It would be an understatement to say there has been considerable handwringing over the state of college basketball in the United States over the course of the past decade.

With each passing year, scoring declined, shooting percentages plummeted and possessions became rarer, to the point where, last year, pundits declared a state of “crisis.” The game had become “boring,” a form of “organized wrestling,” replete with megalomaniacal multi-millionaire coaches so intent on protecting their lavish salaries that their teams had become robotic, with every move carefully scripted. The level of play was so ultra-conservative that no one dared improvise and if anyone felt such an impulse, the solution was obvious: call a timeout. In fact, there was an ethical and pedagogical imperative to do so. After all, it created another teaching moment, so it was entirely consistent with the educational mission of universities.

Several pundits suggested the National Collegiate Athletic Association should simply follow the lead of Canadian Interuniversity Sport, which in 2007-08 adopted FIBA rules for men’s play (2006-07 for women), but of course, the notion was an affront to American hubris, i.e., they may not have invented the game but they certainly perfected it and knew what was best for it. (Lest Canadians think they’re immune from such paternalism, consider hockey, where there is an overwhelming consensus that the international game is safer and more entertaining but we resist change because it might diminish a desired level of violence and cost too much to refurbish rinks).

The Americans ultimately convened a summit and decided to inch toward the FIBA game, implementing some 25 rules changes for this season, including shortening the shot clock from 35 to 30 seconds and taking away a second-half timeout, while making all timeouts called within 30 seconds of a TV timeout (typically four per half, and what game isn’t televised by some network or another?) count as the TV break. Meanwhile, the restricted-area arc was widened to four feet from three, so as to make it harder to draw a charge, and officials were told to call more hand checking and body bumping. Yet, simultaneously, and some would say schizophrenically, defenders were to be allowed to arm bar their foes in the paint.

It’s sort of halfway to FIBA but doesn’t include several other critical differences, such as a 24-second shot clock, a wider key, eight seconds to cross the mid-court line, a reset of the shot clock to 14 seconds after an offensive rebound, or a more distant three-point arc (6.75 metres from the basket and 6. 6 m in the corners, as opposed to a uniform 6.325 m in NCAA play) because those would be, well, un-American.

Advocates say the changes have resulted in a wilder, more entertaining year on the American cage scene. Scoring is up a bit; there are more upsets and seemingly,more parity. That’s somewhat puzzling,given the widely-held belief that the only way a less-talented team can beat a blue blood is to take the air out of the ball.

Critics, though, argue that the consequences have been brutal: more fouls (particularly touch fouls on the perimeter and on attacks off the dribble),more turnovers, harried players who toil with less discipline, rush their shots and don’t have the time to indulge in crisp ball movement or teamwork, or to implement those grinding, half-court sets that somehow instill them with life skills (such as patience and a capacity to follow orders) that make them perfect corporate employees when they hang up their sneakers.

It all but invites an assessment of Canada’s experience with FIBA rules.

With Canadian basketball record-keeping historically in a dismal state, it is impossible to get nation-wide statistics dating back as far as 2007. But in Canada West and Atlantic University Sport men’s conference play in 2006-07, teams averaged 79.12 and 73.9 points per game, respectively. In the first year of playing FIBA rules, that declined to 77.4 in Canada West and rose to 80.87 in the AUS. Nation-wide over the last five years, scoring across all four conferences has slowly declined from 79.15 points per game in 2010-11, to 77.75, 76.39, 76.37 and 76.54 last year.

Overall, it’s a bit of a drop in offensive production but nowhere near as precipitous as in America, where there’d been nearly a 10-point decline in scoring over the past decade, to 67.4 points per game in 2014-15 (apparently, the lowest level since 1952). In Canada last year, the average offensive production of the 47 university men’s teams was the aforementioned 76.54. In comparison, just 22 of 351 teams in NCAA Division I play topped that last year.

With regard to fouls, the average number called against teams in Canada has hovered at around 19 per game for each of the past five years. It was 19.07 last season. By comparison, 245 of 351 NCAA teams had fewer fouls than that called against them. That suggests there is some legitimacy to the argument that more fouls are called under FIBA, presumably because the game is played at a more frantic pace, causing rushed players to reach.But some NCAA statistical gurus say the 2015 American figure is deceptive and that overall fouls per teamhas actually averaged between 18 and 20 for 50 years.

Shooting percentages haven’t changed appreciably over the past five years, with two-point field goal percentages for the 47 Canadian teams rising to .418 in 2014-15 from .407 in 2010-11. But over that period, the average three-point percentage declined to .322 from .342.

The most noticeable difference between pre-FIBA and post-FIBA Canadian stats is in the area of treys attempted. There were an average of 15.48 shots from beyond the arc in the AUS in 2006-07, and 17 in Canada West. By 2010-11, the nation-wide average was 21.74 and it has hovered in that neighbourhood for each the past four years (21.42, 22.75, 21.27 and 21.89).

In short, scoring has been higher in Canada, though a slow decline in offence more recently suggests that all those “defence is beautiful” creatures called coaches are finding ways to clampdown on production. The FIBA game appears more perimeter-oriented, which is consistent with the stated aim of unclogging the paint. Yet the actual number of foul calls isn’t appreciably different. Shortening the shot clock, though, does appear to result in more possessions per team per game, depending on the calculator used. For example, under some systems, an offensive rebound doesn’t constitute a new possession, but rather, a continuation of a previous possession. At any rate, the calculators suggest that there are anywhere between 77 and 92 possessions per team in the FIBA game, as opposed to 65.1 in the US last year.

In short, the numbers are somewhat ambiguous.

But there’s a consensus among most Canadian coaches that the move to FIBA rules has nevertheless had a substantive impact on the style and quality of play.

Most appear agreed that the FIBA game is more fan- and player-friendly, simply because there’s more scoring, so it’s more fun to play. As Laurentian coach Shawn Swords, who toiled 10 years in the European ranks, notes: “I think it’s a faster-paced game and the players have to learn how to make plays. It gives less control to the coaches, which I thoroughly enjoyed as a player. Now, as a coach, I don’t like it as much.”

The coaches are also generally agreed that it has significantly changed the style of play in Canada.

Continuity offences (such as flex, shuffle or wheel offences, which are characterized by patterned movements, screens, cuts and passes essentially designed to get players back into their originalformation, so that the pattern can be repeated to the point where a desired open shot can be taken by a preferred shooter in a certain location) are all but obsolete, say Queen’s men’s coach Stephan Barrie and U.B.C. men’s coach Kevin Hanson.

“You have to play transition basketball,” says Barrie. “Teams that stylistically may have wanted to slow it down and work the clock, now find thatit is very hard to do. You have to play off the transition style and within that, everyone has to run now.”

“Realistically, the best players, your go-to guys, they may get two touches, and if you’re lucky, they’ll get a third touch in that time frame,” says Hanson. “There’s an awful lot more quick hitters. It has gone sort of the NBA style. You’re not running just the Utah offence or some other offence. There’s a couple of teams still running the Princeton offence but they’re certainly not taking as much time off the clock as they used to.”

Saskatchewan women’s coach Lisa Thomaidis adds the FIBA rules all but make the traditional low-post game anachronistic. “You really have to be able to make reads and play more conceptually. The bigger key has really made a big change in that there’s really no low post game anymore. There’s not really a place for just that big man to park him or herself down low because you’re not close enough to the basket. So it really draws the game outwards.”

The FIBA rules put more of a premium on using ball screens earlier in the shot clock, says Calgary men’s coach Dan Vanhooren. “The things that you do offensively need to be more disruptive, early. … It’s moved us away from the traditional post player. In many respects, those guys, you just don’t run into them too often anymore. Not that they’re not valuable. But there’s a lot more four-out, one-in type actions than there is the traditional two-post, high-low stuff.”

“It certainly changed how we coach the game,” says Queen’s women’s coach Dave Wilson. “Now, the idea of running a transition, possibly a secondary break, and if you don’t get anything out of that, reset, set up your offence and run something, is all gone. You just don’t have the time. So now whatever you’re doing to transition the ball from defence to offence must flow into your offence completely.”

“The other thing it did is push players to become more multi-skilled,” Wilson adds. “You don’t have your traditional five player, your four player, your three player, like 30 years ago, when kids often only had certain skills and they stayed in their box.”

uOttawamen’s coach James Derouin argues that the need for players to be multi-dimensional is an asset for Canadian basketball. Particularly when combined with a shot clock that places a premium on shooting, teams can no longer readily hide a player who lacks a certain skill, so it creates an onus on everyone to be more skilled and fundamentally sound, which in turn, has created opportunity for many Canadians, he says. “That emphasis on skill is something that is unique in the Canadian game versus the American game and a lot of kids that are overlooked by Americans because they’re not tall enough or their arms aren’t long enough and their hands aren’t big enough or their feet aren’t big enough, actually bring a lot of skill to the game. That makes for better basketball.”

The coaches also appear universally agreed that FIBA rules diminish the in-game control and power of coaches. As McGill men’s coach David DeAveiro notes: “It definitely takes the game out of the coaches hands, that’s for sure.”

“There’s no question it takes more of the power away from the coach and puts it on the player,” Barrie says, adding that there’s an ever greater onus on players to make quicker reads and quicker decisions on the floor.

From that perspective, some educators might argue that more pedagogic value accrues to players in their post-basketball careers if they’ve toiled in the more-open FIBA game, rather than the more structured and micromanaged American game, because it promotes more independent thinking and decision-making.

Derouin, for example, notes that because the FIBA game is more cerebral, more responsibility falls on players to study the game, during practice and video sessions, and learn how to make quick decisions. “That’s the key,” he says. “Can you teach your players to play without them having the crutch that a coach can call a timeout and bail you out of any situation?”

“You definitely have to develop their decision-making a lot more,” DeAveiro adds.

Therein lies a potential down-side, though, in that it may result in games in which the outcomes are primarily predicated on the play of a single player, who can essentially take over a game, Hanson notes. Overall, while the FIBA game may promote the development of individual skills, “personally, I think it may have taken away a bit of the team game.”

Others lament the loss of “tactical” basketball, games in which teams craft unusual strategies to pull off an upset, by, for example, utilizing a series of junk defences to confuse foes.

There’s also a concern that the failure of Ontario and British Columbia high schools (which produce two of the nation’s largest pools of players) to adopt FIBA rules puts many kids behind the eight-ball when they arrive at university and are suddenly faced with having to play what amounts to a different game.

“We’re still not reaping the benefits of having the young kids go through this and understanding things like what is a good shot or what is a bad shot,” Hanson says. “The basketball IQ has not necessarily risen in the players that are coming up and it won’t until we’re all playing by the same rules.”

Itinevitably takes players and coaches time to “catch up”with rule changes,Wilson notes. “Ideally, all the changes should be introduced simultaneously at all levels so that ultimately, the skills that the kids come in with are better, so that they can play the game at the speed at which they want them to play. Because if teams play faster than their own ability, it’s not going to be an entertaining game, unless you like to laugh.”

Still others are concerned that FIBA rules haven’t gone far enough to clean up physicality and contact. “I think the game has perhaps become rougher,” says veteran Laurier men’s coach Peter Campbell. “Theoretically, under FIBA rules, you can have the up-tempo game, you can have the flow in the game that everybody wants without it being a cross between rugby and hockey but I’m not sure we’re there yet. … Maybe we’re not coming up with a consistent message (to the officials), saying ‘this is the way we want the game called’.”