To start off this fine Wednesday, I present to you something that is somehow even more difficult to watch than last night's basketball game.
Worst 2 minutes in the history of Wheel of Fortune pic.twitter.com/vGUnldCzVw
— TodayInSports (@TodayInSports3) March 2, 2022
I hit the one-minute mark and found myself in physical pain that I was only halfway through.
Word of the Day: Suffuse.
WINNING THE LOTTERY. Mike Conley Jr. is the definition of a guy who was Made in March™. He certainly didn't have a bad regular season, but the dude just went CRAZY down the stretch.
To put it in some context, he had 10 double-figure games across his first 26 appearances, which is extremely respectable, especially for a true freshman. But then, crunch time rolls around, and he put up another 10 double-figure games across his last 11 appearances, including four of his top-five scoring performances – all while playing strong defense and averaging five assists per game.
Suddenly, he was decidedly the best guard in the draft, and coming back to school would have been absolutely irresponsible – even if he wasn't necessarily ready to leave.
“It was such a blur that once the season ended, the smoke cleared everybody’s like, ‘You know you’re gonna be a probably lottery pick,’ ” Conley said Monday. “I’m like, ‘There’s no way. There’s no way that’s true.’”
...
He was ready to come back for more, until it became obvious that he needed to go. And when it was, his reaction might surprise you.
“I wasn’t excited,” Conley said. “It’s a weird feeling, because I was not excited to hear that news. I was so invested in Buckeye basketball and winning a championship. When coach set me down, I was talking to him like, ‘I’m coming back for sure. There’s no question. I’m coming back.’
“Some opportunities you only get once in a lifetime and you have to jump and have faith in it. Did that and it’s worked out, but I can’t lie: I wish I could’ve been able to stay in school longer.”
Selfishly, I'm sad we didn't get to see Conley and Jamar Butler for another season with Kosta Koufos down low, but I think it's safe to say he made the right call.
Also, random fun fact: Conley played in 37 games at Ohio State and reached double figures 20 times, yet only hit multiple three-pointers in three games, and never hit more than two in a single game. That would be completely unheard of from a player taken No. 4 overall in the draft these days.
It's amazing how much the game has changed in such a short amount of time.
LETTING THEM PLAY. For the gritty ones among us who prefer the refs swallow their whistles, you've certainly gotten your wish this year– foul calls and free throws are at an all-time low this season.
The above chart is fouls and free throws per game, which are at an all-time low in college basketball this season. But you could argue that doesn't tell the entire story, given how much the game has changed over the years.
So here's another one that shows fouls and free throws per field goal attempt, to help compensate for tempo:
It's not quite an all-time low anymore, but this season is still by far the lowest over the past 40 or 45 years and has been dropping consistently since 2013.
This is not really what I expected to see, especially with the whole "freedom of movement" thing that's supposed to be emphasized by officials. It's especially hilarious that those rules went into effect back in 2015. And if you notice on that chart...
I have to give credit where credit is due here because I remember Jay Bilas calling the shit out of this back in January, and he didn't even have the benefit of looking at the data.
"Yes, freedom of movement is dead. This season has been the most physical, foul-filled one of the past five, with basketball games devolving into hockey games. While those "in charge" continue to talk about officials being mandated to reduce physicality to create freedom of movement, the truth is, freedom of movement died a slow, painful death. Arm-bars on ball handlers, clear fouls on shooters near the basket, illegal hedging of ball screens, and illegal blowing up of dribble handoffs, among other things, are now being routinely allowed, and players are being required to play through it.
Move just a hair setting a screen on offense and it's a foul, but throw your chest into a shooter and it routinely goes uncalled. And because such clear fouls are not being called by officials, coaches are teaching fouling techniques because they know they aren't being called. This leads to a far more physical, plodding game overall. The work done by the entire college basketball landscape over the past few years to reduce illegal physicality and allow freedom of movement was for nothing. Very unfortunate. RIP, freedom of movement."
Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what we're seeing. And the data backs it up. I'd also love to see if there have been generally more injuries across college basketball this season.
Also, that random spike in free throws in the early 50s and sudden decline in the early 70s led me to discover an old rule I had no idea existed. Apparently, they randomly added a one free-throw penalty to non-shooting fouls for the first six personal fouls in a half, and that was eliminated in 1972.
KEEPING THE CLOCK RUNNING? New kickoff rules, the beloved "targeting" penalty, banning wedge blocks – college football has had its fair share of rule changes to try to make the inherently violent game as safe as possible.
Now, the NCAA has realized there's really not a whole lot more they can do to make the actual game safer. But what they can do is make some minor changes to ensure there are fewer snaps per game – like treating incompletions like a player running out of bounds, or keeping the clock running on first downs.
Shaw said two possible rule changes that have been discussed could have the biggest impact on the number of plays in a game moving forward. The first is treating incomplete passes the same way officials now treat runs out of bounds, where the clock stops only until the ball is spotted and ready for play. Shaw said the rules committee could always add that incomplete passes still stop the clock until the next snap in the final minutes of a game.
“That (rule change) probably would have the biggest impact of anything we could do because there are so many passes now, and, unfortunately in some of these long games, there are a bunch of incomplete passes,” Shaw said. “That could be a way to keep the game moving … and it would still leave the offense in control of not only the tempo but also the clock. If an offense said, hey, I don’t want to lose plays out of this game because they’re going to restart the clock, they can simply get to the line and get there quickly, so when the ball is there you can snap it.”
One other option for a rule change would be restarting the clock more quickly after first downs. Shaw said that he doesn’t think changing this now “would have a dramatic impact, because if you watch our games, we’ve worked with our officials to be very, very efficient at getting that clock restarted.”
I fully expect these rules to get passed, but because I'm a cynic, I don't believe it will really have anything to do with player safety. The *real* win here is that it will shorten the actual football portion of the football game presentation, which means more time for commercials, which means more of that sweet advertising money.
That's probably a little tin-foil hatty of me, but I am who I am.
ALL-BIG TEN. If you're frustrated with the men's hoops team, let me introduce you to a Buckeye squad with not one, but *two* All-Big Ten guards currently averaging over 19 points per game.
The 2021-22 @B1Gwbball first team is L-O-A-D-E-D. pic.twitter.com/U5cPKTUr7L
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) March 1, 2022
The honor is well deserved for both of these ladies. It would have been riot-worthy had they *not* been All-Big Ten after the seasons they had.
It wasn't all good news though – I'm gonna have to go to bat for Kevin McGuff. Ohio State was picked to finish fifth in the Big Ten in the preseason before losing starting point guard and second returning scorer Madison Greene to a knee injury right before the start of the season and the Buckeyes won the regular season conference title.
Yet somehow, Michigan's Kim Barnes Arico was named Big Ten Coach of the Year over McGuff.
McGuff's taken a lot of heat during his time in Columbus, but if this season isn't worthy of a Coach of the Year award, I just don't know what is.
SONG OF THE DAY. "The Three of Us" by Streetlight Manifesto.
NOT STICKING TO SPORTS. An off-duty Las Vegas police officer is accused of robbing a casino at gunpoint... Behold, the world's biggest strawberry... The losses and gains of the world's most influential stunt dieter... Could "monsters" exist in the modern world?... Five surprising uses for recycled poop... How to stop overthinking... Seven habits that lead to happiness in old age... Inside the ‘vicious’ feud tearing Playboy alumni apart...
