Men’s & Women’s College Basketball Have Replay Challenges Now…. But Not The Same System

On Tuesday, the NCAA announced that there would be multiple rule changes for both men’s and women’s college basketball for the 2025-26 season. After passing through the proposal stage, all of the new rules have officially been approved now, so we can go ahead and discuss them.

Some of the rule changes are tiny technical tweaks. For example, in women’s college basketball, if a player appears in a game that they should have been suspended for, both that player and the head coach will be suspended for the next game. Or, for men’s basketball, if one shot clock stops working, the other one will remain in operation, which is a change from existing policy.

You get the idea.

The big notable item from both sports is the introduction of a coach’s challenge system for video replay. Both men’s and women’s college basketball now has a system for head coaches to challenge a call on the court and ask the referees to review it via the video replay monitors. However, the two sports, because they’re governed by two different committees, now have two different challenge systems.

First, here’s how the NCAA describes the challenge system for men’s basketball:

Changes include a coach’s challenge at any point in a game to review out-of-bounds calls, basket interference/goaltending and whether a secondary defender was in the restricted-area arc.

[…]

Under the coach’s challenge rule, teams must have a timeout to request an instant replay review challenge.

If the instant replay review challenge is successful, teams will be allowed to have one additional video review challenge for the rest of the game, including overtime.

If the first video review challenge is unsuccessful, the team loses the ability to challenge the rest of the game.

Officials can initiate video reviews on basket interference/goaltending and restricted arc plays in the last two minutes of the game and into overtime. […] Officials cannot conduct video review on out-of-bounds calls unless through a coach’s challenge.

The coach’s challenge, however, does not impact the NCAA officials’ voluntary use of instant replay for timing mistakes, scoring errors, shot clock violations, 2-point versus 3-point field goal attempts, flagrant fouls, etc.

And here’s the description for women’s basketball:

Under the rule change, the following plays can be challenged at any point during the game:

Ruled out-of-bounds violations.

Ruled backcourt violations.

Whether a change in team possession occurred before the ruling of a foul where free throws would be involved.

Whether a foul was assessed to the correct player.

Officials cannot initiate reviews on these calls, with the exception of whether a foul was assessed to the correct player.

Teams will not be required to have a timeout to make a video review challenge in NCAA women’s basketball competition. However, a failed challenge will result in a technical foul for an excessive timeout.

There’s the obvious part where there are different things that can be challenged in the two sports. Backcourt violations can be challenged by Marquette women’s head coach Cara Consuegra, but not by men’s head coach Shaka Smart. That’s a little weird, I guess, but that’s not the part that interests me the most.

The part that interests me the most is how many challenges you can make in the two sports. For men’s basketball, you can at most challenge two calls in a game, and that’s only if 1) you get your first challenge right and 2) you have a timeout available to make both challenges. The press release doesn’t explicitly say it, but I presume you have to spend a timeout to make a replay challenge, and you lose the timeout no matter what the result of the review is.

For women’s basketball, you can challenge as many calls as you want all game long, because you don’t need to have a timeout available. However, if you are wrong, automatic team technical foul for creating an unnecessary timeout. That’s not just free throws awarded to the other team, but then also a team foul assessed to your team total for the quarter. That means not only is there the instant penalty of losing points, but also possibly giving your opponent a few more free throws as the quarter plays out.

I like the idea of “here’s your one challenge, don’t screw it up” for men’s basketball, but I also like the idea of “hey, you’d better be right!” for women’s basketball. Both sports have the added value of the referees being unable to just initiate their own replays for the things that can be challenged, so in theory, that should cut down the number of replay reviews all on its own.

What do you think about the two sets of rules for replay challenges? Which one do you like better?

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