The term “March Madness” describes the college basketball postseason and high school state tournaments.
It could also describe figuring out your own schedule if you’re a basketball announcer.
Last week, I announced two college conference tournament games and two high school girls’ regional games. My first game of this week was Tuesday, which went to overtime. I will be in Monroe for a girls’ sectional semifinal, followed Friday by a trip to Spring Green for a boys’ regional semifinal. Saturday will include one of three potential night boys’ games, possibly preceded by a girls’ sectional final game, the winner of which goes to state.
I am done announcing college basketball for the year, but Division I March Madness kicks in next week with conference tournaments, followed the week after that by the NCAA men’s and women’s tournaments.
Sports Illustrated’s and CBS’ Seth Davis used the week before conference tournaments to bring up an issue it says is getting worse — pace and scoring, or lack thereof, in the college game. Davis’ story begins with the 2000 Final Four, in which Wisconsin trailed Michigan State 19-17 at halftime of one national semifinal. From there:
The more things change, the more they … get worse. College basketball is slower, more grinding, more physical and more, well, offensive than it has been in a long, long time. The 2014-15 season is shaping up to be the worst offensive season in modern history. Through Feb. 22, teams were averaging 67.1 points per game. That is the lowest average since 1952. The previous low for that span was set just two years ago. This more than reverses the gains that were made last season, after the rules committee made adjustments to clamp down on physical defense and make it harder to draw a charge. Thanks to lax enforcement by officials and a foolish decision to reverse the block/charge modification, scoring declined by 3.79 points per game. That is the steepest single-season drop on record.
Millions of people are preparing set their sights on college basketball for March Madness, but the sport is not ready for its close-up. All season long, there have been games where the winning team struggles to reach 50 points. Halftime scores in the 19-17 range have been a nightly occurrence. And because too many coaches use too many time outs, games become interminable during the last few minutes. As a result, this game is in danger of turning off casual fans while losing ground with the younger set, who have more choices than ever before.
“I have great concerns,” says Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s vice president of men’s basketball championships. “The trends are long-term and unhealthy. I think some people understand the urgency of it, but there are others who think the rhetoric is sensationalized and that it’s not as bad as people make it out to be. There are enough people concerned that there is movement to get things done.”
That concern prompted the NCAA to announce earlier this month that it will experiment with a 30-second shot clock (instead of the current 35) and a bigger arc under the basket (to make it harder to draw a charge) during the postseason NIT next month. That is a hopeful sign, but the approach is still too cautious, too incremental. If we’re going to summon the requisite urgency to reverse the tide, we have to start by calling the situation what it is.
College basketball is facing a crisis. It’s time for an extreme makeover.
First: Let’s be honest about why this is a “crisis.” It is not because one style of basketball is preferable to another, or all the others. It is because of a fear of dwindling fan interest, which means fewer eyeballs watching games in person and on TV, and thus less money being spent on each. College basketball is a business because all sports past the high school level that charge admission are business sectors within the entertainment world.
Davis suggests five rules changes because …
For a long time, the attitude among college basketball’s cognoscenti has been that the game should look distinct from its professional counterparts. That is reasonable, but right now the game is too distinct, not just from the NBA but also from other sports like football and hockey. Here are five rules changes that would push the pendulum back in the right direction:
1. The shot clock should be shortened to 30 seconds.
Some prominent coaches, like Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim and Villanova’s Jay Wright, who both have extensive international experience, would like to see the clock reduced to 24 seconds, which is the case in the NBA and FIBA. Reducing it to 30 would speed up the game while allowing college basketball to remain distinctive. “Why wouldn’t we go to 30? That’s a better question,” asks Dukecoach Mike Krzyzewski. “We didn’t go to 30 in the first place because the women had it. People wanted to be different. It’s not hard to figure out. A shorter clock means more possessions, and more possessions means more points.”
History shows that to be the case. When the 45-second clock was trimmed to 35 for the 1993-94 season, scoring went from 73.6 points per game to 75.0. Those gains were short-lived, but it supports the idea that a shorter clock helps.
2. The arc under the basket should be extended to four feet.
It wasn’t until the 2010-11 season that the rules committee established a secondary defender could not take a charge under the basket. At first, the committee declined to put down an arc, and when it did in 2011, it was placed at three feet. That is one foot shorter than the NBA’s circle, and it is obviously insufficient. “That thing is like a bee bee on a four-lane highway. It’s a joke,”Michigan State coach Tom Izzo says. “That’s the NCAA and our coaches saying we are not going to be the NBA. I look at it as, the NBA plays a hundred games a year. Let’s learn from them.”
Izzo is so opposed to the charge call that he refuses to teach his players to take them. He believes it is dangerous, and he does not want to be hypocritical. There is a place for this play—charges are called regularly in NBA games—but there is broad consensus that too many collisions reward the defense. Plus, it’s the toughest call a referee has to make. Says Adams, “A four-foot restricted arc would help unclog an area that’s an officiating headache.”
3. The lane should be wider.
The college lane is 12 feet wide. The NBA’s is 16 feet. FIBA’s used to be shaped like a trapezoid, but in 2010 it adopted the NBA’s 16-foot rectangle. The college lane should have that same width, but even an increase to 14 feet would be an improvement. A wider lane would push post players away from the basket, which in turn would force them to learn to shoot with touch as opposed to just backing down and powering to the rim. That’s what players do—they adapt. A wider lane would also create more space for drivers, allowing players to showcase their athleticism better.
4. The three-point line should be deeper.
The goal here isn’t to make the shot more difficult; it’s to create more space. That’s why the line was moved in 2008 from its original distance of 19′ 9″, to the current 20′. With a wider lane, the college line will need to be extended again. If the committee pushed it to 22′ 2″, which is where FIBA has it, that would preserve some distinction with the NBA’s distance of 23′ 9″.
5. There should be fewer time outs. …
Even before a coach calls a single time out, he is guaranteed nine stoppages of play—four media time outs per half, which last 2 minutes, 15 seconds each, plus a 15-minute halftime. That’s 33 minutes, or almost another entire game, to talk to his team. Yet, on top of those breaks, a coach is also granted four 30-second time outs and one 60-second time out. One of those 30-second time outs is referred to as the “use-it-or-lose-it” time out because teams only get to call three 30-second time outs in the second half. In other words, the rules actually incentivize a coach to call a time he out he wouldn’t otherwise take.
Sure, the refs need to speed up their replay reviews, but reducing the number of time outs is the best way to shorten the game. Former Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese complains that “the college game in the last two minutes is absolutely awful.” Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, who heads a competition committee that studies these issues, agrees. “We’ve got to find ways to expedite the last few minutes,” he says. “The games are slowing down to the point where the only people who are going to watch are diehard fans of those two teams.” …
Unfortunately, the men who call all those time outs are the same ones who write the rules. College basketball coaches are fierce competitors. They’re under a lot of pressure. They are not about to relinquish control. “Coaches have always felt that if you take time outs away from them, it’s like taking their first born,” says Art Hyland, the rules committee’s secretary editor.
Which brings us to the heart of the issue. The primary reason college basketball faces a scoring crisis isn’t the rules. It isn’t the refs, it isn’t the players, it isn’t the officiating coordinators, it isn’t the conference commissioners, and it isn’t the television networks. It’s the coaches. …
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to legislate offensive creativity. The only way to spur more people to coach that way is to create rules that force them to. …
No wonder the game is stuck in reverse. Though the people who serve on the rules committee are no doubt earnest and diligent, they are naturally protective of their own interests. A slower, rougher game benefits teams with lesser talent. Byrd, for example, says he likes the shot clock where it is because “I don’t think you can really run your offense in 30 seconds,” even though most of the planet seems to be able to do just that.
And what do you do if you’re a coach whose players aren’t quick and tall enough to prevent the gazelles at Kansas and North Carolina from driving through the lane and finishing at the rim? You manipulate the rulebook so it’s easier to push a driver, bump a cutter, shove a post player or draw a charge.
There is a place for upsets, of course, but they should happen because underdogs executed better, not because they were allowed to grab their speedier opponents. “I hear people complain and say, well if you do these things, the teams with the better players are going to win,” ESPN analyst Jay Bilas says. “And I’m thinking, did you really just say that? That’s like saying if we took all the sprinters and let them run in a straight line, the fastest guy would win. That’s the whole point.” …
When it comes to solving intractable problems, we are often told that where there’s a will, there’s a way. But the way out of college basketball’s mess is clear. The question is, do the people who run the sport have the will to come up with a plan and see it through?
Plenty of other sports have done it. Over the last two decades, the NFL and college football have greatly diminished the degree to which defenders can impede the progress of receivers, and they have outlawed excessive hits on quarterbacks. That begat the spread offense and the wide-open, pass-happy, no-huddle, high-scoring games that electrify football fans every fall weekend. Likewise, the NHL instituted a slew of new rules following the 2004-05 work stoppage, including clamping down on obstruction, the elimination of the rule against the two-line pass, and installing a trapezoid behind the net, which limited goalies’ abilities to play the puck. The changes have been widely praised for improving the aesthetic of the game, but scoring has flatlined due to improved goaltending. As another effort, the NHL before the 2013-14 season enacted a rule limiting the size of goalies’ equipment.
The NBA offers the best blueprint. Before the start of the 2000-01 season, then-commissioner David Stern tapped Jerry Colangelo, the general manager of the Phoenix Suns, to chair a special committee that was assigned to eliminate “all the muggings,” as Colangelo puts it. They devised prohibitions against hand-checking and other tactics that had tipped the advantage too far to the defense. There were many games that got bogged down in fouls early on, but eventually the coaches and players adapted.
Colangelo, who is now the chairman of USA Basketball’s board of directors, believes college basketball needs to go through the same transition. “Basketball ultimately is a game of fluidity,” he says. “It took about two years for everyone to adjust, but that dissipates over a period of time. You pay that price, but in the long-term that’s what was in the best interests of the game.”
Those who have coached American college players for Team USA in recent years swear that when our kids play in FIBA tournaments, they score points. They make shots. They’re rewarded for beating their man off the dribble. Turns out all they need is a shorter clock, some more space, and a tighter whistle. “Anything you can do to increase freedom of movement is going to increase scoring,” says VCUcoach Shaka Smart, who has served as an assistant coach for USA Basketball’s under-18 and under-19 teams the last three years. “The players just kind of figured out how to play with the 24-second shot clock. We as coaches did, too, because you can’t run too many multiple sets. If you really want to increase scoring, you have to make the rules more to the advantage of the offense as opposed to the unbelievable advantage the defense has right now.”
College and high school basketball in Wisconsin is dominated by two styles of play — the Bo Ryan school, and the Dick Bennett school. They’re not dissimilar, but there is one important difference. Bennett’s approach is based on defense as the first five or so priorities. Ryan’s approach is based on defense and offensive efficiency — essentially, score as close to every time you have the ball, regardless of your tempo. That means working the swing offense (which by now I think every team in the state runs), getting good shots, and limiting mistakes, meaning missed shots, turnovers and allowing the defense to rebound a miss.
Wisconsin is leading the country in offensive efficiency, though the Badgers are nowhere near the top in offensive points per game. Bennett is retired, but his son, Tony, coaches at Virginia, which has been in the top two in the nation in defensive efficiency all season. (Should Wisconsin and Virginia meet in the NCAA tournament, bet the under.)
I support all five of Davis’ proposed rule changes. (I would like to see at least two timeouts replaced by quarter breaks instead of two halves, since it is not logical for high school and the pros to have four quarters but college have two halves.) I firmly believe those moves will only temporarily speed up the game, because good coaches will find out ways within the rules to neutralize their own talent disadvantages (see Bennett, Dick).
I firmly believe those moves will only temporarily speed up the game, because good coaches will find out ways within the rules to neutralize their own talent disadvantages (see Bennett, Dick) and maximize what they have. If the NCAA is serious about entertaining fans (and again, college basketball is a business), it needs to commit to a continual process of changing the rules, similar to the NFL.
Some may claim that rules changes aren’t necessary, pointing at the popularity of March Madness, when even casual fans fill out brackets using scientific and, well, less-scientific approaches (blue uniforms, mascots you like, etc.). The issue isn’t getting people to pay attention to March Madness; it’s getting people to pay attention to the regular season, when everybody plays, not just the top 68 teams in the country, and to keep fans watching games besides your favorite team’s games.
… this disreputable looking quartet is your non-humble writer (second from right) and his father (far left) and his two friends since approximately grade school. (In fact the two wearing Brewers stuff were born in the same hospital within days of each other.) For the second year in a row we went to a Brewers game (remarkably we got let into Milwaukee County), but unlike last year, the Brewers won, prompting some wit in the parking lot to note that we had seen one-third of their wins that day. (Now it’s down to one-fifth, I believe.)
When I was an intern at WKOW-TV, there was a black-and-white photo of Bender and some other people at state. Bender wore a white turtleneck, a blazer, plaid polyester bell-bottoms, and white shoes. I wonder if channel 27 still has that photo.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 