You can cuss it or discuss it, you can love it or you can hate it, but you can`t ignore it. The three-point field goal has made even more an impact on college basketball than its proponents had hoped or its opponents had feared.
The game has changed, and not, as many coaches feared, for the worst. While the majority of coaches still appear opposed to the rule that allows three points for a shot made beyond an arc extending 19 feet 9 inches from the center of the basket, there is no evidence two-thirds of the way into the season that the game has suffered any irreparable harm.
To the contrary, the excitement level at college basketball games has never seemed higher. When Reggie Williams drills a three-point shot to hand De Paul its first defeat, when Doug Lee nails a three-pointer at the buzzer to send Purdue`s game with Illinois into overtime, when Tommy Amaker`s three-point try bounces all over creation before falling through to tie up Duke`s game at Clemson–that`s excitement.
Some rule changes make subtle alterations in the game. The three-point shot is as subtle as a smash in the mouth. When you`re leading by two points with the clock running down and the other guy throws one in from 20 feet
–ouch, that hurts.
Perhaps the most telling dramatization of the rule`s impact came in a game at Oral Roberts, when Memphis State, trailing by seven with 14 seconds left, came back to win in regulation. But in game after game, the rule has caused some fascinating end-of-game strategy.
In De Paul`s game at Georgetown, the Hoyas trailed by two with less than 45 seconds to play. The only way De Paul could lose in regulation was on a three-point shot. If Georgetown merely scored a conventional basket to tie the game, the Blue Demons could hold the ball for the last shot and either win or, at worst, go to overtime. At least De Paul made Williams take a difficult shot for his winning three-pointer. In Illinois` overtime loss at Purdue, the Illini had a three-point lead with 4 seconds left and probably could have won the game by fouling on an inbounds pass. Lou Henson chose to try to defend the three-point try, but his players let Lee have an open shot.
At Indiana a week later, trailing by three in the closing seconds, Illinois` Ken Norman pulled down a rebound and retreated beyond the three-point line before putting up a desperate shot that failed.
Recalls Notre Dame coach Digger Phelps: ”We were playing Central Michigan here and we were up by one with 30-odd seconds to play. They had five team fouls to give so they couldn`t send us to the line. During a timeout I told my kids, `I don`t want you to score.` They looked at me like I was crazy. I said, `Trust me.` The point is, if we scored they could come down and score a three-pointer and we`d go into overtime.”
Phelps, however, is one of the many coaches opposed to the rule, particularly at the present distance. ”A field goal`s a field goal,” he argues, ”and it`s always been worth two points. It`s like awarding seven points for a touchdown on a 90-yard bomb but only six points if you`re inside the 5-yard line. What`s next, a 23-foot shot for four? Where does it stop?”
There`s no question that tinkering with the rules of a sport that is at the peak of its popularity can be dangerous. ”If it`s not broke, don`t fix it,” is the phrase several coaches have used.
”That`s ridiculous,” says Loyola assistant coach Doug Bruno. ”If we always went by that rule we`d still be using outdoor plumbing.”
Bruno maintains that there are two groups that love the new rule–the fans and the players. ”All the negative reaction is coming from the third group, the coaches. Coaches act like we own this game, and we don`t. We`re just the caretakers.”
Actually there are those who feel the game was ”broke” and the three-point shot was needed to fix it. For several years, basketball has been evolving into an inside game, with the emphasis on pounding the ball into the middle to ever-bigger and more agile players. With defenses packing their zones under the basket, it became, in Loyola coach Gene Sullivan`s words, ”a game of weightlifters.”
When the 45-second clock was instituted last year it gave offenses less time to work the ball around and solve the zone. The real purpose of the three-point shot is to force the defense to defend the perimeter. ”I always believed the two rules should go in together,” says Sullivan, whose only regret is that the three-point shot wasn`t in use earlier when he had Alfredrick Hughes, Andre Battle and Carl Golston.
Understandably, UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian loves the three-point shot.
”I`m for anything that will keep you from playing a zone defense,” he says.
Many coaches feel that if there must be a three-point shot, at least it should come from farther out on the floor.
”It`s too close,” says De Paul`s Joey Meyer. ”A kid can actually shoot the shot and not realize he`s in three-point range.”
For a good shooter, it certainly is not a difficult shot. Some players are shooting more accurately from long range than from inside the three-point line. Eric Rhodes of Stephen F. Austin had made nearly 65 percent of his three-point shots (42-for-65). One of the most interesting statistics of the year is that Indiana as a team was hitting 56.9 percent of its three-point shots while North Carolina led the nation in overall shooting at 54.2 percent. What could that possibly mean? That coaches who have been teaching their players to pass up the open shot from outside and take a six-footer while falling down with three men on their backs have been wrong all these years?
Not at all, insists North Carolina`s Dean Smith. ”We were consistent pounding it inside,” he says, ”and as good a shot as you are you aren`t going to do it every night from the outside. You may do it on certain nights, but over the long haul we`re going to be ahead.”
In the Tar Heels` game against Southern Methodist they made only 9 of 30 three-point shots and had to go to overtime to win. ”They dared us to take it and we took it,” Smith said. ”If it had been worth only two points we wouldn`t have.” Yet Smith is the highest profile coach to come out in favor of the rule. ”I pushed that rule,” he says. ”It`s not the way I like to play, but I think it`s good for the game. The fans like it and the kids like to play it.”
For those coaches who feel the line should be moved back, perhaps to the NBA distance of 23 feet 9 inches to the backboard (or 22 feet to the center of the basket) consider this: According to the latest NBA statistics only one player, the Lakers` Michael Cooper, has averaged even one three-point basket a game. Cooper had made 52 in 41 games. The NCAA leader, Butler`s Darrin Fitzgerald, had made 96 in 18 games.
The three-point shot is seldom taken in the NBA unless the shot clock is about to expire or your team is far behind and needs to catch up. In college basketball it is an integral part of the game, as likely to be tried in the first minute as the last.
If the purpose of the rule is to increase scoring, it has done that. If the purpose is to unclog the area around the basket, it has done that and will do it more when coaches learn that they have to defend the perimeter as well as the basket.
”From a coaching standpoint,” says Phelps, ”you have to change defensive concepts that`ve been taught for years. Defenses will adjust. It`s almost like when the wishbone offense came into football and nobody could stop it. Ara Parseghian came up with the mirror defense and adjusted to it.”
But many coaches do not want to adjust to the new rule. ”Ours is the only sport,” complains Western Kentucky coach Murray Arnold, ”where you get rewarded for going backwards.” Of course, Arnold`s team is probably the one team in the country most adversely affected. Like some De Paul teams of recent memory, Western Kentucky has a powerful front line and no outside shooters. The rule does not really change the basic dynamics of the game. A team like Kentucky, with no inside game, cannot win consistently, and neither can a team like Western Kentucky without an outside game.
Even before Reggie Williams` stinger last Sunday, Meyer had said, ”I`m not in favor of it.”
”It was forced on us as coaches,” says Phelps. ”We didn`t want it.”
But they`ve got it, for the rest of this year at least. Phelps points out that the National Association of Basketball Coaches has its legislative meeting on the Saturday morning of the NCAA finals. On the day following the tournament the rules committee meets in New Orleans, and, he notes, ”I`ve been added to the rules committee.”
