For those who don’t know, college basketball had a rule change this offseason that allows officials to hand out “Class B” technical fouls to players for flopping — or, as described by the NCAA, “an unsporting act that occurs when a player attempts to influence an official's judgment by creating an appearance that a foul has been committed when there has been incidental or no contact.”
The original rule, which was introduced in 2019, made referees issue a warning on the first flop and technicals for repeat offenders. There are no warnings this year. They’re jumping straight to techs. The “Class B” part of the rule means that it doesn’t count toward a player’s personal foul count, but it does still give the opposing team a free throw and the ball.
I’ve seen the rule called twice so far this year, the first time in the Gonzaga/Texas game on Wednesday and the second last night in the Illinois/UCLA game. And in both cases, the call was wrong. The ball-handler pushed off the defender, the defender fell to the floor and was then issued a Class B technical foul for flopping.
West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins led the rules committee that recommended the change. And when asked about why the change needed to happen, Huggins said, without citing any data, “We didn’t feel like we were getting the results that we wanted with the warnings. Our goal is to continue to try to get flopping out of the game.”
And it’s interesting because Colorado head coach Tad Boyle, who used to be the rules committee chair, said the exact same thing when he first introduced the idea back in May 2021, verbatim: “After two years of using warnings, we didn’t feel like we were getting the results that we wanted. We are trying to get flopping out of our game.”
Boyle didn’t point to any evidence, either. No stats on how often flops occur. Nothing about feedback from players or coaches they spoke with. No specific examples of plays to point to and say “this is what we want to avoid.”
So my question is, what is the actual end goal here? Is it to completely erase flopping from the game of basketball? Because that’s never, ever happening. They could raise the punishment to a Class A technical and it wouldn’t matter. They could start immediately ejecting players and guys would still flail their arms like Manu Ginobili.
Is the goal to lower the rate of flopping in games? Ken Pomeroy tweeted last night that there’s been a flopping technical called about once every 2.5 games, which kind of seems like an awful lot. That rate would mean that there were 32 technicals assessed in the 80 games played on Friday alone. And that’s with the very likely possibility that officials don’t want to make the call as often as they should, knowing that it results in a free throw. Maybe they’re calling it more often than they will in March, trying to get teams to adjust. But again, flopping isn’t going away.
Now, if the goal is to reward players for pushing off, Boyle and his parrot Huggins have hit the bull’s-eye. Congratulations on a job well done.
I don’t think the solution is to review each flop called (except, maybe, if a player is getting ejected because of it). We don’t need anything unnecessarily slowing the game down. But I really don’t like that, if a ref makes a wrong call, a team gets a chance to tack on an extra point to its possession. That’s going to change the outcomes of a few games this year.
An actual example: There were seven games on Friday that were either decided by one point or went into overtime. One of those games was Denver’s 70-69 road win against Idaho State. Denver was whistled for two separate Class B technicals. Idaho State made its free throw the first time, but missed the second. If the Bengals had made it, the game goes into overtime instead. That could’ve happened in any of the other six games.
Don’t get me wrong, flopping sucks. But how bad was the old system, really? We truthfully don’t know — nobody has shown us the receipts. And until someone does, I’ll be skeptical that flopping honestly warrants a free throw and loss of possession.
If we can’t trust officials to make a no-call when someone actually flops, why are we trusting officials to make an actual call when they *think* someone flopped?
***
Some unrelated thoughts on Illinois after their win over UCLA last night (a preview of my preview for the Braggin’ Rights game, if you will):
-I don’t think Terrence Shannon Jr. is going to shoot 8-9 from 3 every game, but he is averaging a career-high number of attempts from deep this season.
-Sencire Harris is a PROBLEM. He only played 10 minutes and was +16, tied with Matthew Mayer for best on the team.
-The reason the Fightin’ Brad Underwoods won (and the reason Harris was so good) was their ball pressure. UCLA had a nine-point lead at the half and was crushing Illinois inside. The Illini flipped the tables with a full-court press that led to 13 points off nine Bruins turnovers in the second half.
-Illinois has actually played at a faster tempo than Mizzou so far this season. Dec. 22 is going to be an all-out sprint.
The original rule, which was introduced in 2019, made referees issue a warning on the first flop and technicals for repeat offenders. There are no warnings this year. They’re jumping straight to techs. The “Class B” part of the rule means that it doesn’t count toward a player’s personal foul count, but it does still give the opposing team a free throw and the ball.
I’ve seen the rule called twice so far this year, the first time in the Gonzaga/Texas game on Wednesday and the second last night in the Illinois/UCLA game. And in both cases, the call was wrong. The ball-handler pushed off the defender, the defender fell to the floor and was then issued a Class B technical foul for flopping.
West Virginia head coach Bob Huggins led the rules committee that recommended the change. And when asked about why the change needed to happen, Huggins said, without citing any data, “We didn’t feel like we were getting the results that we wanted with the warnings. Our goal is to continue to try to get flopping out of the game.”
And it’s interesting because Colorado head coach Tad Boyle, who used to be the rules committee chair, said the exact same thing when he first introduced the idea back in May 2021, verbatim: “After two years of using warnings, we didn’t feel like we were getting the results that we wanted. We are trying to get flopping out of our game.”
Boyle didn’t point to any evidence, either. No stats on how often flops occur. Nothing about feedback from players or coaches they spoke with. No specific examples of plays to point to and say “this is what we want to avoid.”
So my question is, what is the actual end goal here? Is it to completely erase flopping from the game of basketball? Because that’s never, ever happening. They could raise the punishment to a Class A technical and it wouldn’t matter. They could start immediately ejecting players and guys would still flail their arms like Manu Ginobili.
Is the goal to lower the rate of flopping in games? Ken Pomeroy tweeted last night that there’s been a flopping technical called about once every 2.5 games, which kind of seems like an awful lot. That rate would mean that there were 32 technicals assessed in the 80 games played on Friday alone. And that’s with the very likely possibility that officials don’t want to make the call as often as they should, knowing that it results in a free throw. Maybe they’re calling it more often than they will in March, trying to get teams to adjust. But again, flopping isn’t going away.
Now, if the goal is to reward players for pushing off, Boyle and his parrot Huggins have hit the bull’s-eye. Congratulations on a job well done.
I don’t think the solution is to review each flop called (except, maybe, if a player is getting ejected because of it). We don’t need anything unnecessarily slowing the game down. But I really don’t like that, if a ref makes a wrong call, a team gets a chance to tack on an extra point to its possession. That’s going to change the outcomes of a few games this year.
An actual example: There were seven games on Friday that were either decided by one point or went into overtime. One of those games was Denver’s 70-69 road win against Idaho State. Denver was whistled for two separate Class B technicals. Idaho State made its free throw the first time, but missed the second. If the Bengals had made it, the game goes into overtime instead. That could’ve happened in any of the other six games.
Don’t get me wrong, flopping sucks. But how bad was the old system, really? We truthfully don’t know — nobody has shown us the receipts. And until someone does, I’ll be skeptical that flopping honestly warrants a free throw and loss of possession.
If we can’t trust officials to make a no-call when someone actually flops, why are we trusting officials to make an actual call when they *think* someone flopped?
***
Some unrelated thoughts on Illinois after their win over UCLA last night (a preview of my preview for the Braggin’ Rights game, if you will):
-I don’t think Terrence Shannon Jr. is going to shoot 8-9 from 3 every game, but he is averaging a career-high number of attempts from deep this season.
-Sencire Harris is a PROBLEM. He only played 10 minutes and was +16, tied with Matthew Mayer for best on the team.
-The reason the Fightin’ Brad Underwoods won (and the reason Harris was so good) was their ball pressure. UCLA had a nine-point lead at the half and was crushing Illinois inside. The Illini flipped the tables with a full-court press that led to 13 points off nine Bruins turnovers in the second half.
-Illinois has actually played at a faster tempo than Mizzou so far this season. Dec. 22 is going to be an all-out sprint.
