Robert Deutsch-Imagn Images
The NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel announced several rule changes for men’s college basketball this week. Changes it says will “help enhance the flow of the game in men’s basketball for the 2025-26 season.”
Among those rule changes are the addition of a coach’s challenge at any point in a game to review out-of-bounds calls, basket interference/goaltending and whether a secondary defender was in the restricted-area arc. The panel also added new directives for officials that address delay-of-game tactics, time spent at the monitor, improve game administration efficiency, and reduce physicality.
The big news, however, wasn’t a rule change that will take effect this season, but one that could significantly change men’s college basketball down the road. The panel revealed that it is considering changing men’s games from using two halves to four quarters.
“In considering the decisions last month, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee had conversations about ways to continue this direction in the upcoming years, which includes positive momentum for moving the men’s game from halves to quarters,” the NCAA stated. “The committee realizes there are hurdles to implementing the quarter format to the game, including the structuring of media timeouts to accommodate commercial inventory.
“The committee recommended NCAA Division I conferences create a joint working group to provide feedback on the potential change from halves to quarters. The Men’s Basketball Rules Committee would like to have feedback from the conferences by the next rules-change year.”
NCAA men’s college basketball is the only major basketball organization that still uses halves instead of quarters. Even NCAA women’s college basketball games use quarters, and has been doing so since way back in the 2015-2016 season. That move was approved by the same NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel in June 2015 and was done, as they put it 10 years ago, to, wait for it, “enhance the flow of the game.”
Apparently, the flow of the men’s basketball game has deteriorated enough since then that the panel is now looking at making the same change, perhaps as early as 2026.