National Collegiate Athletic Association Basketball Research Articles

Middle Facet Tarsal Coalition in a National Collegiate Athletic Association Basketball Athlete: An Exploration Clinical Case Report

The patient is a 22-year-old female basketball player initially diagnosed with a calcaneal fracture. Five months after the pain began, the patient was referred to a foot and ankle surgeon and diagnosed with middle facet tarsal coalition. The patient received one X-ray-guided subtalar steroid injection and two platelet-rich plasma injections to aid in pain relief while completing her senior year of collegiate basketball. She elected to end her senior season early to have the recommended subtalar fusion surgery. The surgery ended her basketball career but provided pain-free activities of daily living. This case presents unique components compared with available literature on how injury presentation in adult populations can complicate a timely and accurate initial diagnosis. This case is also unique because despite conservative efforts, a surgical fusion was required to optimize pain and function during activities of daily living.

Using Conformal Win Probability to Predict the Winners of the Canceled 2020 NCAA Basketball Tournaments

The COVID-19 pandemic was responsible for the cancellation of both the men’s and women’s 2020 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I basketball tournaments. Starting from the point when the Division I tournaments and unfinished conference tournaments were canceled, we deliver closed-form probabilities for each team of making the Division I tournaments, had they not been canceled, under a simplified method for tournament selection. We also determine probabilities of a team winning March Madness, given a tournament bracket. Our calculations make use of conformal win probabilities derived from conformal predictive distributions. We compare these conformal win probabilities to those generated through linear and logistic regression on college basketball data spanning the 2011–2012 and 2022–2023 seasons, as well as to other publicly available win probability methods. Conformal win probabilities are shown to be well calibrated, while requiring fewer distributional assumptions than most alternative methods.

Triple grief cycle of cancelled events: the emotional crisis aftermath

PurposeThe coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic response is not only devastating nations and economies across the globe but it is also severely disrupting the event industry, with government and health authorities forcing many events to be postponed or cancelled. The purpose of this study is to investigate the prospective attendees’ emotional responses to cancelled events. This study draws upon grief cycle theory to articulate different layers of the grief process in the event domain of inquiry.Design/methodology/approachThe National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament was selected as the research context. Taking user-generated messages from Twitter, this study first performed content analysis to organize lexical patterns into categories and higher-order themes based on the grief cycle. It also performed social network analyses using UCINET to illustrate how different grief phases are inter-related.FindingsResults not only point to attendees’ self-expression manifested through a continuum of denial, anger, bargaining and acceptance but they also reveal a three-layer hierarchy of grief, namely, event-related, socio-politics-related and crisis-related. The network analysis further illustrates how grief phases are tied into a complex network of grief messages.Originality/valueThis study advances the event literature by improving knowledge about attendees’ emotional responses to cancelled events. It increases our understanding of the grieving process in the aftermath of COVID-19. The proposed triple grief cycle helps advance the literature by showcasing how voices from prospective attendees represent three pillars of grief hierarchy. The findings also underscore the emotional crisis of the COVID-19 aftermath.

Home sweet home: Quantifying home court advantages for NCAA basketball statistics

Box score statistics are the baseline measures of performance for National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball. Between the 2011-2012 and 2015-2016 seasons, NCAA teams performed better at home compared to on the road in nearly all box score statistics across both genders and all three divisions. Using box score data from over 100,000 games spanning the three divisions for both women and men, we examine the factors underlying this discrepancy. The prevalence of neutral location games in the NCAA provides an additional angle through which to examine the gaps in box score statistic performance, which we believe has been underutilized in existing literature. We also estimate a regression model to quantify the home court advantages for box score statistics after controlling for other factors such as number of possessions, and team strength. Additionally, we examine the biases of scorekeepers and referees. We present evidence that scorekeepers tend to have greater home team biases when observing men compared to women, higher divisions compared to lower divisions, and stronger teams compared to weaker teams. Finally, we present statistically significant results indicating referee decisions are impacted by attendance, with larger crowds resulting in greater bias in favor of the home team.

Hand and Wrist Injuries in Men’s and Women’s National Collegiate Athletic Association Basketball

Background:Hand and wrist injuries (HWIs) are common in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball players and can negatively affect performance. There is limited literature available on this topic.Purpose:To open a discussion on prevention strategies and encourage future research on HWIs in basketball athletes.Study Design:Descriptive epidemiology study.Methods:HWIs sustained by male and female NCAA basketball players during the 2009-2010 through 2013-2014 academic years and reported to the NCAA Injury Surveillance Program (NCAA-ISP) database were utilized to characterize the epidemiology thereof. Rates and distributions of HWIs were identified within the context of mechanism of injury, injury recurrence, and time lost from sport.Results:Over the 5-year period, 81 HWIs in women and 171 HWIs in men were identified through the NCAA-ISP database. These were used to estimate 3515 HWIs nationally in women’s basketball athletes and 7574 HWIs nationally in men’s basketball athletes. The rate of HWIs in women was 4.20 per 10,000 athlete-exposures (AEs) and in men was 7.76 per 10,000 AEs, making men 1.85 times more likely to sustain HWIs compared with women. In men, HWIs were 3.31 times more likely to occur in competition compared with practice, while in women, HWIs were 2.40 times more likely to occur in competition than in practice. Based on position, guards, both men and women, were the most likely to suffer HWIs.Conclusion:HWIs were common in collegiate basketball players. Most injuries were new, and the majority of players were restricted from participation for less than 24 hours. Men were more likely to be injured compared with women, and injuries were most common in the setting of competition for both sexes. The majority of injuries was considered minor and did not extensively limit participation; however, prevention and detection remain important for optimal performance.

Epidemiology of Lumbar Spine Injuries in Men's and Women's National Collegiate Athletic Association Basketball Athletes.

Background:Lumbar spine injuries (LSIs) are common in both men’s and women’s National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball players and can frequently lead to reinjuries and persistent pain.Purpose:To describe the epidemiology of an LSI in collegiate men’s and women’s basketball during the 2009-2010 through 2013-2014 academic years.Study Design:Descriptive epidemiology study.Methods:The incidence and characteristics of LSIs were identified utilizing the NCAA Injury Surveillance Program (ISP). Rates of injury were calculated as the number of injuries divided by the total number of athlete-exposures (AEs). AEs were defined as any student participation in 1 NCAA-sanctioned practice or competition. Incidence rate ratios (IRRs) were then calculated to compare the rates of injury between season, event type, mechanism, injury recurrence, and time lost from sport.Results:The NCAA ISP reported 124 LSIs from an average of 28 and 29 men’s and women’s teams, respectively. These were used via validated weighting methodology to estimate a total of 5197 LSIs nationally. The rate of LSIs in women was 2.16 per 10,000 AEs, while men suffered LSIs at a rate of 3.47 per 10,000 AEs. Men were 1.61 times more likely to suffer an LSI compared with women. In men, an LSI was 3.48 times more likely to occur in competition when compared with practice, while in women, an LSI was 1.36 times more likely to occur in competition than in practice. Women suffered the highest LSI rate during the postseason, while the highest rate in men was during the regular season. The majority of both female (58.9%; n = 1004) and male (73.1%; n = 2353) athletes returned to play within 24 hours of injury.Conclusion:To date, this is the largest study to characterize LSIs in NCAA basketball and provides needed information on the prevalence and timing of these injuries. The majority of injuries in both sexes were new, and most athletes returned to play in less than 24 hours. Injury rates were highest during competition in both sexes.

Difficult training improves team performance: an empirical case study of US college basketball

AbstractOne major challenge facing policy-makers is to design education and workplace training programs that are appropriately challenging. We review previous research that suggests that difficult training is better than easy training. However, surveys we conducted of students and of expert sport coaches showed that many prescribed easy rather than difficult training for those they coached. We analyzed the performance of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball teams in postseason tournaments to see whether the existing research, largely on individuals in short-term situations, would generalize to teams in the long run. Indeed, playing difficult nonconference (training) games modestly improved performance for NCAA teams in the postseason. Difficult training particularly benefitted teams that lost many nonconference games, and the effect of difficulty was positive within the range of difficulty NCAA teams actually encounter, making it clear that difficult training is superior. We suggest that our results can be generalized beyond sports, although with careful consideration of differences between NCAA basketball teams and other teams that may limit generalizability. These results suggest that policy-makers might consider amplifying the difficulty of team training exercises under certain conditions.

Sport Differences In Resiliency Development Of Men’s NCAA Football And Basketball Athletes

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has recently identified mental health as a primary health concern for student-athletes. Each sport contains its own unique stressors, which may require sport-specific stress reduction and resiliency-building techniques. PURPOSE: The purpose of this investigation was to identify the differences in stress impacts and resiliency in men’s NCAA football and basketball athletes. METHODS: Thirteen NCAA Division II men’s basketball athletes 32 NCAA Division II men’s football athletes were surveyed before and after the 2016-2017 competition season. The survey contained 35 questions, which were selected from the College Student Health Survey (Boynton Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN). The survey addressed aspects of physical health, drug and alcohol use, screen time, relationships, sleep, stress management, and resiliency. Post-season surveys were analyzed to determine differences between sports in stress management and resiliency. Independent t-tests were used to determine differences between survey question responses. Alpha levels were set at 0.05. RESULTS: Football athletes reported significantly better ability to respond to adversity (p<0.001), and withstand difficult situations (p<0.001). No significant difference existed between the sports in regards to the number of days their physical health (p=0.58) or mental health (p=0.95) was negatively impacted in the past 30 days. CONCLUSIONS: While no significant differences existed in the number of days in which mental or physical health was negatively impacted, significant differences were found in the football and basketball athletes’ perceived abilities to respond to stressful situations. Future research should investigate the development and efficacy of sport-specific resiliency-building techniques.

The Baron and the Bear: Rupp's Runts, Haskins's Miners, and the Season That Changed Basketball Forever by David Kingsley Snell

Reviewed by: The Baron and the Bear: Rupp's Runts, Haskins's Miners, and the Season That Changed Basketball Forever by David Kingsley Snell Jamal Ratchford (bio) The Baron and the Bear: Rupp's Runts, Haskins's Miners, and the Season That Changed Basketball Forever. By David Kingsley Snell. Foreward by Nolan Richardson. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. Pp. 312. $29.95 cloth) March 19, 2016, marked the 50th anniversary of the so-called Glory Road game when the all-black starting five from Texas Western College defeated the all-white University of Kentucky team. It was so-called due to its play on Rupp's words during his retirement press conference and, because Tennessee State A&I (now University) won three consecutive National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) basketball titles against all-white teams from 1957–59. In fact, the 1958 TSU title team had four players that played in the NBA. The 1958 UK title team had three on their roster. Talent and [End Page 511] meritocracy were moot because the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) prohibited historically black colleges and universities access to their tournament. I digress. Coach Don Haskins with Dan Wetzel co-authored an accessible book that became a major Hollywood motion picture. Glory Road made forty-two million at the box office and ESPN gave it the 2006 ESPY for best sport film. In 2002, Cotton Productions released a 45-minute documentary called And the Wheels Turned: The 1966 NCAA Basketball Championship. Intriguing occurrences in the black and white film footage took place at the twenty-four minute, fifty-five second mark in the documentary. There were three signs and one read "Big Blue." There also was a sizable section of majority white-male spectators that waved anywhere from ten to fifty Confederate Flags. Media and subsequently Hollywood needed an antagonist that seemingly represented an exclusive, segregated past in American sport and society. They found their culprit in Adolph Rupp. Allegations, innuendo, and conjecture swirled. Rumors circulated that Rupp said "he would not lose to a team of blacks, of coons." As of 2016, no one can confirm truth in these allegations. Nevertheless thanks to Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford, Frank Fitzpatrick, and a slew of others, Rupp was framed after his death in 1977 as the architect of racism and segregation in an American sporting past. Armed with oral interviews, secondary sources, and media accounts, journalist David Kingsley Snell de-clutters myths about Adolph Rupp the racist and writes a readable, climatic narrative on the 1966 NCAA basketball national championship victory of Texas Western against the University of Kentucky. Nolan Richardson, former Texas Western player, head coach, and 2014 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, provides a powerful and thought-provoking Foreword. In the Prologue, Snell problematizes master narratives and their impact on memory particular to Rupp and Haskins. In the Epilogue, Snell challenges revisionist interpretations on race and sport, and infuses primary accounts with critical analysis in ways useful for casual sport fans, undergraduate students, and experts on [End Page 512] sport in history, journalism, and sociology. These three sections and his central argument and exploration of a championship game that paralleled an Emancipation Proclamation within the athletic Civil Rights Movement, are the most significant contributions of the book. Although Snell investigated a misconstrued topic, there were notable omissions in the text, and room remains for future scholarship on Adolph Rupp, sport, and the politics of integration. The book lacks historiographical depth. Numerous scholars and journalists have written on race and basketball in the last ten years, including works on UCLA, Bill Russell, John McClendon, and the NBA. More importantly, there are missed opportunities that could have resulted in this book becoming the definitive treatment on Rupp and race. Discussion on his engagement with Freeport High School, the Kentucky Negro Education Association, Don Barksdale, Jim Tucker, CUNY, Solly Walker, coverage by black presses in the 1950s, and a post-championship game interview with Standard Oil would have significantly strengthened his argument. These quibbles aside, Snell has written a valuable book with engaging stories on both Texas Western and Kentucky that, at minimum, should reignite debates on who Rupp was, and...

Super Bowl Ads

We explore the effects of television advertising in the setting of the National Football League’s Super Bowl telecast. The Super Bowl is well suited for evaluating advertising because viewers pay attention to the ads, more than 40% of households watch the game, and variation in ad exposures is exogenous because a brand cannot choose how many impressions it receives in each market. Viewership is primarily determined based on local preferences for watching the two competing teams. We combine Super Bowl ratings data with weekly sales data in the beer and soda categories to document three primary findings about advertising. First, the relationship between Super Bowl viewership and sales in the week leading up to the game reveals the brands customers buy to consume during the game. We find some brands are consumed while watching the game while others are not, but this is unrelated to whether a brand ever advertised during the Super Bowl or advertises in a specific year. This rejects the theory that advertising works by serving as a complement to brand consumption. Second, we find that post–Super Bowl sales effects of ad viewership are concentrated in weeks with subsequent sporting events. This suggests Super Bowl advertising builds a complementarity between the brand and sports viewership more broadly. Finally, we collect data on National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament viewership to test this theory and find that the complementarity between a brand’s sales and viewership of the tournament is enhanced by Super Bowl ad viewership. Together, these findings identify advertising as a determinant of why some brands outperform others for particular consumption occasions such as sports viewership. Data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2017.1055 .

Malt Beverage Brand Popularity Among Youth and Youth-Appealing Advertising Content.

This study examined whether alcohol brands more popular among youth are more likely to have aired television advertisements that violated the alcohol industry's voluntary code by including youth-appealing content. We obtained a complete list of 288 brand-specific beer advertisements broadcast during the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men's and women's basketball tournaments from 1999 to 2008. All ads were rated by a panel of health professionals using a modified Delphi method to assess the presence of youth-appealing content in violation of the alcohol industry's voluntary code. The ads represented 23 alcohol brands. The popularity of these brands was operationalized as the brand-specific popularity of youth alcohol consumption in the past 30days, as determined by a 2011 to 2012 national survey of underage drinkers. Brand-level popularity was used as the exposure variable to predict the odds of having advertisements with youth-appealing content violations. Accounting for other covariates and the clustering of advertisements within brands, increased brand popularity among underage youth was associated with significantly increased odds of having youth-appeal content violations in ads televised during the NCAA basketball tournament games (adjusted odds ratio=1.70, 95% CI: 1.38, 2.09). Alcohol brands popular among underage drinkers are more likely to air television advertising that violates the industry's voluntary code which proscribes youth-appealing content.

The impact of cross-cultural communication on collective efficacy in NCAA basketball teams

This research contributes to the knowledge and theory on cross-cultural communication by investigating the impact of cross-cultural communication competence on the collective efficacy of multicultural National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball teams. Data was collected from 140 US National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball coaches via the Cross-Cultural Communication Competence Questionnaire and the Collective Efficacy Questionnaire for Sports. Principle component analysis was conducted on the data, revealing that the cross-cultural communication competence and collective efficacy of basketball teams are multidimensional. The hypothesized relationship between cross-cultural communication competence and collective efficacy was confirmed and statistically measured through regression analysis. It was found that four of the cross-cultural communication competence dimensions produced by the principle component analysis exhibited a significant positive relationship with one of the two dimensions within collective efficacy. Given the well-supported relationship between collective efficacy and team performance in business, this study produces important implications for scholars and practitioners working with multicultural sporting teams.

Injuries sustained in National Collegiate Athletic Association men's and women's basketball, 2009/2010–2014/2015

Background/aimRecent rule changes regarding the safety of basketball athletes necessitate up-to-date reports of injury incidence. This study describes the epidemiology of injuries in men's and women's National Collegiate Athletic Association...

Race and Retention in a Competitive Labor Market

Between 1994 and 2013, Black head coaches of Division I National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball programs were more likely to be terminated than their White counterparts, adjusting for performance and characteristics of the coach. Controlling for employment at a historically Black college or university, which accounts for approximately a quarter of the Black coaches in our sample, overturns this result. The findings highlight the importance of understanding institutional environments when assessing discrimination in labor market outcomes.

Passing Up Uncertainty for Attendance: The NCAA Basketball Tournament Organizers Change Direction

We analyze the changes the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), a widely studied cartel, made in 2002 to the organizational structure of its most valuable asset, the Division I men’s basketball tournament. The NCAA granted itself more freedom in assigning participating teams to their first-round games, and we conclude it used this freedom to provide the sports’ most powerful members with small advantages in their first-round games. The policy change allowed the organization, unwittingly or otherwise, to trade-off reduced uncertainty of tournament games for increased attendance at games, a move that helped maintain the status quo within the cartel.

An Empirical Evaluation of the US Beer Institute’s Self-Regulation Code Governing the Content of Beer Advertising

We evaluated advertising code violations using the US Beer Institute guidelines for responsible advertising. We applied the Delphi rating technique to all beer ads (n = 289) broadcast in national markets between 1999 and 2008 during the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament games. Fifteen public health professionals completed ratings using quantitative scales measuring the content of alcohol advertisements (e.g., perceived actor age, portrayal of excessive drinking) according to 1997 and 2006 versions of the Beer Institute Code. Depending on the code version, exclusion criteria, and scoring method, expert raters found that between 35% and 74% of the ads had code violations. There were significant differences among producers in the frequency with which ads with violations were broadcast, but not in the proportions of unique ads with violations. Guidelines most likely to be violated included the association of beer drinking with social success and the use of content appealing to persons younger than 21 years. The alcohol industry's current self-regulatory framework is ineffective at preventing content violations but could be improved by the use of new rating procedures designed to better detect content code violations.

Athletics, Academics, and Rankings: The Power of Competition

Please bear with me a moment as I write about sports. As you surely know, athletic events are a prominent part of U.S. college and university life. More than 1000 institutions are engaged in one or more of the 23 sports overseen by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) ranging from water polo to tennis to cross country and football (see http://www.ncaa.org). Collegiate history reveals a longstanding interdependence between athletics and institutions (Toma 2003). For example, American football is traced to 1869 with a game between Rutgers and the College of New Jersey. College basketball dates from 1895, and in the mid-1850 s Harvard and Yale held the first U.S. intercollegiate competition in rowing. Athletics quickly became a vehicle for institution-building, far beyond its recreational origins as part of the “collegiate ideal.” As I write this brief editorial, “March Madness,” the frenzy that is the quest for the U.S. national championship in men’s and women’s college basketball, is underway. From late fall to early spring, basketball teams from across the nation compete with hopes to win individual games, to claim the regular season conference title, and to triumph in the conference tournament games. Then, they wait, while the NCAA selection committee considers the teams and announces with great fanfare the successful competitors for a berth in the NCAA basketball tournaments. Sixty-four men’s and 64 women’s teams are slated for competition over 3 weeks in late March and early April. For the uninitiated, the 64 teams are divided into regional competitions across four geographical areas, which spreads the excitement across the country. In each region, teams ranked 1–16 commence play; of course, the lowest ranked team plays the highest ranked, and the game is on. Like most games and disciplines, there is insider terminology: teams want to get through the first and second rounds to make it to round three, called the “Sweet Sixteen,” or to the “Final Four,” where two games yield the two finalists for the championship game. Teams board planes and trains; spectators scramble for tickets and hotel rooms; stay-at-home fans and others fill out brackets in serious and not-soserious competition to see who can predict the ultimate winners of each game and the overall tournament. While the onsite spectators number in the thousands, almost every game is televised, and the home viewing audience numbers in the millions. Innov High Educ (2013) 38:171–172 DOI 10.1007/s10755-013-9258-z

Smart Event Traffic Management

In 2008 the City of Orlando, Florida, embarked on construction of a new Amway Center to replace the existing Amway Arena. The new center was designed to host a variety of events such as concerts, arena football, graduation ceremonies, National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball, and the National Basketball Association's (NBA's) Orlando Magic home games. The Amway Center, which opened in October 2010, had a capacity of 19,000 patrons for NBA games. The Amway Center was adjacent to Interstate 4 and State Road 408 in the downtown core. To prepare for the Amway Center's event management challenges, the City of Orlando's Transportation Engineering Department utilized smart event traffic management techniques, which integrated the following system and plan components: intelligent transportation system infrastructure (software and hardware), traffic control device upgrades, regional planning efforts, and state-of-the-art safety and security protocols. These components also helped minimize the environmental impacts of traffic congestion. When designing smart event plans, it is important to consider high-threshold events such as the NBA All-Star Game for system performance and to understand the balance required for operational efficiency and security in today's global climate. In addition, infrastructure performance is critical during high-profile events so that the local economy can benefit and the municipality can stay competitive to attract more of these types of events. Finally, the resultant operational efficiency is vital for reducing the carbon footprint and negative societal impacts.

Political Correctness, Selection Bias, and the NCAA Basketball Tournament

Allegations of selection bias toward the major conferences and teams with committee representation have previously been levied on the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Basketball tournament selection committee. We illustrate the source of this bias is political correctness. When using the computer ranking of Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), which uses only wins and losses in its analysis, bias in the selection process seems evident. No bias is revealed when the Sagarin “Predictor” rating is substituted for RPI. The Sagarin “Predictor” rating uses margin of victory and results compared to expectations in its analysis; the selection committee appears to use the same factors when determining at-large bids.

Team assignments and scheduling for the NCAA basketball tournament

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) organizes a men's basketball tournament every March to determine the national champion for the current season. In organizing the tournament, the emphasis is typically on selection of the most deserving teams to participate and providing a fair, equitable environment in which to play that result in a true, undisputed champion for the season. However, there are growing concerns of dwindling actual attendance at tournament games and increasing financial burden on the NCAA related to reimbursable team travel expenses. In this paper, we describe the development of an integer program designed to optimize team assignments in the sense of minimizing the distance travelled by teams to game sites and the corresponding travel costs. The goal is to increase tournament accessibility to fans as well as lessen the financial impact to the NCAA while maintaining the integrity of the tournament. We test our model against actual tournament assignments from the past 5 years. Results show consistent and significant cost savings and reductions in distance travelled without compromising the fairness and structure of the tournament. Overall, we demonstrate the usefulness of the model in both operational and strategic business decisions.