Rules Committee To Adopt 'Illini Rule'

Hey, remember that time the Illini were in the NCAA Tournament and playing Miami? Yeah? Well, remember how late in that game there was a ball that pretty clearly went off the hand of a Miami player before going out of bounds but the refs ruled that it was Miami ball and the Illini were screwed because the refs weren't able to go to the monitor to review it because of RULES?

I figured you would.

Well, here's some news about how that's going to change in the future.

The 12-person committee had 11 members present and voted on changing the replay rules, as well as adjusting the elbow-clearing rule and block/charge clarification.

Pending approval from the Playing Rules Oversight Panel, which will meet on a conference call on June 18, these rules will go into effect for the 2013-14 season.

[Rules committee chair John] Dunne said there was a lengthy discussion to allow officials to go to the monitor in the final two minutes of regulation and overtime to determine who should retain possession for a play out of bounds. The original proposal was for the last minute.

"We felt that two minutes was better than one minute," Dunne said. "Obviously, a possession with 1:10 left is just as important as one with just under a minute left."

Which is good news in that it will help ensure that teams don't get screwed out of a possible Sweet Sixteen berth like the Illini did this year, but it's crappy news because it wasn't already a rule like it should have been in the first place. Of course, it's also crappy news because this means we're going to have even more shots of referees huddling around a television monitor in the future, and if there's anything I want to see more than referees huddled around a monitor in the closing seconds of a basketball game, I don't know what it is.