A much-needed rule change has made college basketball a much better game in 2023-24
If you’re one of those unfortunate souls who tuned out college basketball ages ago, who complained about the physical play and the plodding pace, you’re missing out.
In case you haven’t noticed, the 2023-24 version of college hoops has featured teams that actually know how to put the ball through the basket.
Lots of them, it turns out. Through last weekend’s games, Alabama (91.1) and Arizona (90.1) were averaging over 90 points per game. Even better, 44 more teams in Division I were averaging 80-or-more points per contest.
Compare that to last season, when not a single team finished the campaign averaging 90 points per game. Just 18 averaged 80-or-more points per contest.
So what’s the reason behind this sudden explosion of offense? A simple rule change.
Back in June, the NCAA Playing Rules and Oversight Panel announced a much-needed alteration to the block/charge rule. The new guideline “required a defender to be in position to draw a charge at the time the offensive player plants a foot to go airborne for a shot.”
As well, the new rule stated that “a secondary defender has to be outside the restricted-area arc.”
No more sliding in front of a driving offensive player. No more secondary defender appearing out of nowhere in an attempt to take a charge. No more instances of a defender trying to position himself underneath an offensive player in the air in hopes of drawing an offensive foul.
“Our goal is to try to reduce the number of charges that are called,” said Tennessee coach Rick Barnes, the chairman of the committee. “We want to give more time to the offensive player to adjust to defensive player movement and reduce the hard collisions that are taking place.”
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Unlike previous half-hearted tweaks to the block/charge rule, or officials’ “areas of emphasis” that were enforced early in the season but long forgotten by the time January rolled around, this time the change has worked.
College basketball games are no longer littered with those controversial block/charge calls in which not even reasonable minds can agree what is actually a block or charge. As a result, player movement is easier, the game is cleaner and scoring has increased.
Twelve of the 14 SEC teams are scoring at a higher clip than a season ago. Kentucky leads the way with a 14.2 percent increase over last season. John Calipari’s Cats averaged 74.5 points per game in 2022-23. Heading into Tuesday night’s game at Mississippi State, they were averaging 88.7.
Florida is averaging 13.6 points more per game this season. Auburn has seen a 9.9 points per game increase, Tennessee a 9.5, Alabama a 9.3, LSU and Mississippi State a 9.2 each.
The only two that are not scoring more points are the league’s two worst teams — Vanderbilt is down 5.8 points per game from a year ago; Missouri 6.9. The duo has two conference wins between them.
Consider that in 2022-23, SEC teams hit the century mark just nine times in the regular season — Alabama five times, Missouri twice, Florida and Kentucky once each.
With this year’s regular season still two weeks from completion, SEC teams have hit the century mark 24 times — Alabama eight times, Kentucky five, Auburn three, Florida twice with Arkansas, LSU, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Missouri and Tennessee once each.
Kentucky’s five games of 100-or-more points — including UK’s 117-95 thrashing of Alabama last Saturday — is more than the Wildcats managed in the previous six seasons combined.
The coaches can’t say they weren’t warned about the impact of the block/charge change either.
“It’s going to be drastically different,” said Curtis Shaw, the Big 12’s director of officials, at the league’s media days. “What I’ve told coaches is, and what I want the media to understand, we watched 100 plays from last year that were called charges — 96 are now blocks under the new rule. It’s almost impossible to take a legal charge anymore. Not impossible but almost.”
And college basketball is a better game for it.
