The NCAA proposed new rule changes last month for men’s college basketball. They included a shorter shot clock, amount of timeouts each team will have per half, expanding the restricted circle under the hoop from three feet to four feet, and when officials can look at the monitor feeds for shot clock violations. On Monday some of these were approved.
The shot clock in men’s college basketball will be shorter this upcoming season. It had been 35 seconds since 1993-1994 when it was reduced from 45 to 35 seconds. Teams will only get 30 seconds to shoot the ball before a shot clock violation. This is a great rule passed by the NCAA. 35 seconds was too long. Teams could just pass the ball around for a while. Five seconds less will decrease teams from holding onto the ball. This should have been approved years ago and will hopefully speed up the game. For player safety, the restricted circle or arc under the basket, where any collision with the ball carrier is automatically called a defensive foul, has been expanded from three feet to four feet.
One rule change that could really mean a difference in the pace of play is the number of timeouts. Teams will only receive four timeouts in the first half instead of five. A team can carry three over to the second half. This seems like a decent rule to keep play going. The problem isn’t teams taking timeouts, it’s the national TV timeouts. They really cause the games to go longer. They need to have fewer or shorter TV timeouts so the game has more of a flow to it.
A change that makes sense is that the officials on the floor can consult video monitor feeds for shot clock violations throughout the game. In years past the referees on the floor could only look at the monitor for shot clock violations in the last two minutes. The point of being an official is to get the call right. This will help. They can only use the video for shot clock violations. If they want to see who the ball went off of last, this can only be during the last two minutes of regulation or overtime.
According to ESPN, NCAA Rules committee chairman Rick Byrd hopes that all these rules enhance the NCAA game. He said, “The areas of concern in our game have been about pace of play, about scoring, about increased physicality defensively. There are concerns about how long it takes to play our games sometimes, particularly as we’ve introduced review in the last two minutes. I think we’ve addressed all these areas as best we can.”
Hopefully scoring will be up and we will see a much better tempo to the college basketball game.
How do you think these rules will affect the men’s college game?
Leave a Reply