NCAA Looking Into More Basketball Rule Changes
The NCAA is looking into new rule changes for the 2015 rules cycle.
Some of them include:
-Fewer timeouts (yay!)
-Shorter shot clock
-Widening the lane
-The elimination of liveball timeouts
There are a few others but those are the big ones.
April 11th, 2014 at 12:40 PM ^
April 11th, 2014 at 12:44 PM ^
You know less timeouts would just mean more TV timeouts though. There's no way they give up that advertising money.
You are right that you would probably end up tacking a couple more TV timeouts, but at least you would cut down on those situations where six timeouts get called in the final minute.
No - they will have more commercials inbetween games. Right now all games edge over 2 hours and TV hates that the games don't fit into their two hour time slots. So, TV wants to shorten the game.
If they can get them over in 1:55, that is a few minutes more commercials inbetween.
If I were a TV executive whose job it was to maximize eyeballs on advertisements, I'd still see that as a major net loss. I assume a very large portion of viewers would shut off the TV after the game ends. The only way to keep the status quo is to ensure that the ads stay between tipoff and whistle.
- Make sure that as many of those timeouts as possible come at the end of the game, if the game is close. The higher the excitement level, the more likely people are to stay at their TV and not change the channel.
- Make the length of timeouts erratic, so people can't easily time them. You don't want people knowing they have enough tme to get to the refrigerator and you don't want them able to time their channel surfing easily.
watching but almost every NCAA game went over 2 hours and quite a few I watched this year were 2 1/2 hours long.
A game with no TV timeouts, which can only be found in D2/D3/NAIA now, last just over 1 hour 30 minutes.
April 11th, 2014 at 12:42 PM ^
April 11th, 2014 at 12:48 PM ^
...means less time for a patterned offense, more one-on-one stuff.
Like the charge/block rule change this past year, it's part of a broad move from the rules committee to shift the game away from Beilein-style offenses towards Calipari-style. It's killing the game for me, but I suspect it's what most people want.
April 11th, 2014 at 12:49 PM ^
April 11th, 2014 at 12:53 PM ^
Eh, I disagree.
A 24-second shot clock would do that.
But 30-seconds? That's plenty of time to get into whatever offense you want. It means you need to get the ball up court quicker, that's all (note: in WCBB there is no 10-second back court violation).
Every shortening of the shot clock means that end-of-possession happens earlier in the possession. As it stands, Michigan breaks off its pattern with 10-15 seconds left on the clock and goes 1-1 or high ball screen; it's a lot different from what those offenses looked like when the clock was 45, or before there was a clock at all. Of course you can "get into whatever you want" but you have five fewer seconds and that many fewer passes and cuts before you cut it off.
Nothing is stopping you from starting an offense earlier, though. I think you're ignoring the other side of the shot clock.
In CBB, most teams walk the ball up after a basket or stop and take out 5 seconds of the shot clock themselves. They can still operate in the same manner by getting into their offenses early.
To be succinct: I don't think many offenses utilize all of the current 35-seconds. If you posit that most offenses/patterns are designed to last no more than about 22 seconds (very reasonable, likely less), then why is the shot clock 35 seconds?
Michigan's offenses probably utilize a high percent of the shot clock, but I'd argue no more than 20 seconds tops.
They utilize 20 seconds because the clock is 35. When the clock was 45 they used 30. When there wasn't a clock they used what they needed.
Haven't you noticed that when Michigan is waiting for the last shot in a half, they don't run their normal offense?
There are offensive plays--high ball screens, KY-style chuck-and-dunk-- designed to get a shot at a particular moment. There are plays, and entire offensive schemes, designed to run until a shot presents itself, with no way in advance to predict when that will happen. Michigan runs their offense for "20 seconds tops", as you say, because at that point they have a deadline and have to move to Plan B.
Shorter shot clocks mean more bad shots at the end of the clock. There are studies at the HS level that show that the existence of a shot clock reduces scoring because the extra possessions are more than offset by reduced shooting percentages. That's not an argument against shot clocks, necessarily, because maximizing points shouldn't be a primary goal of the rules committee, but it's some evidence that the results of a change might be counterintuitive.
Michigan runs their offense for "20 seconds tops", as you say, because at that point they have a deadline and have to move to Plan B.
This is the crux of my argument. Well, not an arugment - we seem to be of similar minds but different perspectives. You can still start earlier and end up with the same "oh shit, didn't work, time for a ball screen" Plan B. I think teams/coaches adjust to 5 less seconds and we see the same amount of "Plan B" at the end of shot clocks as we do now. Maybe it's worse for the poorer offensive teams - good for us and Beilein.
I coach at the high school level and certainly understand the notion that bad shots will go up when you're forced to put one up in 10 seconds. My teams might be a little more progressive than some older-school coaches in the sense that I want my team taking the first good shot and not necessarily running offense for 60-seconds until a layup presents (my very basic philosphy being I'd rather get a shot up than a turnover and if I have the better offensive team, I want more possessions in the game).
Good debate, though!
I think most of our disagreement is that I don't particularly enjoy Plan B basketball. I enjoy high school ball more than college, college more than professinal, largely because as you go up a higher percentage of possessions are Plan B. It's one thing to have a diversity of offensive schemes, but what we have is a series of rule changes over a long period of time whose effect has been to exclude certain types of schemes altogether. I miss the offenses you view as not "progressive" and I like high school basketball because there are still some teams running them.
Maybe that's really the crux of the matter. It's not my preference for one particular style, it's my preference for a diversity of styles instead of everybody running the same thing. I reached a point about 2/3's of the way through the tournament where if I saw one more high ball screen I was going to chuck something through my TV screen.
Ten seconds of shuffle before the ball screen isn't enough to keep my interest and the game's going to lose me if it keeps going this direction. Not that it should care.
I can get on board with that. And just so it's clear I wouldn't go too far and say I like bad shots or don't like traditional offenses that value not turning the ball over, of course. But if my HS teams have an entire minute off the clock in a possession and have turned down open looks, I'm probably not thrilled unless we are specifically trying to run clock.
The biggest thing I see is that this would help good/great offenses (b/c they get into Plan B less and there are more possessions) and I like that. I don't think it benefits the good/great defenses as much because they were already forcing their bad shots and they still will.
I definitely am on board with you in loving HS basketball (hopefully that's obvious!). They're just different games. When you have great shooters and great ball handlers, the ball screen is a great option to go to because most teams won't play a zone. In high school you kind of have to be more creative because people can zone up and force you to shoot threes. I love that aspect of the high school game.
I certainly wouldn't want a shot clock in HS of any kind!
April 11th, 2014 at 12:50 PM ^
"An examination of the NBA's continuation rule, and whether it should be applied similarly in college. There was not much support in the meeting room for that idea."
As it is, some NBA players have made a personal industry of exploiting the continuation rule. I can see why there would not be a lot of support for basically encouraging the further manufacture of foul shots. I do like the idea of a shorter shot clock, although it would mean several teams would have to rethink their offense quite a bit, I would think.
April 11th, 2014 at 12:55 PM ^
It's not exploitation - it's just called by the letter of the law in the NBA and players and officials play/call it that way.
Continuation is simply the right to shoot foul shots if you are fouled "after you have started the habitual motion to try at goal." This means as soon as you've gathered the ball to attempt a lay-up.
That's the letter of the law. But many NBA players hear the whistle and then decide they are really trying to make an attempt at the goal, and therefore get foul shots out of it. That's why I don't like continuation as it is in the NBA. Now, if it was something more defined when someone is clearly gathered to go up, then maybe you can have it, but I'd prefer they didn't.
April 11th, 2014 at 12:54 PM ^
I seriously doubt that any reduction in the number of timeouts will mean any reduction in the amount of time spent away from the game. That would mean less revenue, and who would be in favor of that?
I suspect we'll see an expansion of the media timeouts by 30 seconds or a minute to offset. I doubt there'll be any announcement of this; it'll just happen.
Even if each media timeout is longer, at least the flow of the game won't be disrupted as much by the 6,000 timeouts each team currently gets (OK, maybe I'm exaggerating). And getting rid of the live-ball timeouts would also be good -- it drives me crazy when, unbeknownst to everyone on the court, the bench has just taken a timeout and the play that just happened is nullified.
I guess I see this differently. For me team timeouts are part of the flow of the game--they happen at times dictated by events on the court, and they've been part of the game at every level since long before I was born. They happen because there's something to talk about, which means I'm not bored during the timeout because there's something to talk about.
about the relative virtues of hockey and basketball (I'm a hockey guy), my "Exhibit A" is the fact that a hockey game keeps the same flow right 'til the end, while a basketball game flows through the first 38 minutes or so (except for all the media timeouts) and then grinds to a halt. What other game completely changes its back-and-forth nature at the very end, when the excitement level should be the highest? That's partly a result of the strategy of fouling (a separate problem), but the abundance of timeouts sure doesn't help.
Sure the TOs contribute to the change in flow, but so does purposely fouling. I have no good solutions, but it seems odd that a very valid tactic is to purposely commit fouls. Commiting a foul should result in a penalty, not a potential advantage.
Sports in general are fraught with times in which teams purposely take a penalty of some kind and nobody really thinks it's a problem. Pitchouts, intentional walks, delays-of-game, intentional kicks out of bounds in soccer, and so on. I'm OK with it.
If you want a solution, or at least a change of some kind, put the shooting team's player closest to the rim on one side of the lane and the defending team's player closest on the other side, instead of the defending team's player on both sides. Sure, you then might see the shooter aim for that side instead of the bucket, but hitting the rim just so has already been proven to be awfully difficult.
Some of that is that you're a hockey guy, trying to impose hockey rhythms on basketball. I was born into a basketball family and all of this seems as natural to me as hockey does to you. Why wouldn't a game slow down at its most exciting moments, to give us a chance to savor it?. (I'm not saying either one is right--each sport has established its own natural rhythm.)
And some of it is that the timeouts have gotten so long. Before the TV era they were 60 seconds, they still are in high school. 60 seconds goes by pretty quidk, there really isn't time for the excitement to ebb, in fact there's barely enough time to debrief the situation before play starts again. It's not much longer than the time between football plays, and whatever people may think of huddling, I don't think anybody's argued that grinding a football game to a halt by huddling destroys the excitement level.
would spread that time throughout the game. As it is, it took 18 minutes to play the last minute of the UM-Tennessee game because of ALL THE TIMEOUTS.
shortening the shot clock plays to teams with more talent....I don't like it at all...the upsets are what makes NCAA basketball
I do watch the nba, but I don't bring it up much on this board due to all the nba haters who have no clue what they're talking about.
I like fewer time outs. I would say two fewer but put an end to the "one must be used in the first half or lost". Otherwise, cut down one and keep the rule, but I'd prefer the former.
I don't mind a shot clock if it's at least 30 seconds. Lower than that and you start to weed out what makes college basketball more fun to watch NBA basketball, IMO: the variety of offenses and ways of manufacturing points. You don't want every team to be the same. Another reason that guys basketball at the college level has to be a bit longer is because: 1) they aren't nearly as good at shooting as NBA players (meaning there are fewer good shots and the floor isn't as spread); 2) few are as athletic as NBA players; 3) they are still massive bodies, making it harder to find good shots. If you reduce the shot clock too low, the affect will be negative offensive performance, not increased scoring. You still have to allow college offenses to go through their sets to produce points, which I prefer anyway.
I don't like losing liveball timeouts. That means when the ball is in-play, correct? While that certainly may make the game more exciting at times (end of the game, loose ball situations), it also seems to take away from some of the good aspects of the game. I can't really explain it well I guess, but it just doesn't sit well with me for some reason.
I'd also like the media timeouts to happen after every 5 minutes. Make it longer to compensate if you must, but keep the game flowing a bit more. Fewer but longer time outs when they occur, IMO.
I was thinking the same thing earlier this season in RE: to making the TV timeouts at the 15, 10, and 5 minute marks, instead of every 4. I'm sure they would cram another minute to minute-thrity of commercials into each timeout but it'd almost be worth it to get more gameplay/flow and to actually rid of one of the timeouts.
Any reasons for the lane widening?
Liveball timeouts being elimitated would be great. Or maybe they could just enforce some of the timeout rules e.g. I saw multiple times in the Tournament, maybe even against us, where a player was falling out of bounds with the ball and a timeout was awarded to them. That is NOT supposed to be allowed anymore. But eliminating Timeouts while the 10 second rule is in play, at the very least, would be a good rule change (or tweaking that rule, where if a timeout is called while still in the backcourt, the 10 second clock is still in play once play resumes, and once the shot clock hits 25, boom, turnover).
I feel like you should get 10 seconds to cross half court no matter what, and that it shouldn't reset after a timeout. While I don't like getting rid of live ball timeouts, if there was an easy way (read: a way to write a rule) that didn't allow for a liveball timeout on your side of the court after a made basket (for instance), I think I'd like that. Would encourage more teams to trap than foul at the end too.
Any reasons for the lane widening?
Spread out offenses, and therefore, defenses. The net effect would be trying to make it easier to drive the lane.
I hate this idea because it would just lead to more of the one thing I hate most in basketball, which is the tuck-and-carry.
They should do 2 timeouts per half. There is no reason to have 4 timeouts per team plus 4 TV timeouts in a 20 minute half. 2 timeouts per half, 2 minutes each, do not allow a coach to call timeout after one was just called. That should allow coaches plenty of time to coach their players rather than use the timeouts as a way of stopping momentum or to gain a strategic edge.
As for the shot clock, I think they should have 10 seconds to get it across half court and then a 25-second shot clock should start. Potentially, (especially against teams that do full court press) you don't lose any time on offense. However, 25 seconds in your offensive half will force teams to try to score rather than sit on the ball to kill clock. Rebounds with kickouts are now worth 10 seconds less of clock time.
I don't agree with the elimination of live ball timeouts. Increase their value to make teams question whether they should call a timeout.
The one thing that I really want is for a shoulder into the chest of a defender to be a charge every time. If that's the case, then the defender clearly has position and the offensive player is trying to draw a foul. Keep everything else about the charge/block calls the same for all I care. If they took care of this, it would eliminate a lot of blown calls.
"No scoring on a charge. Baskets off a charge are waved off in every level of basketball except college."
I didn't know this was a thing and I've never seen it happen in a game. Ever. Is this a typo or am I misunderstanding something? Or has anyone else seen a charge and a basket on the same play.
If the ball has left the shooter's hand before he makes contact, it's not an offensive foul because he didn't have possession at the time of the foul. "Team control continues until...the ball is in flight during a try or tap for goal."
Happens a lot on runners down the lane. Shooter releases the ball, then commits a charge. Ball goes in, shot counts, offensive foul. How much college basketball have you watched? This rule has been around forever.
I'd like to see one less time out, an NBA regulation three-point line, and ABSOLUTELY a shorter shot clock. Thirty-five seconds is way too long for a shot clock. They don't have to make it twenty-four like the NBA, but I think shortening it by five seconds would be ideal.
I have been saying for years, the shotclock should be 30 secs. No live-ball timeouts (Imagine a QB taking a T.O. right before he was about to be sacked in football. It is absurb.) And most of all, change the rule to 6 foul limit before fouling out.