Already, there is a Michigan State rule in the books. It allows officials to use television to correct a scorer`s or timekeeper`s mistake, and was written in after the Spartans` 1986 NCAA tourney game with Kansas. In it, the timekeeper forgot to start his clock, and with the extra 15 to 20 seconds they received, the Jayhawks managed to tie the game in regulation and win in overtime.
Now, looming on the horizon, is Michigan State II. The National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) will propose that it be adopted by the Division I Men`s Basketball Committee, and if it passes, it would allow officials to use instant replay at the end of NCAA tourney games to determine if a shot beat the buzzer and/or if it was a two- or a three-pointer.
”Sure, I`m very receptive to the change,” says Michigan State coach Jud Heathcote, laughing. His Spartans, of course, lost in overtime in this year`s tourney to Georgia Tech, which tied it up in regulation on an after-the-last- second shot by Kenny Anderson. ”If that hadn`t happened, I`d probably be comme ci, comme ca. I`d be saying, `Gee, that`s too bad.`
”But when you`re the receptionist, you`re suddenly more receptive. So that first rule came about because of that (Kansas) fiasco. Maybe because of this fiasco, we`ll use the monitor at the end of games.”
Heathcote was talking in the lobby of Denver`s Radisson Hotel, the coaches` hotel and the site Thursday of all Final Four action. Duke and Arkansas, Vegas and Georgia Tech, they were sequestered and far from view, but the beat went on both behind closed doors and in public.
The beat, in this case, was being batted out by the coaches, who descend on a Final Four city much like a hungry flock. Some are in search of jobs, but most are there to meet and greet and come up with ideas on how their game should be played and regulated. Its appeal has never been higher, and the two weeks it just offered provided the highest kind of drama, but . . . But.
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”But there are always concerns, always areas that call for investigation and improvement,” says Heathcote. ”Write down after that that I have a wonderful sense for the obvious.”
”But what worries me,” says Southern Cal coach George Raveling, ”is we seem to find a need to continue to flirt around with the game. Why, when we`re at the zenith of our popularity? I feel we should call a moratorium, and the rules committee shouldn`t meet for three years.”
But that moratorium is not yet on, and so, beginning Sunday, that committee will convene and decide how to merely flirt around with a game that is soaring-but in need of a major overhaul. Instant replay will be one issue it will consider, as will be the three-point distance. The NABC was rebuffed last year when it asked that it be moved back nine inches to the international distance of 20 feet 6 inches, but it is set to try to ram that through again. It will also ask that the shot clock not be reset unless a shot hits the rim, and that some way be found to speed up a game`s end. Those have become tedious minutes, minutes that seem to stretch into hours, and only two statistics are needed to drive this point home. The last three minutes of the Xavier-Kansas State Midwest Regional game took 25 minutes to play, and the last four minutes of a Georgetown-Providence regular-season game took 36 to play.
Intentional fouling, of course, is the reason for that, but since officials steadfastly refuse to make that call in the final two minutes, changes must be made. Make what are now one-and-one fouls two-shot fouls, that is one NABC recommendation. Another, and more fascinating, is let the coach designate who will take the shots after a common foul in the last two minutes. ”If I know,” says Raveling, ”that after I foul you deliberately to stop the clock that you`re going to put your best shooter on the line, I`ve got a tough decision to make. Then it`s not running around looking for the worst shooter to foul.”
Running amuck, that is what some coaches have done both during and after games this season, and that is another concern of the NABC. It has, in fact, established an ethics committee to monitor the conduct of its own and has appealed to all coaches to control their emotional outbursts and those of their players. ”We feel,” says Raveling, ”that it`s reaching dangerous proportions, and want to cut it off as quick as we can.”
There was more, much more, but as Raveling (a member of the NABC`s legislative board) and Notre Dame`s Digger Phelps (the chair of its rules committee) stood on stage and talked of the flirting that might change their game, there was no mention of its deepest problems. Those are the cheating done to secure players, and the exploitation of those players once they are secured.
Those are the twin cancers cutting through their game, diseases that eat at its foundation and strip it of integrity. The President`s Commission and the Knight Commission and other commissions too countless to list all are looking at those areas, but the coaches rarely move to monitor their own house.
”We`ve done a bad job of policing our organization,” admits Heathcote.
”I`ve seen some change, but I don`t see dramatic changes in turning other coaches in. It`s a matter of turning the other way, saying, `It`s the other guy. He`s going to do what he does.`
”But the NCAA has a tough time proving anything, and I maintain that cheaters know how to cheat. I guarantee you, they`re not stupid. The hope is, this used to be hush, hush, hush. Now, at least, guys get together and say,
`Hey, that program`s not on the up-and-up.` Maybe that`s the start in getting something done.
”What do you call it? Maybe it will get done by osmosis. If a guy says,
`This is the fifth time I heard this about so-and-so,` maybe then he`ll turn him in. We don`t go by facts on this. We go by rumor. But when a rumor persists, well, where there`s smoke, there`s fire.”
A fire that, ultimately, reduces all those proposals and rules to mere cosmetics. Cosmetics that are not necessary on the face of a game in need of radical surgery.