College Basketball

A Long Dry Spell
Year after year, scores go down. Could the refs reverse the trend?

The NCAA issued its annual midseason statistics recently, revealing that once again scoring had dropped, from a team average of 71.4 points per game for all of 1997-98 to 70.5 in the first half of this season. The decline is even more dramatic when this season is compared with 1974-75, when teams made an alltime high average of 315 field goals and scored 76.6 points despite the absence of the shot clock and the three-point shot In fact, when an adjustment for three-point inflation is made by crediting all field goals since 1986-87 as two-pointers (on average each team had made 5.9 treys a game this season, through Jan. 10), then scoring fell from 76.6 in 1974-75 to 64.6 this year.

Why? Granted, shooting isn't as good as it was in 1974-75 (field goal percentage has dropped from 46.0 to 43.7, while free throw percentage has fallen from 69.0 to 67.1), but that by itself doesn't account for the change. Improved defense is certainly the biggest reason, but it might also be argued that overly physical play—and officials' refusal to crack down on it—is one of the main factors in the scoring slide. "A lot of teams take the attitude that if they foul enough, the refs can't call everything," says Boston College coach Al Skinner. "Years ago they called everything."

The game indisputably features more contact than it used to, especially in the paint "There's more doubling in the post than before," says Utah coach Rick Majerus. "That's causing more contact, and fewer points are being scored."

Texas coach Rick Barnes, one of the country's most ardent advocates of physical play, argues that the rough stuff has increased most away from the ball—"knocking people off their cuts," as he puts it. When he was coaching at Clemson in the mid-'90s, Barnes had a famous tiff with North Carolina coach Dean Smith over the bruising way the Tigers played. "It's a coach's job to find a way to win," says Barnes, who also adds, "If I had the most talented players in the country, I wouldn't want the officials letting anybody touch them either."

It's no coincidence that the ACC, the nation's highest-scoring conference at midseason (averaging 76.5 points per team), has a reputation for stricter officiating. Says first-year Virginia coach Pete Gillen, who spent four years in the Big East at Providence, "The ACC is definitely called a little tighter."

The Wyatt Earp of the ACC is Fred Barakat, the conference's supervisor of officials. Every October, Barakat requires his referees to attend a two-day meeting before the one-day session held by NCAA director of officials Hank Nichols. "I hold my guys accountable," Barakat says. "We call hand checking, illegal post play, grabbing off the ball, illegal screens. We probably do more of that than other conferences do."

Unfortunately Barakat is the exception to the rule. Barnes, for his part, has a motto of sorts. "Strength negates talent," he says. It will, at least until officials make sure it doesn't.

Utah's Resurgence
A Heapin' Helping of Wins

After cruising downtown Salt Lake City for 20 minutes in search of an eatery open after midnight, Utah coach Rick Majerus settled on Dee's Family Restaurant on North Temple Street. It was a shade past 1:30 a.m., about two hours after the Utes' 71-46 thrashing of BYU in Provo last Saturday. Majerus sat down and ordered the Super Stack of pancakes topped with blueberries, bananas and chocolate chips (extra butter and syrup), two eggs over easy, a toasted English muffin and two orders of bacon. "A lot of people say hunger is the best seasoning," he said. "I think winning is."