Originally Posted by
camion
I just listened to a segment of "It's Only a Game" on NPR concerning the foul fest that occurs at the end of many basketball games and a proposed fix. I know we've discussed this before, but this is a solution I haven't heard that it is going to be tried at a tournament this summer.
The proposal is to turn the game clock off at 4 minutes to go in the game and from that point the teams play until one team reaches 7 points more than the leading team had at the 4 minute mark. I sort of like it because it means that a team has to score to win. What do you think?
A
link.
Still chewing on it. Lessee... a team is ahead 75 to 70. Then at the first pay stoppage after the four-minute mark (three-minute in college) the game clock is turned off. (Is the play clock turned off, or does it continue?) The "game" then becomes to the first team to get to "82" -- 75 plus 7 -- with no game clock. OK, I see the attraction for games with a seven point to 12-point margin with four minutes to go, in that it gives the trailing team the chance to win by dominating the last few minutes and holding the leading team to fewer than seven points, while making up the margin.
Hmmm... apparently Jon Mugar's "The Basketball Tournament" will try it this summer in its qualifying rounds. There is a lot of basketball played at every level -- such ideas would really benefit from test drives.
One of Elam's main points, however, is that he has tracked lots and lots of games and foulfests, while prolonging the game, almost never work. Thus, we are agonized with fruitless delays of the play.
What's wrong with just giving the ball back to the team that is fouled more than three or four times in last 3-4 minutes?
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013