Here's Mike DeCourcey on the rule changes in basketball

Mike DeCourcey of the Sporting News, offers his take on rule changes in basketball:

Mike DeCourcey
Sporting News
May 7, 2009

To demonstrate how long we've been waiting for the NCAA to officially recognize that attempting to draw a charge underneath the basket is as bogus as a Manny Ramirez homer, I searched deep into the repository of DeCourcy's Greatest Hits to unearth this line:

Only Manute Bol can defend the basket while standing beneath it.

I wrote those words closer to the beginning of Bol's NBA career (1985) than the end (a decade later), so obviously the NCAA's most significant basketball rules change for the 2009-10 season has been a long time coming.

Henceforth, a help defender -- the NCAA rulebook will call such player a "secondary defender" -- who sets up underneath the goal and draws contact from an attacking player will be guilty of a blocking foul. It's simple logic, really, because a defender should be actively involved in attempting to defend if he is to be rewarded for being overrun. And only Manute -- no, Yao Ming -- can defend the basket from directly below...

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