044: Fast Breaks, Foul Calls, and Fun – College Hoops 101

If NCAA basketball feels complicated, don’t worry—we’re breaking it down for you. New college hoops rules, confusing calls, and tricky fouls? We’ll explain them with real-life analogies, mini-quizzes, and plenty of laughs. From men’s and women’s college basketball to common fouls like blocks, charges, and technicals, this episode is your beginner-friendly guide to understanding the game—and actually enjoying every basket, rebound, and buzzer-beater. 

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Chapters

• 01:21 - Lottery Dreams, Bench Seats
•  10:42 - Ref Drama Decoded
•  13:40 - Goaltending or Just Goal-Confusing?
•  18:52 - Flagrant Fouls: Big Hits, Bigger Fines
•  21:41 - Future Hoops: Math Meets Madness
•  24:25 - Block vs. Charge
•  28:24 - Fouls, Flops, and Facepalms Explained
•  33:42 - Technical Fouls: Attitude Adjustment Time
•  39:13 - Hannah Hidalgo: Hoops’ New Heroine

Transcript

Teryn (00:00)
You're driving down the road, minding your own business. And then all of a sudden cyber truck in the lane next to you speeds up just to cut you off because they're in a hideous and terribly made car. And they side swipe you in their utter rush and carelessness in the meantime. Okay. Now reset, put yourself in the same situation. You're driving down the street.

Ambre (00:08)
you

Teryn (00:26)
listening to Taylor Swift's new album and you're just about to hit the high note when you notice that you're coming up on a stoplight, but you weren't paying attention and you slam on your brakes, but you're too late. You hit the poor lady in her Toyota Corolla who was just minding her own business. These are block and charge

Ambre (00:29)
obviously.

you

my gosh.

Teryn (08:20)
Okay, we're talking college hoops this week. And since this is, I don't know, our second or third time hitting this topic, I asked Ambre what she'd be interested in learning about and she gave me a couple of ideas. And so I just kind of ran from there. So today we're going to be talking all about recent changes and rules for the 2025-2026 season, plus some other potential changes in the years to come.

And then we're going to talk confusing calls slash fouls. I'll break them down with some analogies and hopefully help make watching basketball a little bit easier first of all, because trust me, I had to break off the rust a little bit when it comes to some of the specifics of these rules, because it's been a minute. I mean, it's been a minute since I've been an official and then also a even longer minute since I've played. So.

Ambre (09:12)
Hahaha.

Teryn (09:14)
Anyways, we'll start with rule changes for the 2025 and 2026 season. change has to do with challenges and reviews. And a lot of it's going to start mirroring what the NBA and WNBA look like more closely. So Ambre, do you know what a challenge is?

Ambre (09:34)
That's when a team slash coach is not happy, doesn't agree with one of the officials calls, like maybe a foul, and they want the team of officials to look at it again.

Teryn (09:47)
yes, exactly, the NCAA approved a coaches challenge system in men's and women's basketball for this upcoming season where coaches can challenge out of bounds calls, basket interference, and goal tending.

Ambre (09:59)
Mmm.

Teryn (10:02)
and whether a defender was in the restricted area arc. And I know the first question you're going to ask me is what are those? I knew it. I knew it. This is not even. Yeah, you got that out of bounds. You got that. That's basically like when they're looking at that, they're trying to find out who touched the ball last before it goes out of bounds. So for our brand brand new basketball listeners, whoever touches the ball last as the ball goes out of bounds, the other team gets the ball.

Ambre (10:07)
Time out. Please explain all of those. Out of bounds, maybe. The rest, no.

Okay, yeah, yeah.

Teryn (10:32)
right there pretty much in that area. So that's out of bounds. It is, can get real, it can get really dicey when it comes to like those bang bang plays. Okay, so basket, yeah, basket interference and goaltending. So these two oftentimes get mixed up, but they are different. So here's a simple way to tell them apart. So goaltending is when the defense, the defensive person,

Ambre (10:34)
it can get nicey and the ball moves fast and it's hard to see sometimes.

Okay, tell me the other ones.

Teryn (10:59)
blocks a shot too late. It's a good way of thinking about it. So the ball went up in the air and now it's already on its way down into the hoop. When it's on its downward slope to the hoop, you can no longer block that ball. So yeah, if it's like already on that downward slope, it's an automatic bucket for the other team when a defensive person does this. So that's goaltending. Yeah.

Ambre (11:21)
Can I translate this into

my millennial slash Gen Z? I'm not sure, my age. It's like puppy guarding, yeah?

Teryn (11:27)
Hmm? Yeah.

Puppy guarding? No, what's that?

Ambre (11:30)
You've never heard of puppy guarding?

Yeah, like you can't stand in front of the like, shoot, like what's a good recess game? You know, like you can't just, can't just like stand in front of the whatever, you know, or like capture the flag. You can't just like stand in front of the flag. That's not fair. Nobody gets to like try and capture it then. Puppy guarding, okay. Like I can't stand in front of the basket and just knock down everything that comes this way.

Teryn (11:37)
⁓ sure. Yeah. You're talking about in like, yes.

Yes.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty good. I like that. That's a good reference.

Right, right. Like think about all the really tall players that could just like reach it and scoop the ball out. Right? You can't do So yeah, so that's goaltending basket interference. And this is more has to do with when you mess with the ball or the rim too soon. So like touching the ball when it's sitting on or above the rim. ⁓ Yes. Or like hitting the rim so that it bounces differently so that the ball when it, you know, is going through it, whatever.

Ambre (11:57)
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Got it.

Mm-hmm.

Teryn (12:21)
This also is an automatic bucket for the team who shoot the shot the ball. Yep. Exactly. There's a twist to this one though, is an offensive player could also do basket interference and this could look more like tipping it in while it's still on the rim. ⁓ and this would just negate the basket altogether. So if you're on offense, you also can't be messing with the ball when it's around the rim or above the rim area or, know, in.

Ambre (12:25)
for the other two, okay.

Hmm.

Teryn (12:49)
already in the cylinder basically. So basically defender touches the ball too late, automatic points, offense touches the ball too early. Cause right. it bounces off the rim and it's out of the cylinder region, you can go for it. Then you can get your rebound. If the offense touches the ball too early, no points. So obviously this is a ⁓ area of contention because it's all happens really close up to the rim and you got to be able to know like, is it over the rim? Is it, you know, all that stuff. So they can use that.

Ambre (12:51)
Yeah.

then you can go for it.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Teryn (13:17)
that can now be challenged by the coach. All right. The other one is the restricted area. Now this rule only applies to the men's league because women are not gonna, they don't have this rule. I think it was like 2023, they just took the restricted area out. But basically what this is, if you ever look at a basketball court, there's that little arc underneath the basket. It's four feet and it's like a half circle and it's under the basket.

Ambre (13:40)
Hmm.

Teryn (13:43)
This is called the no charge zone and TBD, we're going to talk about what a block versus charges a little bit later, but just know a charge is when like a defensive player takes a foul on an offensive player. So you can't basically a restricted area situation, a secondary defender. So not the person who's directly guarding the person with the ball, the secondary defender cannot stand inside the arc.

and draw a charge on the player who's shooting So basketball. So why, so this is dangerous because obviously players are running full speed into the rim and you just don't want people like planting their feet inside this area that's right by the rim, you know, potentially causing people to get hurt. So this rule basically says if too close to the basket, you're not gonna get rewarded for taking a hit from an offensive player.

Ambre (14:10)
Hmm

Yeah.

Yeah.

Can we go back to restricted? Is that what's called the paint and you can't spend more than three seconds in it? Okay.

Teryn (14:40)
And we're going to talk. That's one of the ones I

put in on our rules to understand the restricted area is inside the paint. Yes, so that's what it's not. The whole paint. It's just that little arc that you'll see painted underneath the basket. Yep, OK, back to rules updates on the men's side. Officials will no longer be able to review out of bounds calls, so in the past they could review their own calls.

Ambre (14:46)
Cool.

Okay, it's not the whole paint.

Got it, okay.

Teryn (15:07)
unless they are directed through a coach's challenge. So other uses of replay where the official can go to an official review are things like a shot clock violation. So did they get the shot in before the shot clock went to zero? any timing mistakes, that can be like with the clock can be initiated by official review. but no more out of bounds calls can be initiated.

Ambre (15:33)
Is that

the purpose is to keep the game moving a little bit faster? Okay.

Teryn (15:35)
Exactly.

People are hopeful that this will keep the game flow a little bit better and just less stoppage. They, I think I saw, some stat that said during all of March Madness last year, there was 111 minutes worth of review time. Yeah, exactly. So they're hoping to speed the game up just a little bit. on the women's side, officials can't initiate reviews on

Ambre (15:40)
Mm-hmm.

Blech. Yeah.

Teryn (16:03)
I'll get to him in a second, but all of the approved types of plays, they're a little bit different than the men's league. ⁓ but the officials cannot review them at any point in the game unless, it's who is the foul on? So the only time that an official can do an official review, is did we give the foul to the correct player? interesting, right? Keeping that game really fast. ⁓

Ambre (16:21)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Teryn (16:25)
So for the women's team, what rules can be challenged by a coach are out of bounds violations, a back court violation. So basically you've ever heard of over and back. where they cross the half court line and then go back to the other side that can be reviewed. ⁓ Some, this one was a little confusing, but just let's call it some possession rulings on when there's a free throw involved. So who gets the ball after the free throw happens.

Ambre (16:36)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Teryn (16:51)
⁓ And then whether a foul was assessed by the correct player. So these are things that the women's coaches can challenge during a game. On the men's side, we talked about this already, but out of bounds calls, basket interference, goal tending, and ⁓ the restricted area arc. Okay, but there's a little bit of a twist here on this challenge situation. So the twist is for the men's side,

Ambre (17:09)
Yeah.

Teryn (17:15)
Whoever's requesting a challenge has to have a timeout left to be able to use their challenge. Plot twist. ⁓ If they win their challenge, they do get one more challenge to use just at their discretion for the rest of the game. But if they lose their challenge, no more challenges are awarded, right? And I assume, I never read this anywhere, but I assume their timeout is getting used during that challenge, right?

Ambre (17:22)
Plot twist

Yeah, that's how

NFL is. Okay.

Teryn (17:46)
I think so. Yep.

if they, in NFL, I know this is the case in NFL. I don't actually know for NCAA cause I didn't see this like, like very specifically written out, but in the NFL, if you win your challenge, you get your time out back also. So I don't know if that's the case in NCAA basketball. but likely,

Ambre (18:03)
Seems fair.

Teryn (18:04)
On the women's side, they don't have to have a timeout. It's not essential to use your challenge, but this is interesting. Um, if they lose their challenge, a bench technical file will, will assessed to their team.

Ambre (18:17)
Just a broad sweeping. An anonymous bench technical phone.

Teryn (18:18)
Weird broad sweeping. So basically like, believe, yeah, cause

you can get a bench technical if your bench is being a little too rowdy, like they can just assess it to everyone. And I think someone would still get to shoot free throws. Like I think the team would just get to pick who's shooting their free throws. ⁓ but yeah, so interesting, right? Like such a weird way to use that.

Ambre (18:27)
Yeah.

Yeah. Wow.

Yeah.

Teryn (18:41)
This is what they're saying is like the biggest challenge change in the game since 2013. the end 2013 officials were given the ability to review in the last two minutes of the game, like we talked about a little bit earlier, um, and in overtime to confirm like the shot clock violations, and the out of bounds calls. Okay. Quiz for you, Ambre, if a coach uses their challenge and wins, how many total challenges can they have for the rest of the game?

Ambre (18:52)
Mm.

Yeah, it is interesting.

to the same number, same number that they had. Yeah, two total. Like they didn't use one up.

Teryn (19:09)
Total, too total. Yeah, if,

yes, correct. Yeah, they get to use one more after they win. If they don't win it, they just get the one. Yep.

Ambre (19:21)
What if they win two? Like what if this official's team is like, do they get?

Teryn (19:22)
I mean, they just great. Then the rule change, right?

So like if they challenge the idea of a challenge is that the officials would change the call during the game.

Ambre (19:30)
Right, but if they

use up two challenges and they win both, do they have an additional? I hope their officials team is doing some continuous improvement along the way.

Teryn (19:35)
Nothing. Nope. Nope. Just get two.

⁓ Right. Exactly.

I mean, it's hard because like a challenge is a challenge because it's like a hard play to notice. Right. So it's, it's happening quickly. It's happening fast. And so, yeah, it makes sense to have it, but it makes sense to not be challenging and reviewing every sinking call. Yep. Yep. Okay. The next rule change for the 25, 26 season is what they call the continuous motion rule, which is basically

Ambre (19:53)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Every single. Yeah.

Teryn (20:11)
broad strokes when a player is shooting and they get fouled, is the official going to call it a shooting foul or was the foul before the shot happened? Do ever hear people complain about that? Like, he was in a shooting motion and blah, blah, blah. So do they get, do they get free throws for it? Yes or no. So how it works is in the past, there was no continuous motion rule, meaning like if the foul happened before the shot went up,

Ambre (20:25)
Yeah, yeah.

Teryn (20:38)
whether they were in the motion of shooting or not, before the ball left their hand, it was on the floor. Basically no free throws allowed. This year, the rule is tweaked. So now an offensive player who finishes their dribble towards the basket and absorbs contact from a defender can take a pivot or take a whatever step, finish whatever step that they were already on and finish the field goal attempt. So finish their shot.

Ambre (20:43)
Hmm.

Teryn (21:06)
And that can be like the continuous motion allows them to call that a shooting foul.

Ambre (21:11)
Because it's like the whole string of movements together. How interesting. That's a big change.

Teryn (21:14)
Correct, right, right.

Yeah, so previously they had no continuation rule and any foul even during the shooting motion would just stop play altogether. Baskets waved off even if the player was like in the act of shooting but just hadn't gotten the ball off their hands yet. Now, like now they're gonna be able to look at that as continuous motion. It's gonna be a lot of, the hard part about this is it's good because it allows for a little bit more.

gray area, but it also makes it a little bit more gray. know, yeah, like gray area is good and bad, I think in a lot of people's eyes. So it's gonna, it's gonna be interesting to see. This again, it seems to be getting the NCAA a little bit more in line with the NBA rules on these types of plays. So ⁓ the big difference is that in the NBA continuation rule is very liberal. It like allows for player to shoot.

Ambre (21:46)
gray area, yeah.

Yeah.

Teryn (22:10)
after being fouled during the gather of the ball basically, like it's, there's, it's very loose in the NBA. ⁓

Ambre (22:18)
I have a really stupid question.

Why would the NCAA not adopt 100 % of the rules from the NBA? If the whole point is to prepare players to go on to the next level, some of them, why would they have different rules?

Teryn (22:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's a good question. think they probably some of it is safety. I think some of it could be like the level of officiating too. You know, I, I, I don't know the answer to your question, but I would think that's a lot of it has to do with just the style of play and maturity of players. exactly. So yeah, I don't know.

Ambre (22:43)
Hmm. Yeah.

maturity of players. Hmm, yeah.

Teryn (22:57)
All right. So I think I have just one more rule here. So this one

It's interesting to me, of like funny. ⁓ It's very specific. So this one is where officials have the option to call a flagrant one versus flagrant two when a player is contacted to the groin.

Ambre (23:17)
Most men are probably like the worst foul ever must be flagrant tin.

Teryn (23:22)
Yes. Yeah,

it's like a 10. Uh, so a flagrant one foul results in two free throws for the offended team and possession of the ball. So they get to shoot two free throws and take the ball back. But previously officials would call, they would either have to call it a common foul or deem it a flagrant two. So you have to basically decide, is it just a basic foul where like nothing was

You know, it wasn't like, cause you know, you're going to hit hitting someone in the groin. You're like, was that intentional? Was that malicious? Blah, blah. Or in flagrant two, a player receives an ejection immediately. So flagrant one is that middle ground, right? And, ⁓ so nice to be able to say like, cause they could still call it a flagrant too. They're still allowed to call it that if they think it's that vicious enough, I guess.

Ambre (23:49)
weren't trying. Yeah.

Mmm.

Yeah.

that, yeah.

Teryn (24:14)
⁓ But they can also say, you know, that was not appropriate, but we're not going to eject you for that. Yeah, so interesting new.

Ambre (24:21)
Yeah.

Is there like

an equivalent, you know, in women's basketball, if you get an elbow in the chest region, is that a flight? No, we got to protect the men's bodies. Yeah.

Teryn (24:32)
I don't know. I actually have no idea. don't know the answer

to that. I would imagine that they could. Yeah. If they saw it. Yeah. Yeah. So interesting stuff. Yeah.

Ambre (24:39)
I know if it's vicious enough.

Gotta protect those dudes.

Teryn (25:29)
All right. So on to potential rules changes on the docket for next year. So, ⁓ the first one, and I think this is just so wild is potentially changing the men's game to quarters instead of halves.

But the committee realized that the hurdles involved with such a change, mostly to do with structuring of media timeouts, pause for my eye roll.

Ambre (25:52)
Hmm

Teryn (25:55)
The committee has decided that the men's game will continue to be played as two 20 minute halves. And just to note here, they are the only format of basketball still played in halves. Men's college basketball. Crazy to me. Like just figure it out. Like just.

Ambre (26:05)
Come on, guys. Come on.

Teryn (26:13)
We're so concerned with media timeouts that we can't figure out how to go to quarters. We could probably add in more media timeouts.

Ambre (26:13)
Yeah.

Yeah, truly.

Teryn (26:21)
Like, come on. ⁓ the other potential change is expanding March Madness from 68 teams to 76 teams. ⁓ I know. So that would feature 12 opening round games instead of the first four that we see now. ⁓ yeah. So that would just make it, you know, more of a wide open field for more teams to have some Cinderella stories. ⁓

Ambre (26:29)
⁓ look out!

Okay, let's

be real, the media would make more money. More games, more money. Capitalism.

Teryn (26:48)
Yep. Amen. More games. Okay.

I know.

All right. Now I'm going to transition to helping our listeners understand some of the most confusing calls in basketball. So some of which we mentioned already, and I'm going to go into a little bit more. And the first and arguably the hardest and most divisive call in basketball is the block first charge call. So picture this, your drive.

Ambre (27:14)
Hmm. Hmm?

picturing.

Teryn (27:19)
You're driving down the road, minding your own business. And then all of a sudden a cyber truck in the lane next to you speeds up just to cut you off because they're in a hideous and terribly made car. And they side swipe you in their utter rush and carelessness in the meantime. Okay. Now reset, put yourself in the same situation. You're driving down the street.

Ambre (27:27)
you

Teryn (27:46)
listening to Taylor Swift's new album and you're just about to hit the high note when you notice that you're coming up on a stoplight, but you weren't paying attention and you slam on your brakes, but you're too late. You hit the poor lady in her Toyota Corolla who was just minding her own business. These are block and charge a block call.

Ambre (27:49)
obviously.

you

my gosh.

you

Teryn (28:12)
is when the defender is still moving and they slide under the player and don't establish position in time and they make contact with the person with the ball. That's our cyber truck. Yep. He's being too aggressive. He sideswipes your car while moving on the road and it's their fault. They're the one responsible for the damages. That's a block. The defense gets called for a foul.

Ambre (28:24)
The side swipe. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Teryn (28:38)
A charge is when a defender has both feet set and is in a legal guarding position before the offensive player starts their shooting motion. Exactly. So you see where this is going. This grandma who was rightfully stopped at her stoplight and you rear ended her. You're not convincing anyone that it's grandma's fault. She was in her legal guarding position and you ran into her. Okay.

Ambre (28:48)
There's a little old lady hanging out with the red light.

Yeah.

Yeah, she's just doing her

job, doing her thing.

Teryn (29:08)
That's a charge and on the charge, the offensive player gets charged with a foul. So how do you spot it? If a defender hits the deck and the ref dramatically points the other direction with their hand, that's a charge. If the ref waves it off, usually they're going to do this and then they use their fists and hit their hips. That's a block. And then you know that the ball is going to go back to the offense.

Ambre (29:13)
Hehehehe

Teryn (29:35)
because they messed up.

Ambre (29:36)
And where

this seems to get hairy is that, so I'm a defender, I'm gonna try to get into position, but not too early, because if I get there and I set myself up, then the offender's gonna go around me. So yeah, it seems like whenever I see these two being debated, they're slowing down the video and they're looking to see if the defender was still moving their feet when they absorbed the impact, because that means that they weren't.

Teryn (29:42)
Mm-hmm.

They go around me. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Yep.

Yep,

Ambre (30:05)
in place yet. Yeah, it always seems like every game it seems. Yeah. Meaning it's

Teryn (30:05)
yep, yep. hard to get a charge call. Yeah, it's very hard to get a charge call. Yep, yep. So.

Ambre (30:14)
really hard for the defenders to get in place early enough to draw it.

Teryn (30:17)
Yeah, exactly,

Okay. So the next one is the three second violation. So this is what you were talking about before. Yes. And this is when an offensive player. a person on the team who has the ball is standing in the key, which is that painted rectangular area. You often hear it called the paint, like Ambre mentioned for more than three seconds. So how the official decides. So an offensive player can't stand in the painted key.

Ambre (30:25)
Paint. Yes.

Teryn (30:48)
for more than three seconds while their team has the ball. Referees are usually as the referee under the basket is gonna count one, 1000. You might even see them do it with their hands. Like a lot of times in high school, you see them counting, like putting their hand out like this, one, 1000, two, 1000. And then once the ball is shot or the player leaves the key, so steps out of it, their three second clock resets.

Ambre (30:59)
Yeah.

steps out of it just one foot or entire body has to leap the paint.

Teryn (31:15)
I think their whole body has to come out, but actually you're making me think that I'm not a hundred percent sure. But I think, I think their whole body has to come out. I think if you have one foot in the key at all, you're counted as being in the key. Yeah. Um, so to keep our traffic analogy, it's like loitering in the middle of traffic. You can pass through, but you can't just hang out in there. You don't get to just hang out in the middle of the road. You have to get in and get out and make sure that everyone has a chance. Like think about it. Like if.

Ambre (31:21)
Okay.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Go your way.

Teryn (31:43)
If all the offensive players were just standing in the key, could do a lot of different stuff. So yeah, gotta spread out. Okay.

Ambre (31:48)
Yeah. And defenders

doesn't matter where you go. You can go anywhere. I mean, except for your. Except for your restricted area.

Teryn (31:53)
Yes, the defenders can sit all in the key if they want to.

Correct. Yes. Yep. It doesn't help them to stand all on the key because then you can shoot three pointers. So then the whole outside of the outside of the three point line is wide but yeah. So quiz for you, Ambre, can a player re enter the key immediately after stepping out for one second?

Ambre (32:03)
Yeah. Okay.

⁓ yes. OK, great.

Teryn (32:15)
Yes, they can. Good job. So

all they have to do is get both feet out of the key and then they can get right back in if they want. Yep. OK.

Ambre (32:20)
Then they can go back in. Yeah. That makes sense,

because a lot of times you see player, I mean, they're constantly moving. is, you know, like maybe a big defender in the, you know, down below might kind of be stationary, but otherwise when you look at a basketball game, everybody is moving all the time.

Teryn (32:26)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, correct. Correct.

All right. I'm going to get into fouls. So this one's, think, a little bit more fun. So I'm going to first get into a technical foul and why it's confusing, why a technical foul is confusing because it's not about physical contact. This one's just about behavior and how an official decides a technical foul for unsportsmanlike conduct is it's arguing, taunting, hanging on the rim for too long, a delay of game or illegal substitutions.

Ambre (33:30)
Mmm.

Teryn (33:42)
anytime someone gets two technical fouls, it's an automatic ejection. All right. So in this case, it's basically getting detention, not for fighting, but just for mouthing off. Exactly. Okay. And I'm going to see if you can get the gist of that quick description for you, Ambre. I have made up a few bad behavior scenarios and I want you to guess if that would earn them a technical foul or just a warning. All right.

Ambre (33:51)
Mm-hmm. Bad attitude.

Okay.

Teryn (34:08)
The dunks after the whistle just because the play looked too good not to finish. Is that a tech or nah?

Ambre (34:15)
Nah.

Teryn (34:15)
Yeah, good job. Usually just a warning unless it's clearly showing off or delaying the game. They can usually like blow the whistle and someone will grab the ball and dunk it in. It's usually not a technical foul.

Ambre (34:21)
Yeah.

feel like

it depends on how long after the whistle. That's a significant amount of time. Yeah, okay. There's lots of on case by case.

Teryn (34:29)
100 % all depends on the situation, but yeah.

Correct. Okay. Second scenario. After a big block, a player stands over their opponent and yells, not in my house. Tech or nah. Yes. This is taunting in a big no-no in college hoops. Absolutely. So next one, someone's on the bench and starts making traveling hand signals after every opponent's move. Tech or nah.

Ambre (34:42)
Tech.

Yeah.

Nah.

Teryn (34:59)
Yeah. Usually this one's a warning first. ⁓ and then if they keep on doing it and it's getting disruptive, they can get issued a technical foul. Benches can't be showing up the refs like that. ⁓ okay. Next one. The ref makes a call and the player responds by dramatically clapping slow, sarcastic claps right in their face. Tech or nah. Absolutely. Technical foul is considered unsportsmanlike conduct.

Ambre (35:06)
Yeah.

Yeah.

tech. Yeah. Get that guy out of here. Or gal.

Teryn (35:27)
Exactly. Okay. A player celebrates a three pointer by doing the ice in my veins gesture and they chest bump a teammate. Tech or nah.

Ambre (35:36)
Mmm, warning, nah.

Teryn (35:38)
Nah, that's good vibes. ⁓ Unless it turns into taunting.

Ambre (35:40)
Yeah, yeah, okay. I didn't know there was a third

option here. thought there was just, nah. Well, warning, wasn't it, wait, was it tech or warning or, okay, okay, anyway.

Teryn (35:46)
Well, tech or nah. Nah, nah, bro. Yeah, I think tech or nah.

mean, it could turn into a warning. Yeah. If you, if, if like it's a taunting. Like, like they just like, don't know.

Ambre (35:55)
⁓ wait, what? Ice in my veins. What does that mean? Do the thing again? Do the gesture? It's like shooting

a needle in your vein? I couldn't tell what you were doing with your hand in your vein. Ice in my veins.

Teryn (36:07)
I think that's what they do. I know I got ice in my veins. Yeah, I don't know. That just means they're

they're cold. OK.

Ambre (36:16)
⁓

What's your favorite celebration? I know there's the LeBron with the chalk. All I can think about is Travis Kelce and his two-handed motion right now. And our conversation about that, about that, what did you say? Why are we using the most sensitive, a very sensitive, protected part of a body to brag about? Yeah.

Teryn (36:21)
Yeah

my gosh, the balls.

They're big. I know.

say that we're tough. Yeah, we're not, I don't

like that. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

Ambre (36:44)
Okay, ice in veins. I'm gonna remember that. I'm gonna make that gesture at you sometime at work while we're at a meeting or something. ⁓

Teryn (36:52)
all right. Since we mentioned it already before, I'm going to go what a flagrant one versus flagrant two are and how officials decide. a flagrant one foul, this is excessive.

or unnecessary contact. So it's just typically like a really hard foul with intent to stop play. Flagrant two is a hostile act. So this is severe contact typically above the shoulders or below the belt ⁓ and anything deemed unsportsmanlike. So this automatically results in player ejection. as a reminder, the groin contact can be reviewed.

and can now result in a flagrant one instead of an automatic ejection.

Ambre (37:35)
Cool, are we gonna do another quiz?

Teryn (37:36)
no, because I have just one more analogy and that is, well, how about this? I'll ask you which one you think it is. Spilling your drink on someone versus throwing it at them.

Ambre (37:40)
You

Filling your drink is like a dude you need to sober up and throwing your drink at them ejection. Get out of here.

Teryn (37:55)
Bye bye. Exactly. Exactly.

⁓ good job. You crushed it. So now you're officially armed with the rules and calls to sound like a seasoned fan. You can go forth and school your friends, family and Aaron or our listeners, school

Ambre (38:12)
There's no chance.

No chance

of me schooling my former ⁓ college basketball officiating husband. However, I will look for other victims, no doubt.

Teryn (38:17)
Basketball official.

Absolutely. Onward and good

luck as the basketball season commences.

Ambre (38:31)
That was so helpful. I actually really do feel like I want to go watch a basketball game now more than before because now I'll be like, ⁓ I get that. I understand. Honestly, the paint thing was probably my biggest question going into today's episode. Teach me about the paint.

Teryn (38:45)
Yeah, well I'm happy to help.

There's plenty more where that came from so I can come back with some more ⁓ heavily called fouls and or just calls in general and try and explain them more.

Ambre (38:57)
I love that. I'm going to be watching basketball. I'm going to be understanding lots of things and then writing down all of the other things I need you to explain in our next basketball episode.

Teryn (39:09)
Perfect, I'll be ready.

Ambre (39:13)
And now we are on to our final segment of the day, which is She's Got Game. Teryn, is this my favorite part of every episode? Yes, absolutely. And the ones that we have, She's Got Game segments. Tell me, have you heard of Hannah Hidalgo?

Teryn (39:23)
Yeah, absolutely.

Yes, that name sounds familiar. I can't point it in my brain, but yes, I have heard that name.

Ambre (39:38)
Yeah.

She is one of the most exciting new young talents in women's college basketball. She is, hey, she is a point guard for Notre Dame. She's 5'6", which makes me feel like I should have done basketball. I'm 5'6". I mean, that's like, we're like the same then. you know, I should, no, not really.

Teryn (39:46)
Hey!

Yes, okay.

I am on a good hair day.

Ambre (40:02)
Yeah, so she plays for Notre Dame. She is a junior this year and you know I love to kick things off with a little bit of resume bragging Hers is really long, but she's gonna name a couple of them She is the McDonald's all-american co-mvp a three-time USA basketball gold medalist

And finally, she's also ACC player of the year, defensive player of the year and rookie of the year. Just racking up all of the accolades in the ACC. So Hannah is from New Jersey. She comes from a really faith based family. ⁓ Her faith, her religion plays a big part in

how she, you'll find this really interesting and how she says that she prays, she leans on her faith before the game to find peace so that on the court she can also find peace. And to me, I sort of translated that into focus. So being able to sort of leave out the extraneous variables and just focus on doing a really great job.

Teryn (41:10)
And or, right, like whatever happens, it is what it is, right? Like that to me is peace. Like I can't control it beyond what I've done to prepare myself up until this point, but whatever happens, it is what it is.

Ambre (41:13)
Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I, you know, I bring this up in like every other episode, but it also sounds like be a goldfish to me. So I'm going to have peace with whatever mistakes I make, whatever mistakes my teammates make, whatever the outcome of this game is, I'm going to be able to, you know, be okay with that and then move forward. So, from New Jersey, her dad was her coach for most of her, ⁓ formative years, up through or up until high school.

Teryn (41:36)
Yeah, exactly.

Ambre (41:49)
And he was really hard on her, harder on her than any other players. I bet you know how that goes. Your dad was your coach, right? Yeah. So, you know.

Teryn (41:54)
Oh, sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was he

was not hard on me in front of other people necessarily, but did have a high expectation for me and would, you know, my dad's a very calm guy, so it was never like a loud thing. yeah.

Ambre (42:12)
Yeah. It sounds like Hannah's dad was somewhat similar. However, he was hard on her in front of everybody. So one of our teammates would make a mistake or, you know, do something and get, you know, maybe a stern look or something. Hannah did that and Hannah would get, yeah, a good solid loud talking to in front of the whole team or the whole team would have to do, you know, laps, whatever, do some drills.

Teryn (42:17)
Hahaha!

Ambre (42:38)
But she grew up competing with her brothers in the backyard. She and you can tell it gave her a competitive edge. Yes, but also gave her a certain sort of grit, which is really fun to hear her talk about growing up and how that impacted her. So transitioning from high school to college, plays for Notre Dame. It's gonna be her junior year. Point guard. So we've talked about this in our other basketball episodes. That's the leader on the court.

That is the person who brings the ball up, who needs to have nerves of steel, who needs to understand how each player is thinking and feeling and moving on a given day, on a given game. And so she talks about how being a leader in high school is different from college because there were certain tactics, certain things that she did to learn her teammates in high school and lead them. And that some of that worked and some of it didn't work in college.

she had to work a little bit harder to learn her teammates in college. lot of them were older than her, you know, except she was supposed to be this point guard. And so she talked about that being one of the biggest challenges in shifting from high school to college, which I thought was interesting and probably unique to being a point guard. She's also really, ⁓ she said, she'll talk about needing to be a dog on the court. And I listened to this interview and the interviewer said, you say that a lot. What does that mean?

Teryn (43:49)
Yeah.

Mm.

Ambre (44:00)
She talks about actually about her height, meaning that she had to work harder. There were taller point guards she was up against competing against, and they could haul off and shoot baskets from further away than she could. So she decided that her differentiator, how, mean, how do you, how can I train my kids to be this mature and self-aware as a teenager? As a teenager, she looked around.

Teryn (44:05)
Mm-hmm.

Ambre (44:27)
maybe earlier looked around and was like, you know what, I don't have the height. So here's what I can do differently. I can just be a dog on defense. So she's just like, crazy, crazy aggressive on defense. And that's one of her differentiating points and what makes her one of the best point guards in NCAA basketball right now.

Teryn (44:36)
Mm-hmm.

Your kids will figure that out because they'll be like, if I'm not the tallest one out here, how is going to someone going to notice me? Right. So I feel like everyone figures that out eventually. Like, what am I going to do to stand out? have to do something. And I was that way because I wasn't like the fastest. I also wasn't the tallest and I also wasn't the best shooter. So I had to be like, what is it that I'm going to be able to do? And that is, I'm going to outwork you when it comes to sprints and practice and all that.

Ambre (44:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I knew you were going to say that. And you know what? That's also one of the things that Hannah mentioned. She said, you know, I'm going to be a dog on defense. And she talks about, you know, what she wants her legacy to be, you know, at Notre Dame. And she says that she wants other players to look at her and A, think, wow, you know, she's 5'6 and a successful point guard. But also she wants her fellow players to look at her and say, wow, no one, absolutely no one outworks Hannah.

Hidalgo. yeah, mean the mark of and you you too, the mark of a great athlete to be able to look around and say here are my strengths, here are the strengths other people have I don't have, how can I differentiate and how can I, you know, sort of work with what I have. So anyway.

Teryn (45:59)
It was like when

we had start sprints, was like middle of the pack, but by the time we were done with sprints, I was at the front because I was just running harder. Yeah.

Ambre (46:04)
Yeah. Yep.

I love that. Her competitive mindset is very much next play next play, you know, again, I translate that to be be a goldfish. But no matter what happens on to the next, she talks about here's another she just I swear she like she must be an old soul, or just you know, like a 40 year old person in a 21 year old body. But

Teryn (46:15)
Mm-hmm.

Ambre (46:30)
She talks about her strategy when she gets nervous or frustrated and her mindset is in the game, it's selfish for her to dwell on those feelings because she has this responsibility to the rest of her team because they also have their emotions and as a point guard, she's responsible for noticing those emotions and helping those players work through them, maybe understanding, you know what?

Teryn's just not really crushing the threes today, so I'm actually gonna go with a different player for this pass, yeah. ⁓

Teryn (46:57)
True.

Ambre (47:02)
Another way that she's super mature when she talks about her social life in college, I fully expected her to be like, oh, my favorite restaurant or, you know, I'm sure she wasn't gonna talk about bars that she's frequenting. But you know what she said and said? She said that she spends a lot of time with other athletes. Yeah, makes sense. You you're in the same physical space and you're kind of going through a lot of the same experience. But she says she spends time with other athletes. And then she followed it up with.

because they all have these different strengths and talents. And down the road, she wants to know people with a lot of different areas of expertise so she can have connections and be able to further her career. Yeah, grow her career after professional basketball. ⁓ So yeah, just all in all, she seems like A, a really crazy talented player, which yes, I have lot of respect for.

Teryn (47:32)
Mmm.

Yeah, grow that network, girl.

Ambre (47:56)
probably way more respect for the fact that she just works so hard and is focused so intensely on not just the success of herself, but also the success of, yes, her team, she wants to win, but also she just cares so deeply about her teammates. So when ⁓ she's asked about what's next, where she's headed to, she's a junior this year, but she very much wants to be in the WNBA for as long as possible.

Teryn (48:21)
Hmm.

Ambre (48:23)
And like I mentioned, she wants people to look at her and say, wow, I could do that. And she also wants people to look at her and say, wow, Hannah is just such a hard worker and such an amazing teammate. So she is absolutely one to watch the season, Hannah Hidalgo of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Did get that right? Fighting Irish? Yeah. I used to have a starter jacket, Notre Dame, and it was like the

Teryn (48:45)
Yep. Yes.

Ambre (48:51)
profile of like a leprechaun with two fists up. Yeah, it was my

Teryn (48:52)
Yeah. Yep.

Ambre (48:55)
favorite jacket. I wish I would have that jacket. Anyway, Notre Dame. Hannah Dalgo, Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Keep your eye on her this season. For all these reasons and more are why we've chosen to spotlight Hannah today.

Teryn (49:00)
You

Ambre (49:11)
And that's a wrap on today's episode. Thanks for hanging out with us today. If you enjoyed the show, please take a moment to give us a five star rating and drop a quick comment, even just a couple of words. It is the single best way to support our show and help more listeners find us. Come back and join us again for more stories, highlights, and behind the scenes moments from across the world of sports. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you next week.