Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

The college basketball preseason could be getting longer

ncaalogolg

College basketball’s season may be getting just a bit longer.

The way the rules are currently structured, college basketball teams are allowed to start practicing at 5 p.m. on the Friday closest to October 15th. But this weekend, John Infante of the Bylaw Blog passed along this bit of news from the NCAA: practices could end up starting two weeks earlier.
The Legislative Council this week amended and approved a long-tabled measure that will now allow men’s basketball teams to conduct 30 days of practice in the six weeks before their first regular-season game. Past practice has been in the roughly four weeks before the regular season.

And here’s Infante’s take:

The amendment was a minor one: moving the start date to 42 days or six weeks before the first game. This was to ensure that the start of practice would fall on a Friday for Midnight Madness events, rather than on a Sunday which it would have without the change.

Women’s basketball has had this rule for a couple of years. It basically moves the start of practice up two weeks, but requires two days off per week before the first game. This creates a period of acclimatization rather than the abrupt jump from 8 hours per week straight to 20 hours per week with just one day off.


I would be a fan of this proposal. More practice time means that teams will be better prepared entering the season and that the quality of play in the November tournaments will improve, and it eases the transition from the offseason to the actual season.

We’ll find out on May 2nd whether or not this rule will come into effect in 2013-2014.

You can find Rob on twitter @RobDauster.