BIG 12 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL TIPOFF MEDIA DAY

October 19, 2022

Curtis Shaw

Media Day Press Conference

CURTIS SHAW: We have new leadership nationally in basketball. I'm excited about it. We have a new national coordinator of officials in Chris Rastatter. Chris was a long time on-the-court official. Worked in the Big 12 Conference. And he retired off the floor to take this job. So I'm excited about that.

We also have a new national rules coordinator in Jeff O'Malley. Jeff's the athletic director at Lamar. Refereed in our consortium.

And so I'm excited we've got new blood coming in together with the same visions for the future.

We'll go over a few tweaks in a minute but we've talked about how good basketball is in this league. This is the best basketball top to bottom without a doubt. When you talk to referees, you're going to hear them say it's the hardest league in the country to referee because every night is going to be highly competitive. Anybody can win. And we've got such an array of talented players and coaches. Our coaching staffs from 1 through 10, are unparalleled.

I like to trumpet our success a little bit. Before the pandemic the NCAA would take 10 referees to the Final Four down on the court and one as an alternate. And the past five years that that occurred, eight of the 10 referees all worked games in the Big 12 Conference. Since the pandemic, they increased another standby, so nine on the court, two alternates. We've had nine of the 11 the last two years.

Our depth and talent of our staff -- they work other leagues in basketball, but they're working Big 12 Conference games. And I think that's a real tribute to our staff.

This year is a non-rules year but there are a couple of tweaks coming in that are really being pushed by the new national coordinator. One of them which we don't have film on is coaches.

I'm in the process of visiting all our schools and talking to them. The NCAA wants coaches in the coaching box. Some people say why do they worry about it; I'm just coaching? I get all that. But they've made it clear that officials that don't enforce it this year are not going to have an opportunity to work the NCAA Tournament.

So you're going to see a more emphasis on keeping coaches in the coaching box and assistant coaches sitting down. And we've got a couple in this league that are my buddies. I've already talked to them. You've got to sit down. Stand up do your job but you have to sit down. You can't stay up all the time.

If you see more warnings early in the year, even if you see a technical foul, you'll know it's not driven by me, it's driven by the NCAA and what we're trying to do.

Let's do the film. The other tweak we have is flopping. The rules community is adamant about taking flopping out of the game. There's a couple of kinds, the head bob. We'll show that again.

When a player comes off, even if there's slight contact, trying to exaggerate and sell something by trying to throw the head back is going to be a technical foul. We've had the warnings the last couple of years. They aren't happy with how that works. They made it an automatic technical foul.

Here's another example of the head bob. Totally unnecessary. Just trying to fool the refs, sell the play, whatever you want to call it, but they'll be instantly penalized. One-shot technical foul. The ball goes out of bounds at the spot of play.

Another example is the shooters that foul without contact. Trying to kick your leg out, faking it, falling off a shot, it's going to be automatic. So, for example, on this play, as soon as the ball clears the net, you've got a technical foul. Lou (phonetic) will get the ball out on the baseline after one free throw.

The last one, is going to be the hardest one, the plays in the post. When you have an offensive player penetrating, a defensive player trying to hold his space, draw a charge, those are going to be difficult decisions.

What we are teaching is if the offensive player stops on contact, you then fall down, that's a flop. For example, in this play, contact, offensive player stops, then when he falls now he continues backwards. But that wasn't enough contact for that reaction from the post.

If the offensive player hits him and continues through the offensive player as he goes down, now you've got a block/charge situation and not a flop.

But this is going to be highly controversial. You're going to see a lot of it early. I was just talking to Coach Beard and since they were in fifth grade, their shooting coaches, AAU coaches and high school coaches -- sell the play, sell the play. It's going to be a habit some of these players are going to have to break. But as good as they are, they can do it.

The next plays that we're really focusing on are these. Body contact, bumping the cutters, and bumping the ball handlers. The way the game's played today with so much highball screens, with so much pick-and-roll off the top, so much dribble handoff, we have to stop the defender from being able to do this to an offensive player.

Another example, as he starts his drive, he jumps out with his hands down. Checks him with his leg and body and chest. We want that stopped.

You're going to see a heavy push on it early to allow the game to open up. A lot of our teams run a motion offense. If you're allowed to chuck the cutters and shooters they're at a real disadvantage. So look for more of these types of enforcements early.

Another example there, same type play. Secondary defender jumping out. Boom. We want an instant whistle.

Go to the next section. Just another example of how we have to allow the offensive player to make his move short of contact.

Screens, as we talked about, with the way we play the dribble hand-off, the high ball roll, it's imperative that we set legal screens. In this case, hands the ball off, never becomes stationary, clips the guy with his leg. On the dribble handoff the offensive player who is releasing the ball has no rights. In order to make contact, even as he's running on through the defensive player, he must come set or avoid the contact.

That's hard. A lot of coaches don't like it because he said what else are you supposed to do, he's running his play, but that's the rule.

Another example here is trying to screen off of a cutter. Another big point of emphasis. If we allow these legal screens it allows them to get open for wide-open 3-pointers and a real defensive advantage.

That's our major tweaks for the year. As I said with our new national leadership I see more emphasis on enforcing all of this. I think you're going to see the rules committee next year when it is a rules change year, really address some of the problems we've had the last few years that I've talked about. So I'm excited about where we're going.

Q. Let me give you a hypothetical play. Say a player goes up, shoots the ball, kicks his leg out, flops. Ball goes in. Does the shot count?

CURTIS SHAW: Yes.

Q. Shot does count?

CURTIS SHAW: Yes.

Q. He gets a class B technical?

CURTIS SHAW: Yes.

Q. One shot. Same play, puts it up, he misses the shot. His team rebounds the ball, flop. Play stops? Free throw for the other team? Do they keep possession?

CURTIS SHAW: If they had possession at the time of the whistle, yes. If the ball is loose in a rebounding situation, nobody has control, then we'll go to the arrow.

Q. If somebody were crazy enough to get two of these class B floppings in the same game, would they be removed from the game?

CURTIS SHAW: Takes three class Bs to get ejected.

Q. Three, not two?

CURTIS SHAW: Yes. Going down those lines, we've had people ask, what if a guy flops and my guy's getting ready for a layup. Are you going to kill it and take the layup away? What we're saying is, no, let the play get to a stopping point. If you're guarding me on defense, you flop, I'm going to go in and score and then I'm going to call the technical foul.

So it can be a real double whammy, so to speak, but we don't want to penalize a player who is legal because somebody else does something illegal.

Q. On dribble handoffs, one thing I've noticed is the defender purposely running into the DHO guy. Should that always be called a foul? How do you tell your officials to officiate that?

CURTIS SHAW: The way the rule is written and what the rules committee have said, once they hand off they have no rights. If a defender -- now I'm not going to tell you if I hand off I run this way you run into me. But if I'm continuing on my path after I hand off and make any contact, even if I'm trying to avoid him, it's going to be an illegal screen.

Q. You talked about the coach's box. Is that going to be a game-by-game situation? Is there going to be warnings with that or is that going to be something they talk about before the game?

CURTIS SHAW: It's all of the above. I'm telling the coaches as we go around now we've got a couple in this league that love to walk around. They're not bothering the referees. They're really not doing anything but coaching, but they're clearly out of the box.

The rules committee wants that addressed. We might tell them hey, one time, back up, you've got to stay in the box. Sometimes the coaches that I know that are abusive of it I'll tell the assistant coach if he gets out tonight you're getting a technical foul.

So there's different ways of handling it. But we'll probably tell them once stay in the box. The second time we'll do an official warning. The third time it's a technical foul.

Now the assistant coaches are going to have zero leeway. If they're up more than just spontaneous, and they stay up, kill the play. Bench warning on this assistant. If he does it again, it's a technical foul.

Q. Seemed like last year there was a point of emphasis on players after dunks, after layups, set screens, celebrate, they get a technical. There was a lot of confusion as to why those were called. Is that still something that you were emphasizing this season?

CURTIS SHAW: Absolutely. What we say is you can do all the cheering and celebrating with yourself or your teammate. At any point that it's directed at a defender or an opponent, an opponent's bench, at the crowd, or it's something dramatic, like you're patting yourself on the back like you did something better than anybody else could do, then they want to enforce.

But spontaneous reaction, chest bumping your teammates or something after a good play, that's perfectly fine.

Q. You mentioned rule changes will come next year. What are some rule changes that you might like to see them addressed?

CURTIS SHAW: What I talked about last year and preached the last five years, our block/charge rule has to change. There's no way that we can referee the play, interpret the play and really take in the spirit of the game and the quality of the players.

My example is once I'm on a full-bore dribble, I've been in my dribble I've made my last step. I'm starting up, why should a secondary defender be able to jump in front of me at that point? I can't change what I'm doing at that point.

The way our rule is written now, all secondary defender has to do is be there for a split second before my toe leaves the ground. It's a huge disadvantage for making a good offensive play. It rewards bad defense by secondary defender making an ugly play. I think you're going to see that addressed.

We continue to work on the traveling rule. It's really hard the way we play. We made a big mistake, in my opinion, of putting in the three exceptions last year. All of a sudden, stepbacks, spin moves, Euro steps, just ignore them.

Well, those are all travels. We either have to rewrite the rule book to make it where your plant foot is put 0. You can always deem it a 1-2, or we have to enforce what's written. We can't say these three are legal when they're not and these others we're going to penalize. The defense doesn't know how to play. Those are the two biggest areas you'll see addressed by the new rules committee and new national staff.

Q. In preseason rules, giant emphasis was players would need the pants over their knees. Worst in history. They're wearing shorts. No one's talking about it. With the penalty being so extreme, like a technical, are you worried at all that they're just not going to be able to make that call and affect the game that much?

CURTIS SHAW: Exactly the opposite, because what we've told them -- we had our national meetings by Zoom a couple of weeks ago -- what the new national coordinator said, if we're observing games, my regional observers are observing games and you don't call it, you're going to get notified once. If you do it again, you're not eligible for the NCAA Tournament.

I'm going to tell our staff, whether you like it or don't like it, whether I like it or don't like it, I want it enforced from day one. And if you don't do it, I'm probably going to give you one warning. The second time I'm going to pull you out of games. When there's that kind of penalty, I think you'll see it enforced early and continue all the way through the season.