City of Basketball Love

Andrew Albert (@AndrewJAlbert01)
--

(Ed. Note: CoBL spoke to several local Division I coaches about the proposed rule changes in NCAA Division I basketball. The overview of the rule changes, with thoughts from many coaches, can be found here.)

If you’ve watched college basketball over the last few years, you’ve heard play-by-play commentators and color analysts use the term “flawed” when it comes to the game. Columns have been written, debates have been sparked, words have been exchanged on Twitter.

The NCAA has taken notice of some of the complaints of the college game and are taking steps to try and fix them, or so they think. Proposals are on the table to change or adopt a handful of rules they think would make the game more appealing, the most notable of which is the 30-second shot clock.

Shaving five seconds off the shot clock does not seem like anything drastic. The NBA has a 24-second shot clock that seems to work just fine for it. The NCAA went through a trial run of the 30-second shot clock, implementing it for the postseason NIT, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference in the scoring column.

But there would be a difference. It may not be visible to the eye, but it would be there. It would be the NCAA trying to be like the NBA, and that’s not okay for a number of reasons.

“I would caution you that the game is not the NBA game,” newly-minted Penn head coachSteve Donahue said. “We don’t have all these skilled guys around the floor, we don’t have illegal defenses, we can do a lot of things on defense that the NBA can’t do, so you’ve got to be careful that you don’t think the game is just going to get better because of the shorter clock.”

Yes, more shots will go off during the game. There will be more possessions. But will they be quality possessions?

It is hard to guard a team for 35 seconds to force a shot clock violation. Teams will be more willing to run and gun, hoisting up questionable shots because they don’t have as much time to run an offense.

It may not be very evident in the game to game, or really have very much effect on some particular teams, but it does matter. Changing the shot clock signifies trying to be like the NBA, if nothing else.

“I think one of the things that we have to understand as coaches is everybody talks about being like the NBA,” Drexel coach Bruiser Flint said. “We’re not like the NBA because we don’t have NBA players. Not everybody can put five NBA players out there, that’s why the NBA is different from college basketball.”

College basketball is one of the unique entities in sport. March Madness has grown into one of the highest revenue producing events in sports. There is nothing like college basketball.

Why do we have to try and change that?

Sure, scores in the 90s would be cool to see; nobody likes to watch a 55-53 game in which both teams shoot the ball poorly. But if you watched Wisconsin at all this season, you could see just how beautifully they executed the intricacies of the game. The Badgers didn’t have a top-five draft pick, just a team full of players who came together for a common goal.

That’s college basketball.

“Even in Europe, they’re pro players most of the time. Pros,” Flint continued. “So you’re not going to have a team full of pro players. You want it to mirror the NBA but the play’s not going to mirror the NBA because it’s the NBA.”

Kentucky had the most NBA draft picks on its team this year. The Wildcats didn’t win the national championship or even get to play for a shot at it. That’s the beauty of college basketball. When mid-majors like VCU and George Mason can make magical runs to the Final Four, college basketball is at its greatest.

Yes, the change in the shot clock is minimal, and it might not even change the game very much. What it signifies is much more than that. Let college basketball be what it is. Don’t try and make it into an NBA tryout. That robs the sport of everything that it is.

And what it is is incredible.