King,

On point #14, I thought I knew where you were going, but you ended up going somewhere else.

Approximately eight seconds after that desperation heave you mention, there was another interesting fouling situation in the Illinois-Washington game. With Washington up 3, and in the double bonus, the announcers mentioned that if Washington could foul Illinois' Dee Brown on the floor, before he was able to take a shot, they'd put him on the line for 2. He'd be in the difficult position of having to miss the second shot on purpose, and hope for an offensive rebound, because there'd be no other way to compensate for the 3 point deficit by shooting 2 at the line.

To me, this doesn't quite seem right. The double bonus situation is supposed to punish Washington for excessive fouling. But in this case, they'd be able to leverage it to their advantage -- if they weren't in the double bonus, the foul would allow Illinois to run a play from out of bounds to get Brown a look at the 3. Washington didn't end up going the fouling route, and let Brown take a 3... which he missed. But they came a lot closer to losing than they would have if they'd fouled. It seems weird to me that a quick foul might have secured their win. Any thoughts? Should a team be allowed to opt-out of shooting free throws in a bonus situation, if they'd prefer the chance to inbound?

I agree with King's ideas about center court. There are many instances when defenses get "penalized" for playing good defense. If I can tip the ball out of your hands back across half court, where you're not allowed to take the ball yourself, I should get the ball, because you failed to keep possession. I also wish they would have jump balls instead of the possession arrow, but at least that's a pretty fair way to save time and keep the game moving.

The time outs being called during legitimate action is getting out of hand. During some of these games, especially at the end of close games, there were times when I simply said, "What the hell is going on?" Players are in the middle of taking shots, diving on the floor, etc. The jumping-out-of-bounds-grabbing-the-ball-calling-time-out-in-one-motion thing gets awarded more than I'd like to see also. I agree 100% that you can't call TO during the action. Coaches shouldn't be allowed to call timeout at all. Only the player with the ball should be allowed to call TO, and only if he's unguarded. Good defense should be rewarded, especially in college basketball where the players aren't as good at shooting.

Finally, just about CBS' coverage: there was one thing they did that was unconventional that I liked. A few times, if the action was staying on one end of the court, CBS would show a shot of the court from the very corner of the baseline the offense was attacking. The camera looked like it was about 10 rows back, so it was only slightly above floor level and stayed that way until possession changed when it went back to the standard side view. It was a new, but not completely alien angle to show, and it offered an interesting way to see how the plays developed including seeing lanes for cutting to the basket you can't always see as easily with the side view. No big deal, just a neat angle to offer that actually added to my ability to see the game unfold, which is the exact opposite of what most gimmicky camera angles give you in sports.

JLS mentions how he likes when refs officiate with their mouths instead of their whistles when defusing a conflict. I find that practice, along with officiating with a whistle on a play following a dust-up (as in the quick off-the-ball foul called on one of the participants in the previous confrontation just to “settle things down”), completely ridiculous. Refs, I think, should restrict themselves to passing judgment on what happens and should avoid actually controlling the action on the court except as players adjust to the officials’ calls. Refs, for example, don’t step in and prevent a player from traveling before he does so because that’s a basic rule that any player should follow, but they often talk an angered player off the ledge, influencing his behavior in relation to the rules without actually punishing him. Preventing one team’s transgression puts that team’s opponent at a disadvantage because the refs have purposely guided a player’s behavior in a way advantageous to him and to his team. The rules have corresponding punishments for violating rules; let the refs control a game that way.

And I think they would if college basketball’s rules were more reasonable regarding technical fouls. If a tech didn’t also count as a personal foul, refs would likely be more inclined to actually call one when warranted, and they may actually be less inclined to cop out with the double technical or with no call at all. And speaking of cop-outs (cops-out?), what’s with all the jump balls on blocked shots? Doesn’t the offensive player actually have to land with the ball as the defender blocks the shot as the offensive player travels all the way to the ground? And as for another rule change, I wouldn’t mind if that play were ruled a travel, which would make more sense to me and which would reward the defense for offensive ineptitude.

Freddie deBoer proposes lowering the rims in the women’s game, an idea that would actually make some sense, though 9’ seems a little too low. Maybe 9’6” would be a fair compromise. As for that other big difference between the men’s and women’s game (that is, the size of the ball), I disagree that women would acclimate themselves to a larger ball. Compared to men, women already struggle with the smaller ball that they currently use, and that ball handling and shooting “are the strengths of the women's game already” is an idea commonly proposed to bolster the perception of women’s basketball that just doesn’t hold up, at least under my quick and rudimentary look at some statistics. Here are the numbers for field goal percentage, turnovers, and assists by team in the NBA for this season and the WNBA for 2005:

FG% NBA: Median 45.2, Range 42.9-48.2; WNBA: Median 42.8, Range 40-45.2

Assists/game NBA: Median 20.65, Range 17.8-26.6; WNBA: Median 15.2, Range 12.7-16.9

TO/game NBA: Median 13.6, Range 10.8-16.9; WNBA: Median 14.7, Range 12.5-16.8

But wait, women’s games are 40 minutes while men’s are 48:

Assists/min NBA: Median .43, Range .37-.55; WNBA: Median .38, Range .32-.42

TO/min NBA: Median .28, Range .23-.35; WNBA: Median .38, Range .31-.42

Better stats for measuring shooting and ball handling may exist, but these were are the ready and pretty standard, so I used them. The numbers for turnovers especially suggest to me that women’s basketball has bigger problems than being relatively ground bound and that it’s not as fundamentally sound as people say.