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PACIFIC-12 CONFERENCE MEN'S MEDIA DAY

October 15, 2015

Bobby Dibler

San Francisco, California

BOBBY DIBLER: Hi, everybody. It's a pleasure being here. This is my third year, and looking forward to an exciting year.
I know that the talent level in the league this year relative to the teams and the players is going to be really good. Hopefully we, as a third team on the floor, the officials, can match that.
I wanted to discuss with you today kind of a little bit of the state‑of‑the‑art of what we think‑‑ where the Rules Committee thinks the game is at. They've got three major concerns relative to our game and where it's at. One of them is the pace of play. Another one is the stoppage of our game. Our game used to be‑‑ we used to be able to play our basketball game in about an hour and 55 minutes. Now it's‑‑ that's with the same TV time‑out structure that we've always had, but now it's taking 2:10, 2:12, 2:13. So, again, the stoppage of play is of real concern to the Rules Committee. And the third they have is the physicality of the game.
The Rules Committee looked at the 1975 National Championship game this spring in their meeting and they compared it to the championship game of this past season, and it looks like two different totally‑‑ totally two different games. What many of the rules have been changed is to mirror, trying to get the physicality back out of the basketball game.
I'm not going to go over every rule change that we have. I've picked out some that I think are more important than others that I wanted to discuss with anybody. If anybody has any questions as we go through these before we go to the next slide, just raise your hand and we'll try to get it addressed before we move on.
Everybody knows that the restricted arc to be increased from three feet to four feet. Don't see that from an officiating standpoint as a big change, but what the Rules Committee is really concerned about is the hope that increasing it to four feet, we're going to have less crashes and injuries and things like that.
From an officiating standpoint, it won't really change anything because the rule and the interpretation of the rule is still the same as it was with the three‑foot arc.
Two years ago we just had a real challenge on plays to the rim relative to the airborne shooter and the upward motion and being airborne and things like that, and we really kind of botched that to where we tried to get better at it a year ago, and it simplified it a little bit more us this year. To be a legal secondary defender on plays to the rim, all you've got to do is get there before the offensive player goes airborne. You get there, as soon as he's done airborne, then it's going to be a block. And one of the things that they added to that is you can get there and be legal or be retreating or moving backward and still be legal relative to being in legal guarding position.
We've had a play that's kind of been in our game now relative pretty much to the three‑point try. We've kind of had the kick‑out play. We've kind of had the ball fake play and what have you to where the defender goes into the air. And the interpretation we've used in past years has been once a defender goes airborne, if he's not completely straight up and down, then the onus is on him relative to any fouls being called.
And we've had some situations through the years where the offensive player shooting the three ball will kick out and get the call or sometimes where the offensive player gets his airborne defender in the air and he'll kind of as he's shooting that three, kind of jump into him.
The rule change this year is if either one of those happen, it's either going to be a no call or a play on‑‑ excuse me, it's either going to be an offensive foul or a play on.
And again, if the defender goes right at the shooter and runs over him, of course that's a defensive foul. But if there's any movement by the offense, once the defender is airborne and going to miss him and the offense jumps into him, no call or a potential foul on the offense.
We've clarified verticality. We've always used the word "verticality" in referencing the defensive player, and what the Rules Committee has done this year is they've put in a new word called an imaginary cylinder, whereby both players have an imaginary cylinder around them which is from their back, to the width of their shoulders, their hands up in front of them straight up, and both players have that cylinder as their space. So any movement that we have relative to taking up someone else's space or in their cylinder, then the onus for the foul is on you.
As you know, defensively many teams will pretty much kind of get up in your, as we kind of say, kind of get up in your grille and really get up into their space. If they're violating that space of that person's cylinder and there's contact, it's going to be a defensive foul.
The same thing applies to an offensive player. If he backs him down and he's getting into that defensive player's cylinder, it's going to be a player control foul. I think the usage of that word "cylinder" is going to help us do a better job with referencing that play.
Time‑outs, coaches can't call time‑outs this year during live ball situations. Any time‑‑ players can call time‑out, but coaches can't call time‑out during live ball situations. We get a dead ball situation, of course coach can call a time‑out.
And one of the things that I mentioned this morning at the coaches' meeting is from the time goes through the basket until the offensive player gets it to make the throw‑in, that is a dead ball period and the coach can call a time‑out during that particular period. And I think it is something that gets pretty important and critical as the game is winding down because you want to score and take a time‑out.
Hopefully the coaches will be pretty astute at that, and we as the officials will also be right in line with it as far as granting that time‑out.

Q. If the ball is being put back into play after it's gone through the cylinder and the coach has that window to call a time‑out but misses it, then what's the result? Is it a technical?
BOBBY DIBLER: No, we just don't grant it. If he calls a time‑out after the offensive player is on the in line making the throw in and he calls time‑out, we're just going to ignore it. And again, we've had five timeouts per team for the past good many years, and one 30 has been removed this year, so instead of four 30s and a full, you have three 30s and a full, and you've got to use one or lose it in the first half. So that means the carryover into the second half could possibly be a 60 and two 30s.
We've got another change relative to timeouts, and again, this is a rule change that's really got to do with trying to shorten the game. If we're within 30 seconds of a media time‑out, let's say we're at 16:20 and a team calls a time‑out, that team will be charged for the time‑out, but we'll go to a media. That will become a media time‑out. Even if he calls a 30, that will become a media time‑out, and if we are inside‑‑ so what we're going to have in that situation is we'll have a time‑out at, say, 16:20, and then at the 16‑minute time‑out, we're already taken that media, so we'll play on through that. So we're not going to have a time‑out at 16:20 and then another media time‑out at 16:00. I hope that makes sense.
And if we play through that 16‑minute mark stoppage of play that will immediately be ‑‑ if a team calls a time‑out at 15:55, that team will be charged for the time‑out, but that will also go to the media. So we won't come right back in play and then that following stoppage have the 16‑minute media time‑out. Hopefully that makes sense. But, again, what the Rules Committee is doing is to try and take some of that downtime out of the game.
We've got a change on the 10‑second count in the backcourt. For a good number of years, and I think this has kind of been driven a little bit by the NABC, it's always been felt that the defensive team has not been rewarded for good defensive play in the backcourt, and so the change this year is if we have a defensive team that knocks the ball out of bounds, let's say as an example that at seven seconds on the count, offense will retain it and they've got three seconds to advance the ball into front court.
If there's a held ball that's forced by the defense, we have the same interpretation there, and if we happen to have a technical foul on the offense in that same situation, the clock will not be reset.
Now, bear in mind that if during that period of time, particularly if it's late in the basketball game and we know the counts at 8 and we're going to have two seconds to get it across, if the coach elects to call a time‑out at that time, then he'll get a new 10‑second count, only if the offense calls a time‑out. If the defense calls a time‑out during that period of time, there's no reset of the clock.
Questions?

Q. Could you go back to cylinder, talking about cylinder, and say the shooter is shooting the basketball and the defender hits the top of his wrist. Would that be called a foul, where we've got a culture where they shoot and the defender hits him on the follow‑through, could you answer that one? And also when the guy is at the free‑throw line shooting his free throw and the defender backs into him while he's hitting his free throw, will those two areas be called?
BOBBY DIBLER: On the free throw, we've got a live ball situation and if there's a foul, there's a foul, and that's going to be called.
The cylinder, as I referenced earlier, pretty much has to do with verticality, and think about verticality, which is my space, but again, if an offensive player shoots the basketball and he gets hit, maybe he's outside the cylinder, whatever, he gets hit on the arm, that's still going to be a foul.

Q. So if this foul went through and the defender hits him right on that wrist, you're saying that that's going to be called?
BOBBY DIBLER: That's going to be a foul, yeah. What we're really talking about is the body contact and what have you that has placed‑‑ that's taken place where let's just say the offensive post player gets the basketball and begins his dribbling and start backing him down, backing him down, backing him down. We see that play all the time. That first back down this year, he's moved into his space, that should be a foul.
Any other questions?
We've got the shot clock, as everybody knows, has been reduced to 30 seconds. Nobody knows for sure how that's going to play out. Just looking at it personally and visualizing it, I don't see a huge change, I just know it's going to cause offenses to get into their offensive‑‑ let's get ready to score mentality, and we as officials are going to have to be ready for that.
And that's going to happen pretty quickly because if it takes seven or eight seconds to get the ball across midcourt, we've only got 20 or so seconds to go. I don't see a big change in what we as officials do, but the one change that's gone along with that is it used to be that you could hold the ball for something less than five, dribble it for something less than five, and then hold it for something less than five.
Now what we've got is a dribbler, as long as he's dribbling and being defended, there is no closely guarded call. So as an example, you hold it for five, the offensive player, the dribbler could hold it for 15 seconds, and a year ago that would have been a held ball situation, five second count, this year that goes off. I know those two are in conjunction with each other based on reducing the shot clock.
Reminds you of a little bit way back in the days when Phil Ford played for North Carolina and he could dribble the ball for a nonstop period of time trying to shorten the game.
I don't know if y'all recall, but a year ago there was a play that got a lot of media attention, and I believe it was on the Louisville‑Kentucky game whereby a Louisville player kind of went to the floor after a rebound play and he got up and he was holding his jaw like he'd been really hit hard and he kind of staggered around a little bit. And then when they reviewed the play, they found out that the contact was a foot away and there was no contact. This all started with flopping under the basket and what have you where players used to fall before the contact ever happened, trying to draw a foul. And I think this play that we saw last year is kind of what's going on, particularly with the elbows now and the elbow rules that we have, of players many times they do get hit and many times they don't.
But this year, if, upon review for a flagrant foul, we find out that there was no contact and the player who grabbed his jaw, went to the floor, whatever, did not get hit at all, that will be an unsporting technical foul, which means that's two free throws, and that counts as a personal foul for you and also counts as a team control foul‑‑ I mean, a team foul for the team.
Little changes, but again, you won't review that, but if we are going to review for any type of a flagrant foul and we discover that in the review, then we could actually go over there and find out that there was not a flagrant foul but we come away with a technical foul.
Another thing that we're trying to do relative to saving some time throughout the game is we've got to enforce‑‑ we've got to enforce the length of timeouts. We've got to enforce the length of time that it takes to replace an injured player, and one of the things that we're doing now is we're classifying those as one‑shot technical fouls. So let's just say that a team‑‑ we've got a 30‑second time‑out, and we all know those take 45 to 50 seconds. If we have a team now that is not ready to play, we will give them one learning, we will let them know, Coach, you've been warned, we've got to have you out on the floor ready to play. We'll make sure the scorer knows and notes it in the book. And then the next occurrence of that will be a one‑shot technical foul, and that also goes for an injured player, and that also goes for a disqualified player.
We've got timeline parameters that they need to make those subsections. So that will be one warning for each one of those. We hope everybody buys into it.
But, again, the intent of the rule is kind of get the game and save some time and shorten how long it takes to play our game.
We've had a situation on replays and told the coaches this morning, we had four situations last year where we had shot clock violations that were undetected, and last year we could go check them in the last two minutes of a basketball game.
This year we can go check those, if we go check them immediately right after we're suspicious that we had a shot clock violation. The officials in past years have had to hear the horn to make a judgment, so there are some times when they're at that monitor review and it seems like they're there forever, that they can't make a decision because they can't clearly hear the horn. If that happens this year and they can identify zero on the shot clock, then they'll go with the zero. Again, that review can take place throughout the entire game.
And quite frankly that's been something that I've been pushing for a good number of years because I think any time you're talking about points on or off the board, whether it's in the last two minutes or it's two minutes and 25 seconds, we're still talking about points on or off the board, and I have a hard time identifying the difference. So they'll be able to do that at any time. And again, zero now is zero, and from the officiating family, that is really good news.
And again, on the shot clock violations, we're only talking about made baskets. If the player does not score we're not going to review it. The question was posed to me this morning, well, what if the offense gets it. Well, the rule is what the rule is. It's too late to correct it. So it's got to be done right on the spot, and again, only on successful field goals.
I don't know how closely you all get into flagrant fouls and what have you, but in years past we've only been able to review for flagrant 2 fouls, which are the most severe of the flagrant fouls. This year we can go over and review‑‑ if we've got a foul on the play, we can go over and review for a flagrant 2, flagrant 1, and we can come away with, if we have a foul, is we could have F 2, we could have an F 1, we could have a common foul, or we could actually one of those fouls we call fool the ref, and we could come away with a no call, if we have a foul on the play.
If we don't have a foul on the play and we go review for something that's flagrant, we can come away with an F 2, an F 1 or a common foul, but we cannot come away with a no call.
We had to‑‑ a rule was put in two years ago that we could review who touched it last on out‑of‑bounds plays in the last two minutes. We can still do that, but one of the things that we had some problems with were substitutions that were being made during that period of time, and sometimes you're playing offense, defense, defense, offense, and what have you, and we get into a situation where it's too late to make that second substitution.
Well, this year when you're over there reviewing who touched it last, you will not be able to make any substitutions until that's been determined on whose ball it is, and then both teams have the opportunity to make a substitution.
Any questions?
Again, the total number of rule changes that we have, counting the uniforms and what have you, are something over 30 this year. I just kind of wanted to run us through where we were with the game relative to the rule changes.
The last thing I want to talk about is the general philosophy of what is really the state of our game, and it's been put out to coordinators like myself across the country. It's been put out to the officials. There are clinics that are going on. There are two more to go, that we really want the rules and the plays to be called as the rules are written.
We've got to reduce physicality, and what you all are going to see early in the game is you're going to see a lot of fouls and a lot of whistles on plays that you're going to think that was really maybe not much there. But again, in referencing going to the guy with the ball, in referencing freedom of movement, post play, where guys are getting chucked, they're getting held and what have you, there are going to be whistles on these plays.
Our hope is that very, very early in the season that the players adjust very quickly to knowing that we've got to put some space in there and there are some things that are going to be called that haven't been called before, and that they'll adjust and we can get back to playing the basketball game with just not a lot of whistles. But I can just promise you, the whistle is going to blow and it's going to blow often early in the season, and like I said, I hope we get back to fewer whistles as the season goes on.
What the Rules Committee has done now is they've reached out to a number of different organizations getting input from them as to how they feel they look to the national media across the country. They're looking to the NABC. There are a number of committees that the NCAA has in place, and it's pretty much been unanimous that the level of physicality in our game is much, much too high and we've got to get back to making it a game of skill and maybe not as much a game of strength.
Any other questions, anybody?
I appreciate everybody's time. Thanks a lot. Oh, one more question.

Q. Very intrigued by this faking and the technical foul that could result. Does that have to be reviewed or can that be by the discretion of the official?
BOBBY DIBLER: It's only when we go review for a flagrant foul. I mean, we just can't on our own say, let's go see if that kid got hit.
Now, again, if we feel a flagrant foul occurred and we're over there and we detect that during that period of time, absolutely. What we're trying to do obviously with the strength of the Rules Committee has put on this particular interpretation and how it's going to be adjudicated, we're hoping to take that out of the play and we won't be dealing with that as much as we have in the past. But again, I think that once we got the plays and the elbows and things like that involved, seems to me that's where that kind of got its traction.

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