If it seemed the television games of the NCAA Tournament took forever, they did. Once TV comes into the picture, a fan is guaranteed three media timeouts per half, in addition to the three full timneouts that each coach has. The media timeouts show up at regular intervals throughout each half and can run as long as 105 seconds, nearly thirty seconds longer than the timeout requirement listed in the rule book.
With that much time to recover and a media break scheduled for the first dead ball after the 16, 12 and 8 or 4 minute marks, it can be tempting for many a coach to hold off calling one of her own limited number of TOs in favor of waiting for the electronic media break. Coaches can never have enough timeouts, but hanging on to one in anticipation of an upcoming break is a recipe for suicide, according to University of San Diego coach Kathy Marpe.
"The first time I was in a television game, I didn't use my timeout in a crucial spot in the game because it was coming up on the 12-minute mark, and I felt like that cost us the ball game right there," said Marpe. "I went back and talked with our men's coach, and he told me he'd experienced the same thing. I decided right then I'd deal with it exactly the same as if I had the regular timeouts in a regular game."
By that, Marpe means call it, and worry about the consequences later. "If you start getting into playing that game of how long until the media timeout, it's one more thing that interferes with your natural flow of the game," Marpe said. "You have to use your timeouts to stop momentum, change something with your players, explain something -- and if you wait, 20 seconds might be too long."
"In fact, 10 seconds could be too long. You might be 10 seconds away from the 12-minute mark, but the officials won't stop the game until the first dead ball after that point. That might be 10:58, and they could reel off six points real quick."
Dead balls mean fouls or violations -- plays that lead to a whistle and a stoppage of play. Turnovers and scores don't stop the clock, so waiting for a miscue that doesn't happen could be fatal.
"Having only three timeouts bothered me, and I started to panic until I figured out that most games, I end up not having used two or three timeouts," Marpe said. That being the case, Marpe found it easier to ignore the media breaks as well as to call an immediate timeout at the start of the game.
"We were playing a conference game and their top scorer had 5 points just like that," Marpe said. "Thirty seconds gone, and I take a timeout. She doesn't score the rest of the way, so my point was made. If something is happening out on the floor that my players aren't doing and I need to make a correction, I don't care when it is, six seconds into the game or right before the media timeout, and I'll call time."
The problem is when your team is being bled to death and one timeout doesn't stop the hemorrhaging. Leon Barmore came face-to-face with the limit of three TOs and a slow death in the second half of the NCAA semifinal game with Georgia. The Bulldogs were swarming, and with slightly under 8:00 to go, Barmore used his third and last timeout with his team clinging to a dwindling lead.
"He did it because he needed it, but you have to figure he's used to functioning with five timeouts, and the media timeouts hurt him," Marpe said. "They had to have time, but when you're used to dealing with five and you only have three, and then you use one of those for a momentum kind of thing, you're down to two and you don't have that same capability to stop the game that you normally have."
Barmore could only watch as Georgia overcame his squad's five-point lead and went on to win in a romp.
"That's where the 20-second timeout has really helped out," said Marpe. The 20-second timeout was experimental in the past women's season, but will become a regular part of NCAA televised games next year when the rules give the women three :75 second timeouts and one :20 timeout per half.
The men's NCAA Tournament televised games will go to two timeouts per team and a total of three 20-second timeouts, two of which can be used in the second half. The team timeouts will be limited to 75 seconds, though the media timeouts will remain at the extended version of 135 seconds.
Media timeouts not only take control of the game out of the coaches hands, but also make conditioning less of a factor in the outcome.
"When you get to the televised NCAA Tournament games, media timeouts hurt full court pressing teams that count on other teams tiring, like Kentucky on the men's side or Georgia on the women's," Marpe said. "All of a sudden, team depth, or depth in a certaIn position, isn't as much of a factor."
Which means that substitution patterns can be affected come tournament time, but that's a subject to be explored during next year's NCAA Tournament.
