ACC wrestles with rough play

The red marks on Duke forward Kyle Singler's arms bore witness to the physical toll college basketball takes on its players.

Singler grinned Wednesday night after Duke's win over Boston College as he looked at the three-inch scratch on his left biceps and three smaller welts on his left forearm.

He had a large scrape above his right elbow and a couple of nicks on his right arm.

"Game to game, they kind of add up and don't go away," Singler said of the wounds. "It's cumulative over several games and practices."

Although Singler said he enjoys the bumping and contact that go along with college basketball, some coaches believe the game has become too rough.

"You watch our game now compared to the games that were on TV 20 years ago when ESPN Classic is showing those games," said North Carolina coach Roy Williams. "It's hand-to-hand combat now, and it wasn't anything like that [in the past]."

Jay Bilas, a former Duke player who lives in Charlotte, did commentary on the Villanova-Louisville game for ESPN on Monday and concluded that a foul could have been called on virtually every trip down the court.

Sixty-seven fouls were called in the game. Two days earlier, Bilas used wrestling terms to describe the physical play in Georgia Tech's win over Duke.

"I don't want the game to be a ballet," Bilas said, "but at the same time, you don't want it to be a clutch-and-grab game either."

Some other coaches don't agree that the game is more physical than ever.

Mike Krzyzewski remembers extremely physical games with Georgia Tech early in his tenure at Duke but does say defenders bump dribblers more now.

On this week's ACC teleconference call, Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg said the early days of the Big East, with its physical Georgetown teams, were brutal.

A few minutes later, Greenberg was asked what happened with Hokies forward Victor Davila on Sunday night after a loose-ball scramble at North Carolina.

"His eye was lacerated in two different spots," Greenberg said. "He was bleeding, and he had to come out of the game."

That's college basketball at the start of a decade, and some coaches would like to change it.

Changing game

Some coaches say more contact is inevitable in college basketball because the players are larger and the court has remained the same size.

Duke started this season with six players listed at 225 pounds or more. Ten years ago, the 1999-2000 Duke roster listed two players at more than 215 pounds.

Moving the 3-point arc back one foot to 20 feet, 9 inches in 2008-09 was supposed to create more space for those big bodies.

"It really hasn't made much of a difference," Maryland coach Gary Williams said. "So I don't know where you go next to try to take away some of the contact."

Davidson coach Bob McKillop said the summer club tournament scene for youth players is partly to blame. Teams compete in three games a day in those tournaments, and McKillop said referees eager to keep the pace moving stop the game only for major infractions.

"As a result of letting a lot of things go, kids from the time they're 12 or 13 develop incredibly bad habits," he said.

Some say that if college referees would call fouls early in a game, play would be less brutal.

North Carolina's Williams said he spent six years on the NCAA rules committee emphasizing the idea that the game needs to be opened up more.

"Easiest way to do it is to call more fouls," Williams said. "If you do that early, then people are going to stop it."

Bilas said physicality has decreased in the NBA because the league demanded it and wouldn't allow any contact on the perimeter.

Bilas said NBA referees, as employees of the league, are forced to comply with the league's mandates.

College basketball referees, however, are independent contractors.

Bilas said they have an extremely difficult job where the only incentive to call games according to protocol is to get assigned NCAA Tournament games at the end of the season.

With 347 Division I teams playing two games a week and three referees assigned to each game, Bilas said, refereeing is bound to be uneven.

While referees are taking some of the blame for the rough play, coaches who don't want their teams to back down probably are contributing to it.

"We have to be more physical," Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said after a Jan. 2 loss to Pittsburgh

"You have to be physical, and you have to be strong," Minnesota coach Tubby Smith said after a loss to Michigan State on Wednesday.

Those not-so-subtle messages won't cut down on the physicality of the game.

Difficult to officiate

John Clougherty, the Raleigh resident who supervises the ACC's officials, put together video for his officials this week pertaining to physical post play and defenders pushing opponents off the "block" near the basket.

Clougherty agreed that the game is difficult to officiate.

"I've been to practices, and I've watched the way they teach - bodying up the jump shooters, putting arm bars on people," he said. "And now the responsibility to make sure the game is played within the rules is the referees' responsibility. ... We're the guardian of the rules. This is not an alibi, but there's only so much we can do."

Last year, former Horizon League officiating supervisor John Adams was installed as the NCAA's new coordinator of basketball officiating.

He is charged with standardizing officiating across the country, and Bilas and McKillop say he's doing a great job.

Adams, who attended Duke's game with Boston College on Wednesday night, said he believes participants are starting to embrace freedom of movement as a guiding principle.

Still, some are suggesting significant changes:

Georgia Tech coach Paul Hewitt said it's time to consider widening and lengthening the court.

At a recent game at Maryland, Clougherty and Washington Wizards director of player development Ed Tapscott had a long discussion about how the trapezoidal lane used in international basketball would open up space in the post.

McKillop said "teamwork" could help the officials make consistent calls.

"Why do they employ them as individual contractors?" McKillop said. "So now you have three individual contractors come to a game. And three individual contractors might look at things differently."

Gary Williams said all games evolve, and that there are rewards for teams that play a physical style.

He said the game has turned 180 degrees from the days when he was a 170-pound point guard for Maryland in the 1960s.

"We all thought we were really physical, and I've seen some old film of when I played," Williams said. "We weren't very physical, and we were all skinny. The game's really changed."