Get Ready for the New Rules

In case you haven't heard, There will be several new rules in place for College basketball this season. Here are two ESPN.om articles about the new rules. The main changes relate to hand checking and the block-charge call. There was talk of shortening the shot clock from 35 seconds, but that never happened.

Here's the charge rule now ...

Defensive players will no longer be able to slide into the path of a player with the ball in an attempt to draw a charge once he has "started his upward motion" to pass or shoot. If the player is not set before the player begins that motion and leaves his feet, it will be a block.

As far as hand checking ...

A video was sent out to all Division I coaches last week with all the rules changes. Art Hyland, the secretary rules editor of the NCAA men's basketball rules committee, highlighted the proper enforcement of hand-checking rules, which has been moved from a guideline into the official rule book. These rules include:
• Keeping hand or forearm on an opponent.
• Putting two hands on an opponent.
• Continually jabbing an opponent by extending an arm or placing a hand or forearm on the opponent.
• Using an arm bar to impede the progress of a dribbler.

There are also some slight changes changes to the elbow rules and the times that the referees can go to the monitor for reviews. Read the articles for those changes.

The main reason for these changes is to increase the offense during college games this season. I'd expect it to really just increase the number of free throws and the length of games for quite a while at the beginning of the season. I guess we'll see how it goes from there.