If the famously demonstrative Sean Miller looks a little mellower on the sidelines this season, it might not be just because he has arguably the nation’s best team.
Arizona’s coach won’t have to yell as hard when his team is on the opposite side of the court, thanks to a coaches box that has expanded from 28 to 38 feet. The new line stops just nine feet shy of the midcourt line.
“I know that sometimes it appears that I’m always yelling,” Miller said. “That rule will actually help me quite a bit. To communicate with your point guard with your team away from your bench, you have to project your voice. Sometimes it looks like you’re yelling at someone and really, you’re just trying to get them to hear you, especially on the road.”
There’s a tradeoff: While coaches were rarely penalized for creeping outside of the old box, even roaming to 39 feet could be trouble now.
“It came with a directive to me that we strictly enforce the coaches’ box,” NCAA officials coordinator J.D. Collins told the Star during an officiating conference in Phoenix earlier this fall. “We’re giving them something, and we’re also gonna say, ‘Now, you need to stay in the coaching box.’”
Coaches will be warned the first time they step out of the box and assessed a technical foul if they do it again.
Of course, if they roam outside of the box and scream at a referee, there is no warning — just an immediate technical. But since coaches won’t have to project their voices as far to reach the refs, either, it may be less of an issue.
“It will also cut down on coaches yelling at referees,” Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot, chair of the NCAA basketball rules committee, was quoted as saying upon the rule’s approval in May. “If you give them more space, they’ll be held to a higher standard.”
The new coaches box was one of 22 mostly minor rule changes that go into effect this season. Arizona will play a final exhibition game Sunday against Chico State, and open its season Friday against Northern Arizona.
In the past several years, the NCAA’s rule and emphasis changes have mostly revolved around creating more offensive freedom of movement and improving the flow of the game.
Many of this year’s new rules also work toward those same goals in more subtle ways.
Among the more significant changes:
- The shot clock will be reset to 20 seconds (or the time remaining, if greater) instead of the full 30 seconds when a defense commits a foul and the ball is to be inbounded.
Collins says the change should lead to more possessions and thus more scoring, while Miller said it will be particularly important toward the end of a close game.
“It’s a really good rule because it makes the game faster, and it allows a point differential at the end to be less meaningful,” Miller said. “If you’re up six or down six, that 10 seconds is a big deal. If I’m up six, give me an extra 10 seconds a couple times at the end and that really works to my advantage. But the fact that it only resets to 20 now gives me more of an opportunity (if down six) to make that comeback.”
Collins said 20 seconds was chosen because the offensive team typically uses about 10 seconds to get the ball into the frontcourt anyway, while also noting that a previous rule resetting to 15 seconds on a kicked ball was changed to 20 for the sake of consistency.
- When a second warning is issued for a delay that could result in a technical foul, all further delays will be automatic technicals even if they are for different types of delays.
- Before, Collins said, teams were warned for various violations, which ultimately slowed down the flow of the game.
“In the past, every type of play was by itself, so you got a warning and (only if it was the same issue) the second time it’s a technical,” Collins said. “But now if you have a warning for batting the ball and then a warning for not coming out of the huddle you get two warnings and the third one becomes a technical foul for all the types of things.
“There was just too many warnings for too many things so we’re tightening it up just a little bit.”
- If a player is hurt on a flagrant foul or bleeding from any foul, only his replacement will be allowed to shoot free throws.
If a player is hurt but not bleeding on a personal foul, the opposing coach will choose the free-throw shooter from among the four remaining players on the floor.
That rule was instituted in 2009 to prevent players from faking injuries.
- A screener cannot have the inside of his feet be any wider apart than the width of his shoulders.
“We’re hoping this rule change is going to help us on screens, particularly when the contact happens below the waist,” said Bobby Dibler, the Pac-12’s officiating coordinator. “It’s the contact we miss more often down low because we let the screener set up too wide.”
- The “cylinder rule” defining the space up and around an offensive player that he has to make a normal basketball move been expanded to include room to pivot.
“Last year, we allowed more space for an offensive player to shoot, pass or start a dribble,” Collins said. “Now if an offensive player has the ball and pivots — and the defender comes up and straddles the leg of the guy and makes contact, that’s a defensive foul.”
- Three-tenths of a second will automatically be taken off the clock when a ball is touched on an inbounds play and the official immediately signals to stop the game.
In the past, Dibler said, referees would spend minutes in front of a monitor just to determine what fraction of a second should be taken off. He said they often came up with two-tenths of a second.
“I have no idea how long two-tenths of a second is,” Dibler said. “Now three-tenths come off automatically, so we don’t have to break up the flow of the game. That’s one less time we have to go to the monitor and everybody thinks we go to the monitor too often.”
Officials do get the chance to go to the monitor in the last two minutes to determine if a secondary defender is in the restricted area — where he can’t draw a charge — but Collins said officials reviewed only two such plays all season while experimenting with the rule in Big Ten and Mid American Conference games.
Ultimately, having officials make fewer trips to the monitor can be a good thing for the game, too, just as the emphasis of offensive freedom of movement, which Collins said remains a primary goal of officials.
“The rules changes have helped the flow of the game and the scoring,” Collins said. “The focus on reducing physicality to create freedom of movement has also assisted the scoring.
“I think everyone likes to see scoring and therefore, if scoring continues to go up, I think we’d be very pleased. Some of this year’s rule changes were positive toward that.”
