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After thrilling tournament, critical off-season ahead for college hoops
INDIANAPOLIS—The climax of the best month-long stretch on the sporting calendar ended Monday night with a taut and dramatic game befitting a spectacular NCAA tournament. Duke came back from a nine-point deficit in the second half to beat Wisconsin, 68-63, delivering Blue Devils coach Mike Krzyzewski his fifth national title. Certainly, we should take one final shining moment to remember a tournament that gave us Nigel Hayes’ stenographer-antagonizing, Ron Hunter capsizing and Notre Dame’s magical 38 minutes. Wichita State taught us, yet again, not to be shocked. Tom Izzo reminded us that he’s Tom Izzo. And Wisconsin’s six straight late-game stops against Kentucky turned the Wildcats’ historic season into just that—history.
We can all agree that this NCAA tournament lived up to its annual billing as a seminal American sporting event. Fueled by the inclusive nature of gambling in office pools, the chaos of the knockout format and the inherent charm of the underdog, the tournament is engineered to lure everyone in year after year. With the drama subsided and your office pool decided, however, there’s no need for another homage to March magic.
As college basketball fans wake up to the off-season on Tuesday, we are again reminded of the yawning gap between the popularity of college basketball’s postseason compared to the irrelevancy of its regular season. “I don’t think internally we’re blinded by the success of the NCAA tournament,” said Dan Gavitt, the NCAA vice president of men’s basketball championships. “We realize the game needs to be worked on the other 11 months.”
• Duke fans, buy your 2015 championship cover here
The hangover from the NCAA tournament can’t be long, as college basketball enters one of its most critical off-seasons in recent memory. Outside of select pockets around the country—Lexington, Lawrence and the Triangle among them—college basketball has taken a free fall from the nation’s consciousness in every month not named March. (Or early April, if you want to be persnickety). The game has reached a crisis of relevance, pace and skill. It sits at a crossroads that shouldn’t be obscured by the historic ratings from Kentucky’s tournament games with Notre Dame and Wisconsin. Ultimately, the storyline about the Wildcats' pursuit of perfection bailed out this regular season from being a major dud. And without strong leadership and significant rules changes, the regular season will be as anonymous as the postseason is electric.
“Oh boy,” said Miami coach Jim Larranaga. “What an issue. I would say that the state of basketball and the NCAA tournament are in good shape. The game itself really needs to be looked at very, very closely. What do we want it to look like?”
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The easy answer to that is much, much different. No more 21-19 halftime scores. No more officials taking so many trips to the monitor that they seem to be auditioning as film critics. No more slogging paces on the sideline, with coaches bleeding the shot clock and controlling every dribble. The highest rated regular season college basketball games this year—two contests between North Carolina and Duke that did a 2.6—rated worse than 50 college football regular season games. Yep, a middling game between Tennessee and Georgia on ESPN at noon on a Saturday crushes the best college basketball can muster.
Why? Iona coach Tim Cluess gave perhaps the season’s defining quote when he told The New York Times, “The product stinks.” College basketball is being played at a historically slow pace, and the scoring levels all year trended toward dismal lows. Scoring is lower than its been since before the shot clock was introduced in 1985-86 and the three-point line was implemented the next season. The skill level is too low, the officials too unpredictable and the leadership void that’s hovered over the sport for decades—who, um, is in charge?—has allowed the product to atrophy while conference commissioners keep cashing their checks from the $10.8 billion NCAA tournament television contract.
So what can be done to make sure the regular season isn’t just a four-month spring training? Well, a lot. Let’s start with the leadership, something the NCAA finally appears to have figured out. Well, at least attempted to figure out. The bloated NCAA structure made change in college basketball for decades about as complicated as herding cats on a prairie. For years, the NCAA’s inert cycles of needing committees to pick committees to potentially make change left the sport’s leaders so confused they didn’t know how even to introduce ideas for change.
There’s some optimism that things could be different. Before Monday's title game, Gavitt stressed courtside that the new Division I men’s basketball oversight committee, chaired by UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero, could spearhead significant change. The 12-person committee already consists of Guerrero and three other administrators. It will also include a student athlete—novel concept—and likely a few coaches. The goal is to streamline ideas specially for men’s basketball and cut away typical NCAA bureaucracy. This committee is for big-picture ideas to be discussed, like making college basketball a one-semester sport to escape the nuclear winter of football’s shadow.
It will be a forum for potential transformative change, as the sport’s regular season has regressed to the point where it needs major changes to resuscitate it. “The men’s basketball oversight committee has a great opportunity to impact and enhance the game over the next 12 months,” Gavitt said. “It will centralize men’s basketball, which has been de-centralized.”
Duke wins national championship, beating Wisconsin in title game
Then there are the rules. The committee meets May 13-15 this year, in what will be one of the most anticipated gatherings of that group. The most talked-about change is lowering the shot clock to 30 seconds, which could speed up the game. Larranaga's Miami team played five NIT games with the experimental shot clock and said it had a surprising impact on the games. He said he’d overhaul some strategy—including pressing more in full and three-quarters court—if it were implemented next season. But the preliminary data, according one college official, showed a difference of about one possession per game. In other words, not much. The NIT also used a four-foot restricted area in the paint instead of three feet, making it harder for a secondary defender to attempt to draw a charge. “You have to have that,” Larranaga said, endorsing the change as a no-brainer.
Other ideas bandied about in college basketball circles include the game being broken into quarters instead of halves, adopting the NBA’s eight-second rule to cross halfcourt and reviving the notion of calling fouls to improve offensive flow. “What I would say is that we need to examine what we want,” Larranaga said. “Do we want more scoring? Do we want the game to be faster? If we do, are we willing to do a couple of things and make some rules defensively?”
Northeastern athletic director Peter Roby warned that rule changes can’t impact the game too much if the skill levels of the players continue to decline. It’s a valid point, and speaks to the complicated confluence of factors that have led us here.
What’s certain is that change is needed, and the sport’s leaders are saying all the right things about serious discussion of significant change coming. It’s naïve to think that college basketball’s regular season will ever approach the popularity of the NCAA tournament. But it’s even more naïve to think that the game doesn’t need an overhaul to prevent it from being cemented as a one-month sport. And now that the off-season is here, the magic is gone and the game’s problems will continue to persist.
GALLERY: SI'S BEST PHOTOS OF THE NATIONAL TITLE GAME
SI's Best Photos of the Duke-Wisconsin National Title Game
Duke won its fifth national title in college basketball with a 68-63 victory over Wisconsin on April 6 in Indianapolis. Here are SI's best photos of the game.
Jahlil Okafor (15), Matt Jones (13) and the rest of the Duke team celebrate the final buzzer that sealed the program's fifth championship.
Duke players pile on each other in celebration in the moments following their 68-63 national title game triumph over Wisconsin.
Quinn Cook (holding trophy) and the rest of the Duke squad pose amidst cheers and confetti with their national championship prize.
Guards Tyus Jones and Quinn Cook were front and center for Duke this season and also on the podium after Monday's game.
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski cuts down the Final Four nets for the fifth time as Duke head coach. The 2015 title pushed Krzyzewski past Adolph Rupp into sole possession of second place on the list of championship-winning coaches, behind only John Wooden with 10.
Justise Winslow and Grayson Allen celebrate a key play during Duke's 68-63 win. Winslow and Allen finished with 11 and 16 points, respectively.
Wisconsin's Josh Gasser discovers blood on his face during his team's championship game loss. The senior was held scoreless on one shot in his final college game.
Guards Traevon Jackson and Grayson Allen race for a loose ball. Allen had the better day of the back-up guards, scoring 16 points on 5-8 shooting.
Grayson Allen takes a tumble after lunging for a loose ball against Traevon Jackson and Wisconsin.
Wisconsin's Frank Kaminsky got the better of Duke's Jahlil Okafor in a battle of All-Americans. Kaminsky tallied 21 points and 12 rebounds in his team's loss.
Wisconsin's bench celebrates a big play during Monday's title game. The Badgers led by as many as 9 points in the second half before falling 68-63.
Wisconsin's Frank Kaminsky battles for position against Duke's Amile Jefferson. As Jahlil Okafor struggled through foul trouble, Jefferson provided key defense on Kaminsky throughout the night.
Wisconsin contained Duke center Jahlil Okafor for most of Monday night, holding the freshman to 10 points and three rebounds.
Duke's forgotten freshman Grayson Allen jumped off the bench and became Duke's national championship hero.
Justise Winslow and Duke overcame a nine-point second-half deficit in the win.
Tyus Jones shoots a layup for two of his 23 points. The Duke freshman was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four.
Duke point guard Tyus Jones hoists a tough lay-up over Wisconsin's Bronson Koenig. Jones was the Blue Devils' hero, scoring 23 points and drilling several clutch 3-pointers.
Duke freshmen guards Tyus Jones and Grayson Allen combined for 39 points of their team's 68 points Monday night.
Wisconsin alum and Houston Texans star J.J. Watt left disappointed Monday, as his alma mater lost 68-63 at Lucas Oil Stadium.
Duke forward Justise Winslow soars toward the basket. Despite shooting only 3-9 from the field, Winslow managed 11 points and added nine rebounds.
Duke guard Grayson Allen contorts his body to lift a shot over two Wisconsin defenders. In addition to 5-8 shooting, Allen reached the free throw line five times and made all five shots.
Wisconsin guard Bronson Koenig attempts to lay the ball in over Duke forward Justise Winslow. Koenig scored 10 points on 4-9 shooting.
Grayson Allen flies toward the backboard over the contest of Wisconsin's Sam Dekker. Allen was among Duke's heroes Monday despite averaging only 4.4 points per game on the season.
After lapsing on defense periodically throughout the season, Duke stepped up on that end Monday, holding Sam Dekker and Wisconsin to 41 percent shooting.
Wisconsin forward Sam Dekker, one of the NCAA Tournament's best players through five games, shot 6-15 Monday including 0-6 from 3-point range, scoring 12 points.
Duke center Jahlil Okafor draws all eyes as he lifts a lay-up during Duke's national title game victory over Wisconsin.
In a matchup of arguably the nation's two best players, Frank Kaminsky put up the stats but Jahlil Okafor and Duke got the victory.
Duke guard Tyus Jones clashes with Wisconsin center Frank Kaminsky as the freshman attempts to score at the basket. Jones (23 points) and Kaminsky (21 points) led their respective teams in scoring Monday night.
Dukes fans enjoyed their team's 68-63 victory with cheers and body paint.
Duke's student section had much to celebrate Monday night, as their team recovered from down 9 points to deliver a national title to Durham.
The U.S. Army band performs the Star Spangled Banner before Wisconsin and Duke's national title game matchup.
Senior writer Pete Thamel covers college football and basketball. Prior to joining SI in 2012, he was a national college sports writer for The New York Times.