If you are a sports fan there are countless ways that your teams season can come to an unruly, dissatisfying end. Few, though, are more bluntly painful than seeing your favorite college basketball team knocked from the NCAA tournament primarily because one of your crucial big men got into early foul trouble.
I got news: If you are a fan of a team with Final Four or National title hopes, there will most likely be one or two games in the tournament in which one of your key player’s gets into early foul trouble. It will result in that player spending a harrowing amount of time on the bench. It’s going to irritate you, you might break out into cold sweats when it happens, and your team may just lose a game because of it. It happens.
However, there is one college fan base in particular that will be the most agitated when this type of situation happens to them, and that’s because it is almost a foregone conclusion that it will happen to their best, most dominant player. Oh, and it will happen. As you may have guessed based on the title of this story, that fan base is that of the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Remember back in 2007 when the Buckeyes, twice, found themselves starring down an early tournament death to Xavier and Tennesssee? Remember how a large...no, huge... part of that was because Greg Oden spent the majority of those games sitting on the bench because the other teams succeeded in executing their game plan which involved getting Oden into early foul
trouble? Remember how that same Buckeyes team that almost lost in the second round ended up making it all the way to the championship game? I say that because this Ohio State squad is very similar to that 07 team. As was the case with Oden back in 2007, the Buckeyes 2012 Final Four/Title hopes again may rest on their highly touted big man, Jared Sullinger and his ability to stay on the court. He’s that important of a player.
Buckeye fans--as well as every other team that was scouting--already saw a preview of this on New Year’s Eve when Ohio State played at Indiana. The Buckeyes were dominating early when the refs (yes I’m putting it all on the refs) called Sullinger for a couple of cheap fouls. Sullinger was relegated to the bench for the rest of the first half and his absence completely changed the course of the game; a game in which the Buckeyes eventually lost. Actually, forget the Indiana game, did you see the Kansas game when Sullinger was sidelined with an injury? The Buckeyes were a shell of themselves. They’re not the same team without him on the floor.
I love college basketball, but there are a couple things about the college game that I’m not on board with. 1) The designated, neutral sites in the NCAA tourny. 2) The three point line. 3) The 5 foul-out rule. While the combination of these three are what makes for the best, most unpredictable sports tournament in the world, they also make for an annual display of anger from folks, such as myself.
Jared Sullinger is the most dominant big man in the nation, and the Buckeyes are one of the best teams in the country. It would be nice if Sullinger and the Buckeyes were likely to be rewarded for that in March. Last year they weren’t as they were taken out by Kentucky in the sweet sixteen. I’m not so sure 
about their chances this year, either. Whether it be the 3 point line, the five fouls a player is allowed, or the neutral site 500 miles across the country that your team has to travel to, the odds are not in your favor. They aren’t in anyone’s favor. I only mention this because I happen to root for a top ten team in which the odds should theoretically favor.
The shortened three point line (compared to the NBA one in which it should be) negates the advantage of having a dominant inside guy like Sullinger. It’s simple math: 3 > 2, and any team, in any game is capable of going off from the three point strike, taking away the Buckeyes number one offensive force down low.
The neutral sites in the tournament take away from anything the Buckeyes or any of the other upper seeds accomplish in the regular season. At this point, for a team like OSU--a team that has already solidified itself as one of the top seeds in the tournament-- what, really, is there to play for in the regular season? What’s the difference between if the Buckeyes have a 1,2,3, or 4 seed in their region? Nothing, really, just the hope that you won’t have to play a team like Kentucky too early in the Dance. (My apologies to any Buckeyes fan that loves winning the BigTen regular season)
Then there is the five foul rule. It almost foreshadows doom for this Sullinger powered Buckeyes squad. Just think, the lasting memory for one of college basketball’s best player’s might be his having to sit on the bench while he is forced to painfully watch his team lose to a less superior foe. And for Buckeyes fans, the last memory of Jared Sullinger as an Ohio State Buckeye might be of him sitting on the bench while his team is helplessly knocked out. (On the bright side, such a circumstance could lead to his staying another year.)
When will the NCAA decide to compromise with us and stretch it to 6 fouls? Yes the college game is 40 minutes compared to the NBA’s 48, which would automatically lead someone to believe 5 fouls is a fair number for college basketball. However, what we forget to take into account that those eight minutes don’t make up for the fact that the shortened college 3 point line and the thin paint area renders more low post contact and ultimately more fouls. It also doesn’t make up for the suspect refereeing--that can only be described as purely subjective-- which is bound to happen in any game that is played on neutral site. Yes, believe it or not the repercussions of screwing up a call for the home team and having an entire arena out for your blood does influence the refereeing of a game. That’s why the NBA regular season is played to decide home field advantage. I wish I could say the same about college.
Right now you may or may not be thinking that I am over stating this 5 foul rule. But I don’t think I am. If you don’t think that opposing teams’ number one game plan will involve taking the ball into Sullinger’s face and leaving the rest up to the refs, then, well, try not to crap yourself when it ends up
happening. It will. That’s what opposing teams in a one game elimination do when the odds are stacked against them. Here’s where it gets worse, though: the Buckeyes don’t have a viable big man that can step up in Sullinger’s absence--as we saw firsthand against Indiana and Kansas--let alone command the type of attention he does. All the more reason his foul count will be at the forefront of the opposing teams game plan, as well as my reasoning behind deeming Sully’s foul situation the number one X factor in the Buckeyes title hopes. Because of this “5 foul rule” we can expect a Thad Matta game plan in which Sullinger is fed early and often. That’s the smart thing to do... Up until the part where you remember that Sullinger is prone to getting unwarranted charges called on him because of his large, overpowering body mass.
Fortunately though, Matta can actually evade this entire foul situation from backfiring on the Buckeyes.
When it’s the first half and your guy gets hit with two personal fouls, why is it mandatory for the coach to sit that player on the bench for the remainder of the half? Knowing that it’s a one and done elimination, doesn’t that call for a little bit of risk taking? Actually, wouldn’t a regular season conference game call for that same risk taking too?--you know, considering that for a lot of teams there isn’t much on the line prior to March. So why don’t we ever see coaches taking this risk? It’s like the college basketball version of the righty/lefty matchup in baseball. What’s with this rule of thumb?
Well, according to advanced college basketball research, this type of risk wouldn’t even really be classified as “a risk.” In fact, it would be considered more of a strategy. When a player finds himself in early foul trouble (getting two fouls in the first half) within the first 12 minutes and the coach does the normal protocol where he brings that player to the bench, 96.79% of the time that player will end up playing less minutes in the game than if his coach completely disregarded his foul situation and left him in the game in his regular rotation. The same goes for in the second half when a player draws his third foul and goes to the bench. That stat is a bit ironic when you remember that the whole point to taking a guy off the floor in that situation is to preserve and insure his playing time for later. But nevertheless, it’s an interesting strategy. It basically boils down to the fact that if you leave a player in the game when he’s in reasonably early foul trouble, he’s going to play with more caution and the refs are going to be more lenient in the calls that might otherwise go against him on account of the refs who are calling the game know he’s in foul trouble and therefore know he is trying desperately not to foul. Or so some theorize. (I should note that if the season ended today, Jared Sullinger was that 3.21% against Indiana. He sat out ten minutes of the first half and ended up playing a total of 29 minutes that game, more than his 28 he’s averaging.)
With that said, I hope that Matta learned from what he saw in Indiana and leaves Sullinger in the game next time that scenario arises in the first half. Otherwise, it can throw the whole team off their game. Considering that
Sullinger--at some point in the tournament--is destined to find himself in foul trouble, wouldn’t it be worth giving this strategy a dry run in these low stake, rather meaningless February games they’re playing right now? I mean, after everything I just wrote you’d have to say they are meaningless, right?
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