Taking the new rule changes one step further?

[RockawayHoya]

sports.yahoo.com/news/rule-makers-planning-to-make-ncaa-men-s-basketball-even-more-fan-friendly-164746766.html

Poor Hop may not make it through a game next season if they have their way.

I love how they are concerned about length of games, but see no problems with turning every game into a FT shooting contest because no one is allowed to play defense anymore. I especially take issue with Forde's statement that "college basketball was a more aesthetically pleasing game in 2013-14." This was the least aesthetically pleasing season I saw since I started watching college basketball as a kid. The vast majority of games lasted well over 2 hours and 15 minutes (and many times even longer), which is awful when watching a game either televised or in person.

I cannot fathom how they claim to have consensus among coaches (maybe it is Brey just shooting his mouth off, who knows) in favor of not only accepting the rule changes they made this year, but making them even more extreme in future seasons.

The only rule change on this list I'd even remotely consider supporting is reducing the shot clock to 30. If they want so badly to increase scoring in order to generate more excitement (which I don't agree with either), then that's the way to go about doing it instead of turning every game into a parade to the FT line.

[chep3]

Agree. Watching basketball was a painful experience, and not only because I was watching the fouliest team in America. There seems to be no consistency as to what permissible defense is, and if you want a more offensively free flowing game like the NBA, you can't do that if you call 50 fouls a game. Shot clock should definitely happen. Reducing the amount of timeouts should also happen. Those would have been much more moderate steps that would've had fewer unintended consequences than the route they opted for.

[hoyasaxa2003]

All you need to do is look at the championship game between Kentucky and Connecticut to see how much of a joke this is. In that game, the referees consistently allowed calls to go that would have been fouls in many of the games we played this year. It's not surprising - when you have 15 million people watching a game, you don't want it to be torture, I just don't think there should be a double standard of swallowing whistles in a championship game, and then calling 40 fouls when Georgetown plays a team like Colgate or High Point.

I would support the shot clock going from 35 to 30, though. I think 24 is probably too aggressive because the ball handling at the collegiate level just is not good enough. A 24 second clock would make a VCU style havoc defense even more effective, and I'm not sure that I want to see the game headed in a direction where every team puts on constant pressure. Of course, that would also put a premium on ball handling and make good guards even more valuable.

[Buckets]

Shot clock to 30 or under needs to happen. 24 feels a little short just because you can actually press college guards, but I think teams would adapt. Also non-full resets to either 15 or 20 after a foul.

[TBird41]

They should definitely decrease the number of timeouts. There are 18 timeouts each game (combining the coaches and TV timeouts). It's just ridiculous. I felt like I was watching an NFL game with all of the stoppages/commercials during the Final Four

[EtomicB]

Apr 11, 2014 9:33:09 GMT -5 Buckets said:

Shot clock to 30 or under needs to happen. 24 feels a little short just because you can actually press college guards, but I think teams would adapt. Also non-full resets to either 15 or 20 after a foul.

I agree, they have to go to the 30 second clock and if they really want to speed up the game drop the half-court clock from 10 seconds to 8.

[flyoverhoya]

Apr 11, 2014 9:41:33 GMT -5 TBird41 said:

They should definitely decrease the number of timeouts. There are 18 timeouts each game (combining the coaches and TV timeouts). It's just ridiculous. I felt like I was watching an NFL game with all of the stoppages/commercials during the Final Four

Plus, do away with the de facto timeout every time a player fouls out of a game.

[gujake]

I'm for decreasing both the shot clock and the number of timeouts. Right now coaches micromanage the game to an insane degree and I personally don't find it entertaining. I would rather watch the players.

I think the shot clock is the big one. As far as I know, every other league above the high school level plays with a shorter clock. The NCAA women are playing with a 30 second clock.

I'm still not sure what to think about the fouling. I like the no hand-checking rule in theory, but it seemed like a lot of referees decided to call more fouls overall rather than focus on actual hand-checks. But maybe I'm just biased from watching Georgetown games.

[NCHoya]

The shot clock change to 30 should be a no brainer.

And while the coaches would erupt in fury, I would give teams only 3 timeouts. Also, if a coach takes a timeout where there could have been a TV timeout like at 7:30 left in the half, then eliminate the TV timeout and make the team timeout a commercial break. So tired of what seems like back to back timeouts. Those are the times where they lose me as a viewer.

As for the foul stuff, there was no consistency, so I cannot have a real opinion on it.

[FLHoya]

Apr 11, 2014 12:57:03 GMT -5 gujake said:

I'm still not sure what to think about the fouling. I like the no hand-checking rule in theory, but it seemed like a lot of referees decided to call more fouls overall rather than focus on actual hand-checks. But maybe I'm just biased from watching Georgetown games.

That might actually be a reasonable explanation.

According to the Yahoo! article, this season free throw attempts were up 4.2% and fouls were up 3.5% across Division I. In a game with 40 fouls (so, each team hits the double bonus in each half) that works out to about 1.4 extra fouls per game and 1.7 extra FTs per game. It's not ideal to see fouls and FTs increase, but about one and a half more of each per game is hardly a parade to the free throw line. It's probably 2-3 minutes real time added to a game; honestly, video replay seems a far worse offender.

Now, if you consider Georgetown games--which we all binge-watch--the difference was...ummmmmmmm...more pronounced, shall we say:

In 2012-13, we committed 556 fouls (17.375/game) and our opponents committed 586 (18.3125/game). We shot 599 FTs and our opponents shot 582.

In 2013-14, we committed 728 fouls (22.06/game) and our opponents committed 696 (21.09/game). We shot 780 FTs and our opponents shot 893.

(NOTE: Certainly our offensive/defensive pace and lineups play a big role here...I'm more interested in the WHAT than the WHO/WHY/HOW for the purpose of this post.)

So the year to year changes I'm seeing (and feel free to check the math--EDIT: and you should have--because there's an SFS before by class year):

FOULS
NCAA games: +3.5%
GU games: +24.7%
GU only: +26% +30.9%
GU oppts: +15% +18.8% (EDITED to fix math)

FREE THROWS
NCAA games: +4.2%
GU games: +41.7%
GU only: +30.2%
GU oppts: +53.4%

Soooooooo...that's kinda weird. But so was this dumb season.

2014 stats
2013 stats

[professorhoya]

They are destroying the game. At this rate, pretty soon they will ban zone defense and it will be a joke just like the NBA.

Just like in the NFL. They are trying to do everything possible to increase scoring and get rid of defense. We are basically getting to the point of two hand touch football.

[Deleted]

Please by the grace of god move the shot clock to 30 seconds.. The womans game is a 30 why not the guys? It makes no sense.

If you want teams to score more, maybe try increasing the possessions in the game? Idk ...

[SDHoya]

The NFL is moving to an NHL style replay system of having a central reviewer for all games. It might not be practical to have some NCAA office in Indy doing that, but maybe the BE could have someone in Providence reviewing everything? Or the NCAA could just have a replay official to speed things up. But those reviews were just interminable this year. And dear god, MLB is doing more of it now too. Is baseball not slow enough already?

I wouldn't mind a 30 second clock either. And switch to TV timeouts at 15/10/5, instead of 16/12/8/4. Also get rid of one team timeout. Only problem with that is fewer breaks for commercials ($$$). Or, make it so that a time out taken close to the official time out will be converted to an official time out. That way we don't have the ridiculousness of two timeouts with 5 seconds of game time in between.

I'm ok with getting rid of hand checks, they are useless anyways. But defense in the lane should not be completely outlawed. It would make the game unwatchable. Either there would be fouls galore, or a dunk parade with defenders too afraid to even breathe on a driving player.

All that being said though, I really hope JTIII prepares the defense better. We basically lived or died by officiating, which aside from making too many of our games awful to sit through, also didn't help our record.

[arlingtonhoya05]

If the shot clock decreases, at all, III will FINALLY have to make an actual offensive adjustment...you'd think...

[hoyasaxa2003]

Apr 11, 2014 15:15:51 GMT -5 arlingtonhoya05 said:

If the shot clock decreases, at all, III will FINALLY have to make an actual offensive adjustment...you'd think...

Did you watch this past season? Nothing about our offense this past year was similar to the offense used in 2007 and 2008. JTIII does adjust his offensive for his players. For whatever reason, some people refuse to acknowledge this.

Believe it or not, our offense this year was ranked 44th, compared to 78 when we had Otto Porter and we won the Big East regular season. In contrast, our defense this past year was ranked 107th, compared to 2nd when we had Otto Porter the previous season.

While our offense was not stellar, it wasn't the main problem. Defense was.

[johnnysnowplow]

Yea, this notion that Thompson continues to force "his offense" on players that don't fit it is a bit ridiculous. Did this year's team play anything like Jeff/Roy's teams? How bout Chris/Austin/Greg's teams? And the Sims/Clark/Hollis team? The man adjusts. It may take 3 or 5 or even 10 games into the season, but ultimately I think he's been pretty good about figuring out what works for the players he has and what doesn't. I'd fully expect next year to be a fluid situation as the freshmen get incorporated into the fold, but by mid-season, he'll probably have a pretty good handle on it as usual.

[Deleted]

Do people even watch the games??

[johnnysnowplow]

Apr 11, 2014 18:11:52 GMT -5 @yaboynyp said:

Do people even watch the games??

Haha, I'm starting to think they don't.

[FLHoya]

I'm surprised that from this sentence in the article...

But this season was just establishing a beachhead in the clean-up-the-game invasion. When the next rule-change cycle begins in 2015, Division I rules secretary Art Hyland said the top two items on the agenda will be limiting the physical play in the post and freeing up cutters to move away from the ball.

...multiple people have referenced the "physical play in the post" part, but nobody's talked about the bolded part. Grabbing or impeding cutters is basically Coach's #1 complaint to officials. He's stated many times that he frequently points out to officials that our players are being held while attempting to cut without the ball. The response from officials according to Coach is often: well, so what, it's away from the play so it doesn't create a disadvantage and so we don't call it. And Coach's point is: well, the cuts are how our players get open, so it does create a disadvantage.

If grabbing cutters becomes a point of emphasis, it would have a huge impact on our offense.

[Buckets]

Didn't see this mentioned elsewhere but the NIT will feature a 30-second shot clock and an expanded restricted area: www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2015-02-06/experimental-rules-be-used-during-2015-nit-include-30-second

I hope these changes are made at the next rules committee meeting in the offseason and we can experience them in November and not March.