By Legran Akana
The NCAA Men”s and Women”s Basketball Rules Committees voted to push back the recommended start date for its proposals for new court markings to the 2004-05 season.
The three NCAA Championships Division”s will consider the amended recommendations. Division I Championships/ Competition Cabinet (June 24-26, Bonita Springs, Florida), Division II Championships Committee (June 24-27, Savannah, Georgia) and Division III Championships Committee (June 23-25, Indianapolis).
The recommendations originally developed between May 29 and April 1. Committee”s recommendations brought up in the NCAA”s Indianapolis official committees meeting, vied for the men”s game to use the international three-point line and trapezoid free-throw/three-second lane; and the women”s game to use the international three-point line only.
The original recommended start date for the rules changes was set for the 2003-04 season, but due to further evaluation and committee meeting”s the date has been pushed back.
According to the NCAA”s men”s basketball rules committee liaison, Marty Benson, in order for these rules and changes to take place in the NCAA, they need to be considered by the Divisions I, II and III championships committees, in their respected meetings on June 23-27.
“They may never happen,” Benson said. “Those committees have the right to turn them down or approve them.”
If all three divisions committees approve the rules for the 2004-05 season, then further evaluation will be passed on to the three management councils to approve the rules in the following month.
“If one or more of the committees does not pass it, then it will go to the Playing Rules Oversight Committee,” Benson said. “That will form a recommendation to go to the executive committee which might not be able to consider it until October. So, there are a few different scenarios that could happen in making the final decision.”
The reason for the length of time given in the regulation passing will be so that schools have more of a chance to adjust its courts, if the rules proposal goes through.
For the BYU men”s basketball team, it may be a change that they are going to have to adapt to for the future. International experience could be a plus for them.
“We”ve used the international rules in the Virgin Islands,” said BYU assistant men”s basketball coach John Wardenburg. “It spread the floor and made it a little less congested.”
If accepted, the recommendations would represent the first major changes in existing court-line dimensions since the 1956-57 season of the NCAA, when the lane widened from 6 feet to 12 feet for the men”s game. The men”s game added the three-point line in 1986-87; the women”s game added the shot in 1987-88.
“If it happens, we”ll adjust to it,” Wardenburg said. “The good thing is that it does open the lane for us to play.”
