Referee czar attempting to clean up rough play in college hoops

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By Alexander Wolff, SI.com

UNC's Tyler Hansbrough took his share of beatings, including a broken nose against Duke in 2008. Courtesy of Dr. Eric Rivera/University of North Carolina John Adams' orders to refs in 2009-10 The NCAA rules committee puts them in different buckets -- some labeled "points of emphasis," some "areas of focus," and some "absolutes" where a whistle must be blown (the first below) -- but all these guidelines serve a common purpose: to bring about a cleaner game that rewards skill and finesse. Here are NCAA officiating coordinator John Adams' marching orders to referees for the current season: Charges directly under the basket. A secondary defender who slides under the hoop to draw a charge from a penetrating offensive player will be called for a block, even if he has position. Early reports indicate that refs have had to make very few such rulings -- evidence, Adams says, of the directive's deterrent effect. Player safety. It's legit for an offensive player with the ball to flare his elbows out and pivot, but only if those elbows move at the same speed as the rest of the body. Look for more stoppages for video reviews, as officials decide whether to rule a foul as common, intentional or flagrant. No "re-routing the dribbler" on high ball screens. Too often a big man sets a screen near the top of the key, only to watch his defender hedge aggressively out on the dribbler, driving him toward the sideline. Says Adams, "Coaches coach it because until now there's been very little risk to it." But unless refs make that call, many teams can't get into their offense. Increased vigilance on three seconds. Last March Pitt's DeJuan Blair-- not an easy player to miss -- spent 11 seconds in the lane during one NCAA tournament game. By request of the coaches, no one should get away with that again. Strict enforcement of illegal screens. Adams aspires to "coast-to-coast buy-in" to reduce mayhem in and around the lane and standardize the level of contact from league to league. Decorum and sportsmanship. Lapses in either can lead to retaliation and escalation, so expect more sanctions for everything from taunting and baiting to distracting the free-throw shooter. RSBQ. Not a '70s and '80s cult band, but an acronym for rhythm, speed, balance, quickness. Any instance in which a player (not just a dribbler) has any of these four things compromised, it's a foul. The old standard -- did a player gain or lose an advantage? -- left more to the discretion of the official, who would often let contact pass if there hadn't been a missed shot or turnover. Science, not art, is now supposed to rule the day. -- Alex Wolff

Before we advance too far into the current college basketball season, it's worth taking inventory of the mayhem from the last. To refresh your memory -- if not offend your sensibilities -- the record reflects that the sport's two best players, Blake Griffin of Oklahoma and Tyler Hansbrough of North Carolina, each sat out games with concussions. Purdue's Lewis Jackson missed time after Joe Krabbenhoft of Wisconsin flattened him with a flagrantly illegal screen that went unwhistled. In a mid-Feburary matchup that could have been staged by the Nutmeg State's own WWE, Connecticut center Hasheem Thabeet found himself flipped over the back of Pitt's DeJuan Blair, who by the end of that game could point to his own left eye, half swollen shut -- and whose war story equaled that of Louisville's Samardo Samuels, who had two teeth jarred loose against St. John's.

Meanwhile products like the Mad Max-ishly named Nike Pro Combat Basketball Deflex Short, a padded undergarment, became standard equipment, with similar accoutrements working their way up torsos to adorn ribs, lower backs and elbows. "We used to use [padding] just for someone who got hurt," said Michigan State trainer Tom Mackowiak, whose Spartans sometimes ran their contact-intense "war drill" three times per practice during last season's NCAA tournament. "Now we have 15 players wearing them." After Aubrey Coleman of Houston stomped on the face of Arizona's Chase Budinger to earn a flagrant foul, ejection and suspension, Coleman essentially said he hadn't meant to do it. Which is exactly the point: By the end of last season, frightful physicality had become more or less incidental contact.

"I've had a lot of great shooters, and it's harder and harder to get them open," says Charlotte coach Bobby Lutz, chair of the NCAA rules committee, which is trying to roll back this trend. "Defenses won't let them cut and there's all sorts of off-the-ball contact. I've had officials tell me there's no way they can blow the whistle on every play. As coaches we all do what we think we can within the rules -- and maybe pushing the rules -- to help us win. And there are certain coaches who say, 'You know what, our best chance to win is to be very, very physical.' "

If you don't believe your own eyes, look at the numbers. A typical college game features almost six fewer baskets than in 1971, despite the introduction of the 45-second shot clock in 1986, and its shortening to 35 seconds seven years later -- rules changes that have generated more possessions. Yet year after year refs will consistently call about 38 to 40 fouls a game. Small wonder that Missouri post man Laurence Bowers says, "When I wake up the day after a game, I feel like I got into a fight."

"Yeah," adds teammate Zaire Taylor. "A fight you lost."

There's a larger fight going on in college hoops, and it's one that John Adams has no intention of losing. Two years ago Adams, a former college referee and Indianapolis real estate developer, took over as the NCAA's coordinator of men's basketball officiating. Like the eponymous patriot who negotiated peace and championed liberty, Adams spent his first season raising the banner of "freedom of movement." He sent down the message that, if an offensive player's rhythm, speed, balance or quickness is interrupted, it's a foul. And he introduced two "absolutes," plays that referees should automatically recognize and whistle: when a defender puts two hands on the dribbler, and when the dribbler is tripped and loses possession as a result. "We wanted officials to engage, measure and penalize based on the freedom of movement litmus test," Adams says.

But after last season, Adams and the rules committee to which he reports realized they had to go further. At their July meeting they agreed that college basketball is now perceived to be more physical than the NBA and, says Adams, "that we haven't done much to change that perception." So this season they've added initiatives for player safety and sportsmanship. And they've continued to hammer away at freedom of movement and the absolutes intended to enshrine preservation of the game's choreography as a referee's guiding principle [see sidebar to the right]. "We have to do a much better job of creating a zone of predictability for players and coaches, of making officiating more of a science and less of an art," says Adams. "I came up at a time when refereeing was all feel. But coaches want absolutes. And referees should want absolutes."

Adams' job would be much easier if he worked for the NBA. Hand checks on dribblers and forearm chucks on cutters are rare in the pros because a ref who doesn't let the customer see what he has paid for won't keep his job. "The NBA has 60 referees working 100 percent of its games, full-time employees with full accountability," says Adams. "The league office sets limits, and every coach and player knows that if you exceed them it's a foul. We have 600 officials working about 80 percent of our games, and more leagues than the NBA has teams. We deal with an independent-contractor universe."

Only with the NCAA tournament does Adams take control of the college game's officiating pool. Until then Division I referees report to 23 officiating coordinators who represent 31 different conferences, each responsible for hiring, firing, evaluating and -- most critically -- scheduling. Who is a ref more likely to listen to, the person responsible for the bulk of his livelihood or the NCAA's guy back in Indy? "The coordinator in that referee's league is a lot higher up the Christmas card list than I am," Adams says. "Hopefully we're both on the same page, so the transition from conference play to the NCAA tournament is seamless. But if there are conflicting messages a referee is probably going to listen to the guy who's assigning him 40 or 50 games."

In order to flatten out standards -- "to get out of the silos that are leagues," he says, "and get the business horizontal" -- Adams is developing direct channels to referees, including regular memos and an interactive Web site. During last March's tournament, every official was handed a DVD of the game he had just worked as he left the arena. And after each of the past two seasons, Adams and a team of eight regional evaluators broke down every whistle in every tournament game, assigning a grade to each referee and sharing it privately with him. (Their research showed that, of the 75 to 100 calls per game, officials got close to 80 percent right.)