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Interesting story on potential 2016 rules changes for Men's Basketball, by Andy Katz.
Here are the highlights:
SHOT CLOCK:
Men's basketball is likely heading toward reducing its shot clock from 35 to 30 seconds, NCAA rules committee chairman Rick Byrd told ESPN.com on Monday.
Byrd, the coach at Belmont, said a year ago that there was a 5 percent chance of the change happening, but he changed his tone Monday.
"Now there's a real decent chance," Byrd said. "It's pretty evident a lot more coaches are leaning that way. The opinion of coaches on the shot clock has moved significantly to reducing it from 35 to 30. And all indicators are pointing toward that."
Byrd said coaches, fans and media are expecting the rules committee to
do something that impacts scoring.
"There's not a lot we can do unless we rewrite the rules," he said. "There will be pressure to do something, and one of those things to do is to lower the shot clock to 30. I think that would improve the pace of play."
WIDER LANE:
Byrd said there will be discussion on widening the lane and the 3-point shot distance, but he doesn't expect any action on those two. He said one of the main reasons is that
they involve changing lines on the floor, and a number of college courts are already being redone in the spring for summer and fall use.
"When you start talking about lines on the floor, there is almost always experimenting before they change it," Byrd said. "You can't go from no serious discussion in May to changing the width of the lane. These are rules for all divisions, junior colleges and NAIA. These need to be done well in advance."
BLOCK/CHARGE
Byrd said he
does expect the block/charge arc to go from 3 to 4 feet to be in line with the NBA. He said if needed, that arc can be taped on the floor, as it has been during experimentation.
"I would say there is a great chance,
90 percent chance of that happening," he said. "It's just common sense. It's harder now for a player to get in position to draw a charge. A whole lot of people don't like the block/charge situation."
TIMEOUTS RULE:
Byrd also said there will be discussion about altering the timeout rule to create better flow. He said he would like to mimic the rule in women's basketball where if a coach calls a timeout within 30 seconds of a media timeout, then that becomes the TV timeout.
He said too often coaches will call a timeout, knowing they are getting a media timeout 15 seconds later, and that creates an even longer downtime for the fans in the stands and the TV audience.
Here is the link to the full story:
http://bleacherreport.com/tb/dgwA4?utm_s...basketball
