The college basketball season is over, shocker, which means it’s time to go back to the drawing board and look for more ways to improve the game. The major rule changes last year cracked down on hand checking and the charge rule. I would say for the most part that it helped. Pat Forde of Yahoo wrote about some of the new potential rule changes for this upcoming year, which should make the game much better.
1) Reduction of timeouts.
If you’ve watched the last minute of a college basketball game, you are well aware of timeout theater. Teams get as many as 4 second half timeouts, which is way too many. The last few minutes of games turn into slogs with free throws and official reviews and timeouts. It’s something that ruins the enjoyment of the sport. If one of the goals of the new rule changes are to make the sport more watchable, timeouts need to be addressed.
College basketball should be one of the fastest sports. What other sport can you pop in and out of in 2 hours? There is nothing else. The games are starting to move into 2 and a half hour long windows. College basketball should not be played at NBA length windows. Especially with fewer minutes.
2) Improving the 10 seconds call.
Currently in college basketball, you have 10 seconds from whenever you inbound the ball to get it over halfcourt. This is more unfair than the tie up situation to the defense. You play great defense in the backcourt for 8 seconds, the team calls timeout and then has 10 seconds to get the ball up the court again. This is one of those rules that you forget about until the shot clock goes to 25 and you yell out ’10 seconds!’ only for the announcers to bring up this dumb rule. It’s something that needs to be changed.
3) FIBA rules for timeouts.
Going hand in hand with the first two changes would be the proposed change to FIBA rules which state that timeouts have to be called in dead ball situations. There is a portion where it could be only players with live ball timeout power and that is less fine. I like timeouts on dead balls. This should be the rule. I liked Olympic basketball for the most part.
4) Eliminating baskets on charges.
One of the most confusing rules that only exists in college basketball is that you can score on an offensive foul. Why can this happen? No one knows. It’s another rule that penalizes the defense. It adds in that confusing thing where there is a foul but the points still count and everyone thinks it’s on the defense. This happened in a UC game this year.
5) Reducing the shot clock.
The shot clock should be 30 seconds. The rule suggests moving it to 30 or 24, but 24 just doesn’t seem realistic. A shorter clock doesn’t eliminate slower paces, but it adds more possessions to games which should increase scoring. Teams getting into their offenses faster is a good thing.
There are also a couple of proposed rules that reflect NBA rules, such as widening the lane and the continuation call. Widening the lane could very much happen. Continuation will probably not happen, as it shouldn’t. Not for college. If some or all of these rules were implemented, I think we would keep seeing growth in college basketball. I am a fan of those 5 being added on next season. The only one that would take any getting use to is the shot clock. The charge and 10 second addendums should have already been in the rule book. The goal is to clean up the game. These rules are the windex.
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