Arizona’s game with Gonzaga, right?
But we digress…
To take the physicality out of the game, the alterations must reduce: Hand checking, body bumping, post-play screening, defending players without the ball, rebounding, and offense created contact. The direction was to pay special attention to post-play and in rebounding situations. Dibler advised, “Incidental contact is in there, but not advantage, disadvantage.” Okay, got it.
What do you call it when a player on offense, uses their whole upper body to shove a seven foot center from Finland in his midsection out of bounds while in the air attempting a rebound?
Dilber went on to explain what these new rules mean, ” The little jab, the little push to get a rebound that we think is quite incidental or maybe no one was really put at a disadvantage, the Rules Committee now wants those called fouls.”
They want the little jabs called, ha ha ha ha ha. An elbow shoved in your back while you are a seven-foot Serbian dribbling backward, is not a “little jab” in our book.
Three former Pac-12 officials, Verne Harris, Mike Reed, and Mike Greenstein refereed the game on December 3rd. We reached out to the folks at HoopHall, and Pat Ochoa confirmed that these referees are from both the WCC and the Pac-12, or the Western Consortium.
Some would say these three are some of the best of the best you can get in the West, but from what we saw, it was out of hand at times.
Okay, still following? Here’s the kicker, the concept of a Cylinder of space. You read that correctly. According to Dibler, there is a new concept of a cylinder of space players are allowed on offense and defense (we included all of his explanation):
“What the Rules Committee have done to try to help us is they’ve come up with the word cylinder. So if you think of verticality, which is my space, think of the word cylinder which is a cylinder around my body, and what takes place to give me my cylinder is kind of my rear end, a normal stance, shoulder width, and as long as my elbows are bent, I’m in my cylinder.
So how we’re going to be officiating this play and adjudicating this play, is we’re going to have to make a determination. Has the defense violated the offensive player’s space? Because by interpretation now, the defensive player has got to allow the offensive player room to make a basketball play.
So the days of hearing the word like balling up, get up in his grill, all of those are still okay until there’s contact. And if a defensive guy is in the offensive player’s space, more times than not, that foul’s going to be on the defender.
Having said that, the defender also has his space — we could have a player controlled foul on the offensive player.”
Basically, both offense and defense should play as if their opponent has a safety cylinder around them. We don’t know about you, but I did not see much of a cylinder around the Wildcats playing defense.
In that game vs. Gonzaga, the new rule alterations really seemed to benefit Karnowski, as he was able to use his body to gain position down low and impose his will on whoever tried defending him.
We believe Arizona has been doing a great job abiding by these rules. Arizona Daily Star basketball guru, Bruce Pascoe, along with ZonaZealots asked Coach Miller, and he said it would be difficult, but everyone would just have to get used to the rule alterations.
More from Wildcats Basketball
- Arizona Basketball likely to schedule Florida Atlantic for 2023
- Rondae Hollis-Jefferson’s FIBA World Cup performance is reminiscent of Kobe Bryant’s
- Rawle Alkins a star in the Drew League this summer
- Arizona Basketball to play in ‘Battle 4 Atlantis’ in 2024
- Reflections on the Pac-12, the Arizona Wildcats, and other memories
Did anyone tell Zags Poland-born center Przemek Karnowski (7-foot-1, 300 pound Center) or the officials who called the game at STAPLES Center in the HoopHall event? Karnowski ended up being the highest scoring player on Gonzaga with 18 points and two blocks. He may have been fouled, but not while shooting, and he didn’t visit the charity stripe once.
The referees were not calling fouls on Gonzaga for not giving room for the defense to defend in our opinion. The referees that officiated the UCI game where much better from our point-of-view, both teams were allowed more space, on both offense and defense. We will see how this may change in Missouri this weekend.
What’s done is done, we get it, but if you didn’t hear these alterations to the rules with your own ears, you might be arguing with us that we don’t understand or aren’t interpreting the officiating correctly. Mostly because you are used to a very physical game.
If you watch the NBA D-League teams play, there is a lot of contact. When we spoke to the Lakers rookie center Ivica Zubac, he told us the D-League is nothing like the NBA, in the NBA there are hardly any ticky tack or minor fouls. And he has played in both, but not in the NCAA.
We don’t know if this is good or bad for the sport. It doesn’t seem like it prepares these college players for the big leagues, but the goal is to have high scoring games. Well, it’s working for UCLA, ranked No. 1 in the Pac-12, who is so far undefeated at 9-0 scoring a total of 819 points, for an average of 91 points per game. USC is currently ranked No. 2 in the Pac-12, the Trojans are also undefeated at 8-0, and scoring 641 points for an average of 81 points per game.
Must Read: Meet Arizona Basketball’s International 7-foot Stars, ‘EuroCon’
Arizona sits at No. 4 below UCLA, USC, and Utah in that order. At 7-2, the Wildcats have scored a total of 680 points for an average of 75 points. Miller has expressed recently that his players were called for offensive fouls as they were hit in the chest or something of that sort. Hopefully, the Western Consortium officiating aligns more with the form of basketball that Miller is coaching and has been advised would be the method of officiating his team in basketball games.