From Jay Bilas and I agree:
There is a lot to celebrate about the game this season, but ā¦
Let me start this rant by saying I love basketball more than anything. When you love something you fight for what is best for it and acknowledge when it needs proper care. If you have a beautiful house you donāt ignore the repair and maintenance of that valuable asset because you wish to celebrate its positives. If there is a fire in one part of the house, you donāt say that the rest of the place is amazing, so why worry about that blaze elsewhere? You yell āFIRE!ā and immediately address the danger it presents.
Well, we have a fire in college basketball, and it is spreading to the rest of our house. It is officiating. Not individual officials but the officiating of the game.
College basketballās officiating problem is getting worse. Several years ago, the administrators of the game made great strides to reduce overt physicality and allow offenses to have freedom of movement without being fouled. But, some five years ago, scoring had reached an all-time low and the games were suffering as a result. A lot of work was done to ameliorate the problem, to have the games called by the rules as written. As a result of the work done in that area, the game got significantly better.
Well, all those gains have been given back and we now have hockey games in the major conferences, not basketball games. It is, in a word, depressing. This season, freedom of movement does not exist and the college game more closely resembles the NBA in the 1990s, a physical slugfest and fistfight every night.
Turn on any major conference game, and you will see arm bars on ball handlers not in the post, handchecking, bumping and chucking of cutters, illegally riding cutters and screeners off of their paths, and overt physicality in the post area, including a lack of enforcement of verticality on shooters. Whatever you see on the floor in major conferences this season is not basketball and would not be allowed in the NBA or FIBA. Hell, it would not be allowed in the NFL on wide receivers. It is wrong and needs to be seriously addressed. Coaches are confounded and complaining, and so are the bloviating gasbags who announce the games.
The most damning data point? Fouls called are at an all-time low this season. Given how ridiculously physical this game has become, that is impossible. Officials are either missing the fouls committed or ignoring them. And it is clearly the latter. Individual officials cannot and should not be blamed, as they are just doing what their bosses are allowing them to do. The fault lies with the administration of the game.
The product we see on the floor is the responsibility of NCAA national coordinator of officials J.D. Collins, the conference supervisors of officials, the conference commissioners and the rules and competition committees. (Disclosure: I am a member of the NCAA Division I Menās Basketball Competition Committee.) This is not said lightly, but changes should be considered if this clear problem is not fixed. The conference commissioners should order their supervisors to crack down on officials to call the games according to the rules as written and interpreted. If they do not, the supervisors should be subject to replacement with people who will properly do the job.
The competition is great and perhaps has never been better. The players are incredibly athletic and skilled. But the officiating sucks. Coaches are teaching players to foul because they know the officials will not call it, and those coaches would be rank idiots if they did not adjust by teaching players to ādefendā according to how the games are called. But they are not teaching defense, they are teaching fouling because the officials will not call clear fouls.
Again, foul calls are at an all-time low . That is impossible if these games are officiated appropriately. Think of it this way: If cops allow drivers to go 80 mph in a 65 mph zone on the highway, speeding will not decrease. Speeding will increase. If traffic cops want to reduce speeding, they ticket it and drivers will adjust and watch their speed. If officials donāt call clear fouls, fouling will increase, not decrease. Nobody is asking that officials call ātouch fouls.ā On the contrary: Call the clear fouls and clean up the game so that offensive players are allowed freedom of movement.
Not every defender is capable of guarding a good offensive player one-on-one. If the defender gets beat, bring help and rotate. Bring a trap or double-team. But the defender cannot put an arm bar on the offensive player or illegally impede that player. That is what we allow now. It needs to be remedied but it is likely too late this season for significant change. What will the result of this be? We will get to the NCAA tournament, where the supervisor has a hammer over the officials. The officials will call the games as directed by the NCAA supervisor or they will not move on to further assignments. Some teams from major conferences will have to adjust to the games being called closer, as they should have been all season. After a season of hockey games, these teams will be required to play basketball. A few wonāt be able to adjust and will lose earlier than they should as a result.
Foul calls are at an all-time low. Marinate on that one for a while. That is a blistering indictment of officiating in the college game.
Rant over, as we get off of our high horse that is standing on a soapbox. Boy, that feels better, doesnāt it?
