Officiating in College Basketball

I’m going to engage in a time-honored tradition among college basketball fans: I’m going to complain about the refs.

I take as my illustration the example which is freshest in my mind, last night’s NC State-Syracuse game. But you can start from wherever you are. It really doesn’t matter; the problems are everywhere. I may sound like a whining State fan, and I probably am, but I promise you I could have used just about any other game to illustrate these points.

What I see as the essential problem is this: the officials call too many fouls. Many of the fouls they call are unnecessary. As a result, the officials are too intrusive and have too much influence over the outcome of the game.

How many times do you watch a close college basketball game, and what you remember about it most vividly, and what is talked about after the game, is not the on-court action but the officiating? Doesn’t that indicate that something is wrong? It isn’t supposed to be this way, is it? How often does this happen in baseball, or soccer, or tennis, or golf? That what you remember is a call (or non-call), not a play? Admittedly this does happen quite a bit in football, but I would still say that officiating is more influential in basketball than in any other sport.

Certainly some of the problem is not the fault of the officials or the rules; it’s built into the game of basketball. If you think about it, basketball confines ten people in a very small space. Five of them really want to get somewhere, and the other five really want to keep them from getting there. As a result, there is going to be contact. And that’s a problem, because basketball is supposed to be a “flow” game like soccer or hockey. The ball moves, the players move, the whole game is characterized by free-flowing movement. Excessive contact prevents that, so in order to preserve the integrity of the game, there have to be a lot of restrictions on contact. Certain forms of contact are acceptable, but many are not, and result in a foul. It’s a situation that is naturally set up to result in officials having to make a lot of calls.

The irony of the situation is that the intent of the foul rules is not to interrupt the flow of the game; it is in fact the opposite of that. The foul rules are intended to disincentivize unwanted contact so as to allow the game to flow. In other words, to let basketball be basketball.

These things are destined to always be in tension. On one hand, excessive contact turns the game of basketball into something other than what it was intended to be, and it messes up the balance between offense and defense. On the other hand, the enforcement of the rules around physical contact requires an intrusive officiating presence, with three officials further crowding the already confined space where the players are, watching their every move, and frequently interrupting the game to whistle a violation. The thing that is supposed to preserve the flow of the game has to interrupt the flow of the game to do it.

So my point is, I get it. It’s hard to find the perfect balance between these things, and it always will be. My argument is that college basketball currently leans too heavily towards calling fouls in situations where the contact is insignificant and has little outcome on the play; or where the contact is not an outcome of the natural flow of the game, but is instead a charade.

As Exhibit A, I’d like to reference back-to-back plays in last night’s NC State-Syracuse game. Take a look at the two plays that start around the 9:58 mark in the condensed game video:

In the first play, NC State’s Ebenezer Duwuona is guarding Syracuse’s Jesse Edwards. Edwards works his way into the painted area, very close to the basket. Duwuona moves with him, keeping his body between Edwards and the basket. Duwuona is clearly trying to stay close to Edwards but remain perfectly vertical so as to avoid fouling. When Edwards elevates for the shot, there is a slight amount of body contact, that if anything was created by Edwards jumping into Duwuona. At no time does Duwuona do anything to initiate contact, other than stay close to Edwards. The contact is minimal and appears not to affect Edwards in any way. But it’s a foul on Duwuona.

Folks, there’s nothing to see here. It’s a no-call. I’m not a basketball rules expert, so I’m not trying to say it’s not the correct application of the rule. But if the rules say that’s a foul, then the rules are bad. That contact is incidental and the offensive player needs to be able to finish through it – which Edwards does.

Then you go down to the other end, and the same situation plays out. This time, Edwards is the defender against DJ Burns. Edwards does move his right arm downward a bit as Burns takes the shot, but is there any contact there? I don’t see it. I suppose it’s possible that Edwards made contact with Burns’ left arm, but I’m not able to see it. In any case, you get the idea. This kind of thing happens all the time in college basketball. A defender is making no attempt to defend the play, other than keeping himself between the shooter and the basket. Contact is either non-existent or, at most, gentle. And yet, fouls are called. Action is disrupted. Players foul out. And games are decided.

The other situation I’d like to highlight occurs just two plays later at the 10:34 mark. Burns catches the ball in good post position. He takes a couple of dribbles and goes up for a shot. The defender – who is 6’11” and weighs 230 pounds – hurls himself backwards and goes supine onto the floor. And he is rewarded for this behavior by getting an offensive foul called on Burns.

I find this entire situation intolerable. Burns has done everything right. He has outworked Edwards for good post position. He has turned and gone up strong for a shot. Edwards has done nothing in particular defensively. He has allowed Burns to get good post position and he hasn’t attempted to make a play on the ball. And he knows it. He knows that Burns is about to score on him. And instead of responding by attempting to block Burns’ shot, or simply letting him have the shot that he has earned and trying to get in rebounding position, he has one more trick up his sleeve. He attempts, in what can only be described as a performative act rather than a basketball play, to make it appear as though Burns has barreled right through an innocent defender. And it works.

It’s not Edwards’ fault. People respond to incentives. So as long as this behavior is rewarded, of course defenders are going to do it, and they should. The problem is the rules, or the interpretation of them, that incentivize these plays. The entire concept is flawed. Think about the very language we use to refer to this play – we call it “drawing” a charge. Why do we use that term “draw”? It’s because we know that this is not an attempt to actually play defense; it’s an attempt to lure the offensive player and the officials into playing their appointed roles in a scripted performance.

We’ve all seen it a million times. The offense has put itself in an advantageous position and is moving toward the basket. The defender resorts to inserting himself into the path of the offensive player who is in the process of leaping or shooting, in hopes that the offensive player will knock him over. Oftentimes the player crosses his arms over his chest in a kind of “brace for impact” position. The whole thing is contrived. It’s not defense, it’s theater; and we fall for it.

There are offensive fouls that occur naturally in the course of play. A dribbler will hook a defender with his arm in an attempt to get by. A screener will move into a defender. A defender who is actually guarding someone by moving his feet in a defensive stance will get knocked over by an overly aggressive driver. I have no problem at all with those calls. What I have a problem with is the non-defensive play where the defender sets himself up like a bowling pin in the lane and then launches himself backward in an attempt to create the appearance of something.

Get in a defensive stance. Make a play on the ball. Get a steal. Block a shot. Contest a shot. Hack him and make him earn it from the line. Or get out of the way and let him score. But this performative nonsense must be stopped. The solution is to just stop calling it. We don’t call it within the restricted area; how about if we increase that area by a few feet? How about if officials exercise some discernment about guys who are seven feet tall being knocked off their feet rather than actually contesting a shot?

To me, the key differentiator should be, what is the defender’s intent? Does the defender get knocked over in the process of actually guarding the offensive player, or is the defender attempting to get knocked over and “draw” a charge? You may say it’s asking too much for the officials to determine intent, but is it? As a fan, can’t you tell the difference between a defender who is trying to guard someone and a defender who is trying to draw a charge? If you can tell, don’t you think the best referees in college basketball should be able to tell too? It would send a clear message to the players: stop messing around and play basketball. Isn’t that what we want?

After the game, Kevin Keatts was uncharacteristically direct about his displeasure with the officiating. He said exactly what I was thinking: “let the players decide the game”. Yes. Of course, the officials would probably say, the players do decide the game – by fouling or not fouling in critical situations. That’s true, in a sense, but the spirit of Keatts’ comment is certainly correct. We should err on the side of letting players play and keeping officials out of the way.

There is much else that could be said about officiating as well. The ego-driven histrionics of the some of the officials; the incessant reviews that bog down the ends of games; and the blatant missed calls such as the one that gave Virginia a win over Duke that they shouldn’t have had. But this is the thing that bothers me most.