Legal guarding position question
 

A5 is dribbling up the court near the sideline. Defender B21 establishes legal guarding position with both feet in-bounds. Just prior to contact B21 has moved to maintain legal guarding position and has one foot on the sideline when A5 runs into B21 knocking him over.

Based on the wording in 4-23-2-a and 4-23-3-a, as well as the comment on page 70, this is a charge. Is that understanding correct? And seeing they clarified this rule a couple of years ago does anybody have any idea why they still allow the defender to have a foot out of bounds while he was just maintaining legal guarding position?

Not Legal position as foot is out-of-bounds
 

Rule 4, Section 23

ART. 2

To obtain an initial legal guarding position:

a. The guard must have both feet touching the playing court.

b. The front of the guard's torso must be facing the opponent.

ART. 3

After the initial legal guarding position is obtained:

a. The guard may have one or both feet on the playing court or be airborne, provided he/she has inbound status.

b. The guard is not required to continue facing the opponent.

c. The guard may move laterally or obliquely to maintain position, *provided it is not toward the opponent when contact occurs.

d. The guard may raise hands or jump within his/her own vertical plane.

e. The guard may turn or duck to absorb the shock of imminent contact.

Case play:
4.23.3 SITUATION B:

A1 is dribbling near the sideline when B1 obtains legal guarding position. B1 stays in the path of A1 but in doing so has (a) one foot touching the sideline or (b) one foot in the air over the out-of-bounds area when A1 contacts B1 in the torso.

RULING: In (a), B1 is called for a blocking foul because a player may not be out of bounds and obtain or maintain legal guarding position. In (b), A1 is called for a player-control foul because B2 had obtained and maintained legal guarding position. (4-23-2; 4-23-3a)

You cannot be "legally" guarding someone with a foot OOB. In any block/charge scenarios this is an automatic block.

Got it. "On" the playing court means that after establishing legal guarding position you can have a foot, or feet, off the ground and still be maintaining a legal guarding position.

Water Color Memories ...
 

Not according to my high school coach. When he was teaching us our full court zone press, he would have us put a foot on the sideline to insure that we didn't give our opponent even a slight chance of dribbling past us up the sideline. I taught the same technique to my middle school team when I coached.

Of course, high school was over forty-five years ago, and I stopped coaching about fifteen years ago, and the rules have changed.

read the case book also. exact play is in it. if you are only reading the rule book you are missing much. good luck.

Nice Citation ...
 

ltllng already posted it:

I'm sure this was discussed back when it changed--why the change? This change has never made sense to me--maybe its that bias of having been taught to plant the foot on the line myself.

I just can't figure out what problem the rules committee was trying to solve that made it worth changing the rule. Seems to me they just made the play more complicated and harder to officiate.

Forty Five Years Too Late ...
 

Back in high school we were also taught to stay wide filling the side lanes on a fast break. If we didn't touch the twenty-eight foot hash mark, the coach would have us run killers (suicides) at practice. Now those hash marks are gone. What do player's aim for now?

Exactly.

Why was it changed? The rule wasn't actually changed. Someone got on the rules committee and decided that it meant something different than what everyone else had been calling forever. There was no sensible justification for it. And yes, it just makes it harder to officiate for no benefit.

It was an interpretation change or clarification backed by video just like any other interpretation from the NCAA.

I think the video makes the play easier. It is required for NCAA officials to watch the videos. So I do not see the issue here at all. They have justification for not call a foul where before you might not have had that clarification. And officials would try not to call the egregious ones before that anyway.

Peace

Did this change before/after or same time as the violation/technical for intentionally leaving the court change.