Does the Whistle Get Tighter in the NCAA Tournament?
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Tim Casey | GatorCountry.com[/caption]
If you remember all the way back to Tuesday's contest with Alabama, Jimmy Dykes stepped off his jet and decided to take break from guarding his yard to discuss the upcoming NCAA Tournament. As one would expect, the conversation was brief as there was a game going on, but Mr. Dykes did bring up an interesting point on how the upcoming tournament would be conducted - particularly with the stripes calling the games.
Fouls have been a hot point of discussion all season long with the greater emphasis on calling the hand-check fouls that were going uncalled in recent years. Defenders - in the early portions of the season at least - were forced to take their hands off the dribbler or would be whistled for a foul. The beginning of the 2013-14 campaign saw a handful games being extended to brutal lengths due to teams clinging to the old method of defending, leading to many whining coaches and fans. Unfortunately, it seems as though referees have reverted back to the old "Letting-Teams-Hack-And-Claw-Without-A-Whistle" method, leaving many teams who adjusted scratching their heads. However Jimmy Dykes claimed during Tuesday's broadcast that the NCAA Tournament has a tighter whistle, meaning teams like Kentucky who frequent the charity stripe should benefit tremendously. However, I wanted to find proof of the tighter whistle, so I conducted a bit of research.
In order to conduct this study, I had one simple thing in mind. I simply wanted to compare the fouls per game called in the NCAA Tournament with the foul per game averages from the regular season of the teams in the NCAA Tournament. The below table tells the story from the past three seasons. Note that these are the individual team averages and not the combined game totals.
As you can see, the teams participating in the NCAA Tournament conducted in 2011 and 2012 had fewer fouls called on them in the postseason than in the regular season. In 2011, the teams participating were whistled, on average, one fewer time per game than in the regular season, while teams in 2012 were whistled 0.4 fewer times per game. Last year was were Jimmy Dykes' hypothesis gained some traction as more fouls were called in the in the postseason than in the regular season.
As for this season's tournament, I'd suspect that Dykes' hypothesis will come true as the head of officials will want the postseason games to be officiated as they were intended to be a few months ago when the rules were strictly enforced. This could only benefit Kentucky as we're a team that lives off of getting to the free throw line. The individual game style will obviously dictate the amount of fouls that will be called, but Kentucky should be getting to the line more frequently if the whistle is tighter. As for how many additional points this will earn us per game, it's anyone's guess. If we get to the line more often than usual we could be looking at a 3-4 point increase per contest if we connect on free throws near our season average. And as you know, 3-4 points in the tournament could be all the difference between a first round disaster or a late round tournament run.
Tim Casey | GatorCountry.com[/caption]
If you remember all the way back to Tuesday's contest with Alabama, Jimmy Dykes stepped off his jet and decided to take break from guarding his yard to discuss the upcoming NCAA Tournament. As one would expect, the conversation was brief as there was a game going on, but Mr. Dykes did bring up an interesting point on how the upcoming tournament would be conducted - particularly with the stripes calling the games.
Fouls have been a hot point of discussion all season long with the greater emphasis on calling the hand-check fouls that were going uncalled in recent years. Defenders - in the early portions of the season at least - were forced to take their hands off the dribbler or would be whistled for a foul. The beginning of the 2013-14 campaign saw a handful games being extended to brutal lengths due to teams clinging to the old method of defending, leading to many whining coaches and fans. Unfortunately, it seems as though referees have reverted back to the old "Letting-Teams-Hack-And-Claw-Without-A-Whistle" method, leaving many teams who adjusted scratching their heads. However Jimmy Dykes claimed during Tuesday's broadcast that the NCAA Tournament has a tighter whistle, meaning teams like Kentucky who frequent the charity stripe should benefit tremendously. However, I wanted to find proof of the tighter whistle, so I conducted a bit of research.
In order to conduct this study, I had one simple thing in mind. I simply wanted to compare the fouls per game called in the NCAA Tournament with the foul per game averages from the regular season of the teams in the NCAA Tournament. The below table tells the story from the past three seasons. Note that these are the individual team averages and not the combined game totals.
As you can see, the teams participating in the NCAA Tournament conducted in 2011 and 2012 had fewer fouls called on them in the postseason than in the regular season. In 2011, the teams participating were whistled, on average, one fewer time per game than in the regular season, while teams in 2012 were whistled 0.4 fewer times per game. Last year was were Jimmy Dykes' hypothesis gained some traction as more fouls were called in the in the postseason than in the regular season.
As for this season's tournament, I'd suspect that Dykes' hypothesis will come true as the head of officials will want the postseason games to be officiated as they were intended to be a few months ago when the rules were strictly enforced. This could only benefit Kentucky as we're a team that lives off of getting to the free throw line. The individual game style will obviously dictate the amount of fouls that will be called, but Kentucky should be getting to the line more frequently if the whistle is tighter. As for how many additional points this will earn us per game, it's anyone's guess. If we get to the line more often than usual we could be looking at a 3-4 point increase per contest if we connect on free throws near our season average. And as you know, 3-4 points in the tournament could be all the difference between a first round disaster or a late round tournament run.
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