I think that is a great no call. I agree that this play is often called a foul, but it isn't always called a foul.

The shooter stepped into the defender and initiated contact with the arms. If the shooter went straight up with the intent of making the shot, he likely would have gotten the shot off without it being blocked.

Based on what I've heard from college officials defenders get up to 30 degrees of arm down before they are really considered to be illegal. Just a rule of thumb I've heard.

Food for thought:

NCAA 4-40-3:

(emphasis mine).

I do agree that the defender was several degrees short of fully vertical. However, did his position prevent normal movements by the shooter? Does the fact that the shooter jumped abnormally in hopes of a foul provide some amount of immunity to the defender?

I think the shooter's jump moves the threshold.

Also the replay gives us a slightly better angle on the defenders verticality than the Trails position. From his angle the defender looks more vertical than the angle we see on the second replay.

Nobody is mentioning a very important element to this situation. The offensive player won this matchup. He got the defender off his feet and out of LGP in a pretty substantial way with the pump fake. He got caught being aggressive. He was clearly beaten by the pump fake.

People can argue whether it is good basketball to reward the shooter for blatantly jumping into the defender, but when an offensive player makes a good move to eliminate LGP, he has won the matchup, and has earned the opportunity to "draw the foul". You cannot reward the defense for getting beaten, the same way you cannot allow offensive players to jump into defenders with LGP and "draw a foul". That's why this is called over and over again, even on 3-point attempts, during the regular season, despite everybody hating it. Should have been called here, too.

Except that the defender had landed and was stationary prior to A1 jumping into his arm.

The offensive player waited until the defensive player was no longer moving and, in the opinion of most posters here, sufficiently vertical. I'd suggest the offensive player waited too long or the defensive player was quick to stop his momentum.

Well stated.

There's a reason for that.

We all saw the fake draw the defense off the floor, but on this play, it didn't matter.

This was a great move to get a free, open shot. Instead, he launched into the defender and didn't hit him until the defender landed.

^^^^^This. I think he (the defender) is awfully lucky the shooter didn't go up with the shot right away.

The contact was initiated by the shooter so I'm not too concerned with verticality here. True, the defender is not vertical and if the shooter hadn't jumped into the defender the whole play changes.

You have to be concerned -- if I draw you off the floor and you're not vertical, of course I'm going to initiate contact with you. It's what good players do on a pump fake, after all. It's still a foul on the defense.

The shooter can initiate contact and still have a foul called on the defender.

Going back to the OP I'm ok with the no call here. Defense didn't do anything wrong from the stand point of impeding or hindering the shot. Offense takes a wild flailing shot, jumps into defense. Any positioning faults by defense did not impact play or result.

For the rest maybe FIBA influence has me look at this differently but just because someone is in some way not vertical or outside their space, does not mean when there is contact it has to be a foul on them.

If a defender arm's aren't vertical but the offense doesn't hit their arms or contact in incidental and unrelated to the ball I'm not calling a foul on the defense because they weren't vertical.

If a defender has their arms out in front of them as a player comes barrelling in knocking their arms out of the way and running over a legal defender. I'm not calling a hand check because the offense ran into their hands first.

Most fouls IME call themselves, sometimes in collisions require you to make determination. I don't have anything on this play.