The NCAA announced Tuesday it’s bringing the coach’s challenge to men’s basketball.
Under the new rule, each coach will have one challenge to use at their discretion to review out-of-bounds calls, a defender’s position in or near the restricted area, and cases of goaltending or basket interference.
A coach will keep one challenge if their first was successful, and they must have at least one timeout remaining in order to initiate the video review.
Karl Hicks, chairman of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Rules Committee, said in May the group was examining ways to ensure missed calls are corrected without slowing down games too much.
“Coach’s challenges were deemed to be the most efficient way to accomplish this goal,” he said, per the Associated Press’ Eric Olson. “Data from the NCAA tournament and membership conferences showed a substantial number of reviews were on out-of-bounds plays. The committee looked at other basketball leagues around the world to see what the best solution would be for the NCAA, and the committee agreed with the NBA coach’s challenge system and its one plus one process.”
Beyond implementing the challenge system, an important facet of the new rule is that only coaches, not the referees themselves, can trigger a review for out-of-bounds rulings. That should help reduce the length of time a game is ultimately delayed.
The Athletic’s Joe Rexrode argued that men’s basketball was getting too bogged down by video reviews. For example, he cited how the last 77 seconds of Michigan’s 59-53 win over Wisconsin in the Big Ten title game actually took 15 minutes in real time to complete.
To that end, Rexrode lobbied for an NBA-style challenge system. Now, he’s getting his wish.
With this change, the NCAA may have struck a better balance between striving for accuracy without significantly disrupting the flow of a game.
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