One-Game Suspension Proposed for Physical Abuse, Threats Against College Women’s Basketball Officials

The NCAA Women's Basketball Rules Committee recommended a one-game suspension be added to the ejection of players, coaches or bench personnel who make physical contact or threaten referees.

All rules proposals must be approved by the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel before becoming official. The panel is scheduled to discuss women's basketball rules June 6. 

The rule book already defines this conduct as anyone who "disrespectfully contacts an official or makes a threat of physical intimidation or harm to include pushing, shoving, spitting, or attempting to make physical contact with an official."

Committee members, who met this week in Indianapolis, feel proposing a suspension can help deter such behavior toward officials. 

In January, the Playing Rules Oversight Panel issued a directive to all NCAA rules committees to review their sportsmanship and ethical conduct rules. 

"In an effort to address unsporting behavior that we are seeing in our game directed towards officials, the committee felt it was important to send a message of support to the officiating community," said Nicki Collen, rules committee chair and coach at Baylor. "When game participants physically abuse or threaten an official, it should not be tolerated."    

Expanded video review 

The committee proposed expanding video replay review to include whether a player's foot last touching the court was inbounds on a made shot before time expired.

Since these plays are automatically reviewed to see whether the shot was released before time expired, committee members hope to give officials another tool to get the call right. 

If the player's foot is determined to be out of bounds, officials would put the exact time of the violation on the game clock.

However, if the shot is made, and time remains on the game clock, a video review would not occur. 

Currently, officials cannot review whether a player's foot was out of bounds prior to releasing a shot before time expires unless an out-of-bounds call was made by an official on the floor during live play.

Also, in instances where an off-ball foul is called near the time a field goal or free-throw attempt is occurring, officials would have to immediately conduct a replay review to judge whether a basket should count.

This is an adjustment to last year's rules change that provided for the review of defensive fouls to be conducted during the next electronic-media timeout. The committee felt that it was more consistent for all replay reviews to be conducted at the same time when determining whether the field goal or free throw should count.