How new rule could impact Louisville women's basketball in March Madness
· Yahoo Sports
For the first time in the NCAA Tournament, coaches can challenge select calls made by referees. Reviews requested during this time of year, also known as win-or-go-home season, could be the difference between packing and advancing. It’s on the coaching staff to determine when to take that chance.
And at Louisville, the “cardinal rule” (or “Cardinal cardinal rule,” if you’ll indulge UofL assistant coach Amanda Butler) is “whatever Jeff Walz thinks.”
Visit newsbetting.bond for more information.
On June 10, the NCAA announced the approval of a coach’s challenge in men’s and women’s basketball. Each game has slightly different criteria in terms of what and when they’re allowed to challenge, and both sets of rules have a narrower scope than their professional counterparts (NBA, WNBA).
The women’s game in particular permits reviews of possession plays (like an out-of-bounds call or backcourt violation) and potential upgrades (from common to flagrant 1 or 2 fouls). The men’s side allows for reviews of these as well as basket interference/goaltending and whether a secondary defender was in the restricted area until the last two minutes of a game.
An incorrect challenge in women’s basketball would result in the loss of a timeout. If a coach initiates a challenge with no timeouts remaining and is wrong, they’ll be assessed a technical foul for an excessive timeout. The men’s game, however, rules teams must have a timeout to request a challenge. A successful challenge would give the coaching staff one additional challenge for the rest of the game.
Walz prefers women’s basketball’s way of doing things.
“I like the fact in our game that you can keep calling them if you want,” Walz said. “I mean, you'll just get a technical foul if you're wrong, but I think it's important. Why should you lose it? Why should I lose my challenge if I'm right? It makes no sense.”
UofL doesn’t track its hit rate on challenges. Box scores and play-by-play don’t note them either. But Walz and Butler feel, anecdotally, they’ve been very successful.
The team uses a three-prong test with Walz as the ultimate authority when evaluating whether to call a challenge.
First, he relies on his intuition. Nineteen years as a head coach can do wonders for one’s instincts.
“Jeff has great experience, great feel,” Butler — a head coach herself at Clemson, Florida and Charlotte before joining Walz’s staff last season — told The Courier Journal. “He can always see 10 things at once.”
Then he checks with the players. I didn’t touch the ball. She hit my jaw. There was no contact.
Sometimes in-game emotions muddy objectivity, so Walz checks the bench as a third line of defense. Did anyone have a good view of what happened there? Director of video analytics LaMont Russell or team manager Zack Sims keep an iPad to assess the video evidence and see if there’s a camera angle that makes whatever actually happened obvious.
Because ultimately, if the cameras didn’t catch the missed call, a challenge has no chance at being successful. And to waste a timeout, especially during March Madness, could be detrimental. “Those timeouts are gold,” Butler said.
She characterizes deciding when to challenge a play as a “quick-trigger collaboration.” The goal is to be as fast as possible, of course, but it’s not like the staff keeps a timer. Sometimes, if there’s some debate among the bench, Walz will converse with officials to give his staff a “tiny window of time” to review the tape.
Sometimes Walz chooses to use a challenge in place of a timeout.
“A run might be going on, and I'll just be like, just review that. Who did the ball go out of bounds on? Because sometimes you never know what they're going to see.”
Ultimately, there is no set list of circumstances that guide the Cardinals’ challenging tendencies. For example, they won’t not challenge an out-of-bounds play just because it happened in the first quarter. If Walz sees something and the staff collectively feels there’s a good chance it could get overturned, they go for it.
“I think your competitiveness comes out in those moments sometimes too,” Butler said, “and if you feel really compelled that you're going to win the call, you're gonna say, ‘Let’s look at it.’ But not to the detriment of overall success.”
Virginia men’s basketball has studied analytics and found about 90% of calls it challenges are out of bounds, while 75% of challengeable calls happen on the baseline. Butler said Louisville’s approach isn’t so scientific as to study where on the court or when in a game challenges are rules successful at a higher rate, but it is something she thinks would be interesting to look over during the offseason. Anecdotally, she imagines the baseline would be a popular spot, considering that’s where the ball tends to get tipped out most often.
Part of the NCAA’s reasoning for adding a coach’s challenge this season was to limit the number of times officials went to the monitor. Whether it’s a coach’s challenge or an official-initiated review, game stoppages are always disruptive. But they’re also a chance to get the call right.
In an ideal world, Butler would like to see a pitch clock of sorts instituted for these reviews. If the officials can’t come to a consensus on whether to overturn or leave a call as is in, say, 20 or 25 seconds (she's open to suggestions), then that’s the end of that. Game back on.
When the NCAA announced the coach’s challenge coming to men’s basketball, it also mentioned the addition of “other enhancements” to “help with the flow of the game,” including limiting time spent at the monitor.
In March, plenty of high-leverage games are decided by a single possession, so the coach’s challenge could have a huge impact in Year 1. Think about a common-foul-turned-flagrant. That call results in free throws and possession on top of hanging a penalty on an opposing player.
“We’ve seen it during the season,” Butler said. “... There are definitely going to be instances where you see significant momentum swings.”
.oembed-frame {width:100%;height:100%;margin:0;border:0;}
Reach college sports enterprise reporter Payton Titus at [email protected] and follow her on X @petitus25. Subscribe to her "Full-court Press" newsletter here for a behind-the-scenes look at how college sports' biggest stories are impacting Louisville and Kentucky athletics.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville women's basketball on new rule for NCAA Tournament 2026