Shorthanded West Virginia Downs Duke while Highlighting Gaps in NCAA Rulebook
The Mountaineers' win came after six players were ejected based on some questionable rule interpretations.
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Unranked West Virginia’s win over 15th-ranked Duke would’ve been an upset regardless. Doing it with only five eligible players in the second half? That’s the stuff legends are made of. A win in the face of adversity is great, but questions remain whether WVU should have even found itself in such a dire situation.
A fairly minor scrum leading into the halftime break ended with a slew of Mountaineers ejected not for actively participating in the fight, but for leaving the bench area, despite the game already being sent to halftime.
Some of the rules at play are simple, but most of the applications are, at best, opaque. Let’s break down the participants’ roles in the altercation, the consequences, and the rules justifying each.
Jordan Harrison (WVU): Flagrant 2 foul, ejection for fighting
We’ll start this simply, no rule quotations needed; Harrison shoved Wood, physically participating in a fight, and was ejected. Additionally, she will be suspended for the team’s next game.
Jordan Wood (Duke): Flagrant 2 foul, ejection for fighting
Rule 10, Sec. 15, art. 4: When, during a confrontation, an individual uses unsporting acts or comments that, in the opinion of the official, provoke the other individual to retaliate by fighting, it shall be ruled that both individuals have been involved in the fight.
The instigating factor in this fight was Wood’s taunt following her block on Jordan Harrison to end the half. At that point, regardless of any other actions, Wood is classified as a participant in the fight. This seems to be why she was the lone player ejected for Duke and will also be suspended for the team’s next game, though several players made contact with opponents.
Arianna Roberson and Ashlon Jackson: Flagrant 1 fouls
Rule 10, sec. 10, art.1: A personal foul is a player’s illegal contact with an opponent during a live ball and during the dead-ball period immediately following a successful goal (Note: Illegal contact that occurs before the ball becomes live at the start of the game or after the ball has become dead following the end of any quarter or overtime shall be either a flagrant 1 or a flagrant 2 foul.).
Rule 10, sec. 15, art. 1: A fight is a flagrant 2 foul.
By the book, I cannot determine why these two players were not ejected. The quarter clock had expired, so 10-10-1 necessitates any foul called in this situation being either a flagrant 1 or 2. As 10-15-1 clearly spells out, a fight is a flagrant 2 foul. Both Roberson and Jackson made contact with an opposing player (Jordan Harrison) in the midst of a situation already ruled a fight. This wasn’t incidental, ‘break-it-up’ contact, either; both players commit two-handed shoves.
The fouls being ruled flagrant meant that WVU got to shoot free throws, but the penalty should have been greater. Additionally, the official scorebook does not denote flagrant 1 and 2 fouls, only personal and technical, further obfuscating the results. For clarity’s sake, stat documents ought to include designators for flagrant fouls as opposed to just personal and technical fouls.
Gia Cooke, Carter McCray, Madison Parrish, Kierra Wheeler, Jordan Thomas: Ejection for entering the playing area during a fight, collectively enacted as one team technical as non-participants.
Rule 4, Sec. 5 (bench area), Art. 2: During any timeout, the intermission following the first and third quarters, or before any overtime, bench personnel and players shall locate themselves inside an imaginary rectangle formed by the boundaries of the sideline (including the bench), end line and an imaginary line extended from the free throw lane line nearest the bench meeting an imaginary line extended form the 28-foot line.
Rule 10, section 12 (technical fouls), article 4, subsection j: A team member entering the playing court without reporting to the official scorers or a substitute entering the playing court without being beckoned by an official (unless during an intermission).
Rule 10, Section 14 (Flagrant 2 Foul), Penalty, article b.1: When anyone other than the head coach and any assistant coach leaves the bench and enters the court for reasons not permitted by rule but does not participate in the fight, only one flagrant two foul shall be assessed regardless of the number of offenders. This one foul is charged as an indirect technical foul to the head coach.
This is where things get really murky. Players were ejected for leaving the bench area during a fight, but the definition of “bench area” found in 4-5-2 does not include the halftime intermission. Here’s the issue: in the NCAA’s 143-page rulebook, there are no official guidelines on halftime procedures. In fact, the word “halftime” is only used three times, and all three are in reference to the length of the intermission between the second and third quarters.
The difference in procedure between timeouts, quarter breaks, and halftime should be obvious; the latter is the only situation in which the team leaves the floor to return to the locker room. Given the varying layouts of arenas, especially nontraditional venues such as the ballroom used for the Greenbrier Tip-Off, it would be difficult to outline specific procedural guidelines for teams departing from the floor. However, by failing to even attempt to establish these procedures, the NCAA leaves too many situations open to officials’ interpretation with potentially severe consequences.
Penalty b1 of 10-14 is applicable to non-participants in the fight who enter the court for reasons not permitted by rule. Given the fact that no rules governing allowable halftime... movement, we’ll say?... exist in the current rulebook, it seems dubious at best to have ejected all five of these bench players.
If we’re already this far into the weeds semantically, let’s play this all the way out. Since the rules state that expiration of the game clock rules the ball dead for intermission (unlike timeouts, which require the official to complete their signal to the scorer’s table), the bench area should, at the very least, be considered the extended area specified for the other quarter intermissions. By that metric, Kierra Wheeler and Carter McCray both appear to stay within the bench area and should have remained eligible.
Situations that emphasize the need for additional clarification and procedures such as this often result in losses for the team suffering more harm, leading to more controversy and outrage. The NCAA has a rare opportunity to take a “no harm, no foul” incident and use it to prevent future confusion and inconsistency.
Though changes to the rulebook occur in the offseason, issuing guidance on where and when players and bench personnel may enter the court for halftime should be doable in the meantime as it doesn’t really enact a new rule; it just clarifies when existing rules should be utilized.
Eventually, rewording rules to specify that play is not considered dead for the ends of periods until the official completes an end-of-period signal, instead of when the light goes off for clock expiration, would allow officials to keep the play “live” even with time expired. As such, bench personnel would be directed to stay in the bench area until the signal is completed, removing the confusion of whether a player is entering the court due to a fight or the intermission.
My personal crusade is for consistency in basketball, and part of consistency is the ability for all participants to understand the rules to be enforced. I’d much rather dedicate 1,000+ words to how great a game we ended up seeing, but the Mountaineers’ “non-fighting five” gutting out a win was absurdly improbable and unlikely to be repeated. Fighting should be punished, but unclear rules shouldn’t have such an outsized impact on games.
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