Fewer timeouts would improve NCAA basketball
The whistles blow (again). The play stops (again). The arena horn sounds. The padded chairs are brought onto the court. The pep band begins playing. The madness grinds to yet another halt.
Repeat the process about 17 times.
The glut of timeouts in college basketball is ruining what is one of the best sporting events to watch.
Why? Because college basketball is a slave to television. The NCAA takes the big money, so it has to have commercial breaks. The NCAA prefers the term media timeouts, as if a bunch of sportswriters need potty breaks during a game.
There are eight media timeouts in every televised college basketball game. And each team can call up to five timeouts per game. That’s 18 potential stoppages.
Television breaks in the NCAA basketball tournament are stretched to an insufferable 2 minutes and 30 seconds, a half-minute longer than during the regular season. And that doesn’t include the 20-minute halftimes – five minutes longer than normal – or the additional 20 seconds or so the TV guys often request to fit in one more plug for an upcoming program.
Yes, the game has become a drag, especially in the final few minutes of regulation. That’s when coaches, who have been hoarding their timeouts, feel compelled to use them to micro-manage every detail, scenario and situation.
The best example of a game being slowed to a crawl by timeouts and stoppages was played in Pittsburgh. The final 1:40 of regulation in the Notre Dame-Butler tournament game two weekends ago took 17 minutes to play. The game became a timeout and coaching marathon. There were six timeouts and one video review in those final 100 seconds.
And the worst part was that no points were scored in those 100 seconds. All those timeouts, all that planning, for nothing.
It’s unlikely the NCAA rules are going to change to permit fewer timeouts. Still, we can hope. After all, what is the worst that can happen if the number of timeouts is reduced to only three per team?
What would happen is the better-coached, better-prepared team would have an advantage. That’s not a bad thing. It hardly matters now if one team is better prepared and better schooled to play late-game situations.
• In the more than 100 years that they have been playing competitive sports in Washington and Greene counties there have been plenty of outstanding jobs done by local coaches. I just can’t think of a better one than what California University women’s basketball coach Jess Strom did this year.
Strom had a team that lacked both size and depth, often struggled to score in a half-court game and was ranked only fourth in the Atlantic Region at the end of the regular season. Add in the tragedy of senior forward Shanice Clark’s sudden death in January, and nobody would have blamed the Vulcans if they had packed it in at some point during the season and simply played out the string. Instead, Strom never let her players quit and guided Cal to the NCAA Division II national championship, an impressive run that included a blowout win over California Baptist in the final.
Without Strom’s leadership and positive outlook, Cal’s season would have easily gone awry.
• The National Pro Fastpitch softball league will hold its draft Wednesday night in Nashville – more than 450 miles from each city in the league.
The defending champion USSSA Pride have the first two picks and three of the first four. The Pennsylvania Rebellion, who were 9-39 last year, do not have a first-round selection. Care to guess which team is the overwhelming favorite to win the championship?
Sports editor Chris Dugan can be reached at dugan@observer-reporter.com.