City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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Update (6/8/15, 7:00 PM): The NCAA's Playing Rules Oversight Committee has officially announced that it made all the changes recommended to it by the Rules Committee.

This includes the following:

• Shortened shot clock (35 seconds to 30 seconds)
• Fewer timesouts (four instead of five)
• Coaches can no longer call live-ball timeouts
• Restricted arc goes from three feet to four feet
• 10-second count to advance ball does not reset after a timeout
• No more 5-second closely guarding call
• Class B technical fouls (hanging on rim, etc.) now only one FT
• Removal of prohibition against pre-game dunking

Original Story: Several significant changes proposed by the NCAA Rules Committee last month were approved by the Playing Rules Oversight Panel, the organization announced on Monday.

The most noteworthy alteration comes with the reduction of the shot clock from 35 seconds to 30, which the NCAA is hoping will help reverse the trend of lower-scoring, more defensive-minded games.

While a shortened shot clock should ultimately mean more possessions and thus more scoring, there were a few who felt like it wouldn't ultimately address the main problem behind the lack of scoring. The new shot clock was previewed in the 2015 NIT, but it didn't seem to have much of an impact on the games.

"The debate started this year, when scoring went down again, and some of the games weren’t that enjoyable to watch, but the numbers are the numbers, they did it in the postseason NIT, and it didn’t increase scoring," Saint Joseph's head coach Phil Martelli told CoBL last month. "So if they want to try something to get the blood flowing in basketball, I’m all good with that.”

​Also included in the packet of rules changes was the reduction of timeouts from five to four; the initial Tweet by the NCAA was unclear if there were any further alterations, though the initial proposals also included the stipulation that head coaches are no longer allowed to call live-ball timeouts, as well as one that said any timeout called within 30 seconds of a media timeout automatically becomes the media timeout.

Penn head coach Steve Donahue, who spent the last year as a broadcaster, has a unique perspective amongst the local coaches in just how much games could drag on under the old timeout structure.

“I love it," he said. "I’d be in favor of three timeouts the whole game. I just think with our media timeouts already, you get four a half already and then you get four for one team, four for another, it’s plenty."

It is not yet known how these changes will affect Division II and Division III schools, who do not typically have media timeouts during games.