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NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCEMay 15, 2015Rick ByrdJ.D. CollinsDan GavittDAVE WARLOCK: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to today's Men's Basketball Rules Committee teleconference. Our speakers today will include Rick Byrd, the head men's basketball coach at Belmont University and the chairman of the Rules Committee. Dan Gavitt, the vice president for men's basketball for the NCAA, and J.D. Collins, our national coordinator for men's basketball officiating. I'll turn the call over to Coach Byrd and he'll have an opening statement. RICK BYRD: Thank you. First I want to thank everyone for being on the call. Secondly I want to thank the Men's Basketball Committee for an extraordinary week of work, of hard work. I'm so impressed with their dedication to the game that we have in helping us to arrive at some rule changes and some emphasis that we think will make our game better. I think the areas of concern in our game have been about pace of play, they've been about scoring, they've been about increased physicality offensively. There are concerns about how long it takes to play our game sometimes, particularly as we've introduced review in the last two minutes. I think we've addressed all of these areas as best we can. Writing rules is not always easy. There's a lot of people in the room with different viewpoints. But the way this committee came together to try to do what's best for our game was pretty impressive to me. With that, we'll take questions. Q. Coach, I was wondering what role, if any, under the new structure, there's a Men's Basketball Oversight Committee, what role, if any, did they play? Were they in the negotiations? RICK BYRD: There was a representative of the committee in the room this week. But I think it's fair to say their role was not nearly as active a one as probably it's going to be going into the future. Q. With the 30‑second rule and the anticipated emphasis on full‑court pressure, what have you, defensively, was any thought given to not allowing backcourt timeouts, in other words, not allowing a coach or player to call a timeout until they cross mid‑court? And perhaps for J.D. Collins, how much input did officials actually have in making some of these rule changes that they're going to have to deal with? RICK BYRD: The first question about the timeouts in the backcourt. We didn't address eliminating that ability. We did, of course, take away the ability of the head coach to call a timeout during a live ball. But the player can still call one in the backcourt if they're in trouble. We discussed not resetting that, but the committee felt like, especially with the reduction in the number of timeouts, that you could spend a timeout to get your 10 seconds back in the backcourt. J.D. COLLINS: There were three officials in the room: one active official, one coordinator official, and myself in the room. The committee was quite kind in asking us our opinions on officiating the plays they were taking under consideration. Q. Rick, I'm curious, with these changes, I guess it's obviously very early, but have you received any sort of feedback from coaches on how they're going to react to this? RICK BYRD: We did meet for an hour‑and‑a‑half session with the Board of the National Association of Basketball Coaches. A lot of names on there that you'd recognize, for sure. And then, you know, a lot of names that people wouldn't because they represent coaches all over the country. We looked at the survey regarding all of these issues, maybe the shot clock in particular. Well over 60% of coaches were in favor of the reduction of the shot clock. That had some impact on that decision. During this week we talked to people, but we've been busy as we can be trying to get to this 2:00 teleconference. I haven't heard from any coaches so far on that, since we did it. Q. Do you know any other significant percentages from the survey in favoring change? RICK BYRD: We've got it somewhere, but I have so many pieces of paper in front of me, I don't know that I could pull it up. Like the restricted arc, 64% by Division I strongly agreed or agreed. In every area we looked at that. Sometimes you go ahead and make a rule because you think it's better for the game than just going by sheer numbers of votes. But it matters to us in every area. Q. There are obviously a lot of significant changes beyond just the shot clock in terms of the timeouts. Going through things in the committee, was there a lot of back and forth? How smoothly did it go to get to some of these very significant changes in the game? RICK BYRD: I would say there was some of both of that. Obviously what you want in the committee is people who have strong opinions and are not afraid to express them. But it was remarkable when it came to a vote. We had very few close votes. Everybody listened and at the end they tried to do what was in the best interest of the game, even though personally they might not have agreed with it. Look, we kind of had a charge, I don't know who from, but there were several issues. You've heard them and talked about them. The last two minutes of the game, how long they take. We tried to address that as best we can without changing our game as we know it, changing the way guys coach the game. There's never been any hard feelings in that room that I've ever seen. But, again, I can't say enough about how well‑stated their opinions were, how heartfelt they were, but then how people would in the end come together to agree to do something that would be best for our game. Q. Rick, how much concern was expressed about the ability of the coaches to use the change to a 30‑second clock as a defensive weapon rather than having the intended effect of making it a more offensive‑oriented game? RICK BYRD: There was a total discussion about the 30‑second shot clock, the pluses and minuses. In fact, when we got to that topic, I asked everyone in the room to give their opinion about how they felt about it, how it would affect the game. It was the most compelling time in the four years I've been on this committee to hear what folks thought. There are people in that room that personally think that 35 is better than 30. If there weren't, I'd be surprised and almost disappointed because it's not a perfect solution to anything. But we did talk about it. There's likely to be soft presses that slow the ball down, try to reduce the clock to even lower than it's been before. I don't know whether I should say this or not, but I told the guys in the room, This is the rule for the next two years. There's nothing in concrete that says college basketball doesn't find out this isn't a good thing and you go back to 35 seconds. I don't think you have to keep going down if it's not right for the game. Q. Rick, along those same lines, how much were you able to look at the results of games that were played in using the 30‑second clock as an experimental rule, to see if it increased scoring or if it had an opposite effect? RICK BYRD: We looked at it a lot. We looked at all those figures and we looked at them closely. None of them really indicated a negative effect in terms of scoring or possessions. I think that people were 35‑second shot clock advocates could say it didn't show a huge bump either. We don't think it's going to cause a huge bump. We think it's a part of the puzzle, just a piece that helps us get the game headed in the right direction. To us and to me, it's really more about the officiating initiative and getting fouls called that affect the flow of our game that's going to help that the most. Q. Rick, were there any thoughts at all or why wouldn't there be the thought of just trying to enable college ball to more resemble FIBA, which I know some of these rules have done? What's the harm in standardizing the game when certainly many of the players at the Division I level, the goal is to play at the highest level? RICK BYRD: I don't think the goal of college basketball is to prepare people for different types of games afterwards. College basketball has its own identity. I think part of what we tried to do was rob from the good rules of other associations at times and borrow those rules, use them. We looked at a lot of them. Frankly, I agree with you, FIBA has some good ones that we need to look more closely at. College basketball is a great game. There's a whole lot of people that like it better than any other form of basketball. So that's part of it, too. But I do think you saw that we took some of that. I'll be surprised if college basketball doesn't borrow some more of that in the future. Q. Rick, one thing that jumped out at me was the experimental rule about adding a foul for players. I wonder what that discussion was like, what prompted that, and how much support there is exploring whether or not to give players a sixth foul? RICK BYRD: When you're the chair of a committee, people run in to you, send you emails, coaches in recruiting weekends have talked to me a lot about this. There's some support generally. But I also thought that it might be a good time to consider six because if we are going to crack down a little bit more on the physicality of our game, simply call the fouls as they're called, on the one hand it might send a signal that you can be more physical, on the other hand you wouldn't be fouling important players out of the game or sitting them on the bench with 15 minutes to go in the first half. There was a lot of discussion about it. In the end I think it was almost kind of too much to add that one. The committee has always tried to experiment and see what it looks like when we can on rules, so that's where we ended up. Q. Dan, all these proposals have to be approved by the Playing Rules Oversight Panel next month. Do you expect them to all be approved or do you think there's going to be more discussion before all of them become the law of the land? DAN GAVITT: John Steinbrecher, who is the chair of the Playing Rules Oversight Panel was in attendance for the first day of the Men's Basketball Rules Committee meeting. He's very plugged in to what the proposals were, what the discussion was, has been kept up to speed along the way, especially as it relates to the restricted area arc, that it requires a new line on the court. I think the committee is hopeful that this can be implemented at the Division I level for this upcoming season. As you mention, PROP will have the final say on that. They're very well‑versed on all the rules that were considered. We do go out for membership comment for the next couple of weeks to make sure there's nothing that was overlooked or under‑considered. Then PROP will go through the approval process. DAVE WARLOCK: Thanks, everyone, for your time. Have a great weekend. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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