The NCAA News - News & Features

Basketball rules committees make minor changes to game

Comfortable with the state of the college basketball game, the NCAA Men's and Women's Basketball Rules Committees used their annual meeting to fine-tune several rules.

Meeting April 21-23 in Destin, Florida, the committees eliminated two rules differences between the men's and women's games and worked to shorten the length of contests.

"Both committees agreed that there was no need to make major rules changes for the upcoming season," said Linda Hill-MacDonald, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, head coach and chair of the women's rules committee. "The game is popular and exciting to watch for the fans, and the rules have enhanced the talent and performance of the players."

In working to eliminate differences between the men's and women's games, the men's committee made minor adjustments such as voting that teams shall warm up and shoot at the end of the court farthest from their own bench for the first half. Also, the committee agreed that after the horn sounds to end the game, only those free throws necessary to determine a winner will be shot.

Both of these rules already are part of the women's game.

Citing increased concerns from within the basketball community about the actual time necessary to complete the last several minutes of a game, the men's committee voted to decrease from five to four the number of full-length timeouts a team may call in a nontelevised game. In addition, teams will be allowed to use two 20-second timeouts at any time during the game.

The committee also agreed that in games with four scheduled media timeouts, teams will be allowed to call two full-length timeouts and three 20-second timeouts during a contest. Of the three 20-second timeouts, two can be carried over into the second half and overtime.

Currently, teams are allotted three full-length and two 20-second timeouts in a game with electronic media coverage.

In addition, the committee voted to limit to 75 seconds any full-length timeout requested by a team after the completion of the four designated media timeouts.

"The committee has heard from different constituencies that there's a concern that the last four minutes of a game are taking too much time," said Laurence C. Keating Jr., athletics director at Seton Hall University and chair of the men's rules committee. "The committee believes that the overwhelming acceptance of the 20-second timeout coupled with the reduction of the number of full-length timeouts -- and their length in televised games -- may alleviate part of the concern."

The women's rules committee adopted the use of one 20-second timeout per half and agreed to limit to 75 seconds any timeout taken after four media timeouts have been exhausted in a televised game.

The women did not, however, reduce the number of timeouts a team may call in televised or nontelevised games.

"The committee has heard from different constituencies that there's a concern that the last four minutes of a game are taking too much time."

Laurence C. Keating Jr, chair, NCAA Men's Basketball Rules Committee