Yesterday was a big day for college basketball legislation, if only because it was the next day in this summer-long string of ideas and panels designed to improve the game. Two genders play at the NCAA level, though, and dare I say the changes finally and officially made to women’s basketball are more constructive than the changes to the men’s game.

The headline item is splitting the women’s game into four 10-minuite quarters, which is something the men might want to do but won’t because they’re still into pretending this isn’t about mimicking the professional model. What’s more transformative and more exciting and frankly more useful, though, is what’s buried beneath the headline.

The panel approved a rule that allows teams to advance the ball to the frontcourt following a timeout immediately after a made basket in the last 59.9 seconds of the fourth quarter and any overtime periods.

Teams also will be allowed to advance the ball to the frontcourt after securing the ball from a rebound or a change of possession. In these scenarios, the ball would be inbounded at the 28-foot mark on the side of the court where the scorer’s table is located.

The committee made the initial recommendation because it felt this change would add more excitement to offensive possessions at the ends of games because teams would no longer be required to travel the length of the court after inbounding the ball.

That was the best of a couple clever changes. It’s fantastic, and the men’s game ought to have this. March would have more madness, and we’d be done with this silly notion the decision-makers don’t want more offense and thus more excitement. More and more, you get the idea defense is passively discouraged in the men’s game, and what went into the wet cement yesterday only strengthens that opinion.

Again, the headline will go elsewhere, and trimming five seconds off the shot clock was the major news item, but what are we to make of the way defenders will be judged in the fall?

The key areas officials will focus on in the upcoming season are:
• Perimeter defense, particularly on the dribbler and strictly enforcing directives established before the 2013-14 season.
• Physicality in post play.
• Screening, particularly moving screens and requiring the screener to be stationary.
• Block/charge plays.
• Allowing greater freedom of movement for players without the ball.

Hope you like free throws!

Offensive players are going to win the block/charge more often than not, especially because the arc is moved farther from the basket to eliminate collisions, which means deter defenders from initiating collisions, which is a million-dollar way of saying “guarding.” I’m mostly OK with that, as long as the officials grasp the concept, because I think bad defenders or bad plays are wrongly awarded for playing bad defense and being bad plays.

There’s no more five seconds call, either, and though it wasn’t the most commonly called or ignored thing, I do wonder why you’d even want to be a good defensive player anymore. Basically all defenders have left to turn offensive players over is a steal (Don’t touch!), a block (Don’t touch, as well!) and possibly a travel, unless you trap someone in Morgantown. Allegedly.

You don’t see any of this language with the women’s game, and you can’t tell me it’s aesthetically pleasing or devoid of contact (and the women’s game actually introduced the 10-second backcourt rule before the 2013-14 season to liven things up some). But not everything that’s good for the women’s game is good for the men’s game. The women, for example, can now defend with a forearm or an open hand with a bent elbow in the back of a posting-up offensive player. I believe you’d be ejected and possibly suspended for such an action in the men’s game. Not certain. I do know that “physicality,” whatever that means, is now discouraged in the post and that a lot of this is again subjective, though I’m coming to accept that there is just no way around this apart from getting better officials … meaning there is no way around this.

(Proof? The best part of this is the first bullet point, which would be better listed as “We’ll remember all the changes we sought to make two years ago and decided to ignore last season.” Somewhere Juwan Staten’s Free Throw Productivity is standing in the middle of the floor with its arms in the air.)

However, I do think the officials will be serious about this, for two reasons: 1) There’s a specific mention of rules established before, which serves as an allusion to the idea those rules were only sporadically enforced — and that’s an awful look for those fellows. 2) Officials are being encouraged to do more with their whistles, which is an interesting if not smirk-worthy maneuver.

I don’t think officials will throw out technicals or eject coaches at the Coliseum. We’ve been over this. I also think officials are sometimes slow to call technicals in any venue because of what and how much two free throws can mean to a game. The NCAA is softening that, though. It really does want to speed up the game, and the items about pace of play attached to timeouts and standard stoppages are good calls, but the enforceable ones have to be enforced. You can’t convince me officials would be willing to enforce the 15-second rule after a player fouls out in the form of a two-shot technical foul. Solution: a one-shot technical foul. Making Class B technical fouls (hanging on the rim and delaying the resumption of play, for example) one-shot technical fouls. Previously, two shots were granted for these types of technical fouls.