For two decades now, the shot from 19 feet, 9 inches has been college basketball’s most guilty little pleasure. Members of the NCAA rules committee looked at each other like giddy schoolgirls after giving the 3-point shot the go-ahead back on April 2, 1986, two days after Louisville’s Doctors of Dunk won the national title. The shot designed to bring the little man back into the game has been friendly to players of all sizes, from 5-foot-3 Muggsy Bogues to 6-11 Kevin Pittsnogle. When Virginia Military Institute coach Duggar Baucum announced a few practices into this season his plan to wage an assault on the line that will shatter several Division I 3-point-shooting records, the reaction was predictable.

“I just laughed,” said Reggie Williams, whose 26.5 ppg ranks among the top-five scorers nationally.

The 3-pointer has that sort of affect on people. Even the purists who dislike where the shot has led colleges – “We have destroyed the mid-range game,” said Gonzaga assistant and longtime rules researcher Jerry Krause. “It’s all dunks and threes.” – or the many who oppose its distance –“A seventh-grade girl,” said ex-Louisville coach Denny Crum, “shoots the same shot that the college men shoot.” – have cracked a smile at the sight of a Chris Lofton, a J.J. Redick or a Steve Alford heating up.

This is the 20th anniversary of the 3-pointer – rather than the 19th – because of Gary Colson.

“I’m a little crazy, OK?” conceded the former New Mexico coach.

The 12-member NCAA rules committee had been studying the shot for years. Among them were Krause, the chairman who was then the head coach at Eastern Washington; longtime rules committee secretary Ed Steitz; Missouri coach Norm Stewart; Gerald Myers, the former Texas Tech coach who now serves as the school’s athletic director; and LeMoyne College coach and athletic director Tom Niland, whose nephew, John Beilein, would benefit greatly from the rule some 18 years later.

They were serious men who took a no-nonsense approach to their duties as rules-makers. Many entered their terms determined to influence a number of rules changes but listened to the debates and became more conservative in their approach. The delicate balance of the game was at stake, and that was not to be taken lightly.

There was some feeling in 1986 that big men had taken over the game. Scoring was down as opponents packed in zones that resembled scrums within the lane.

“It was nasty down there,” Stewart said. “You didn’t go in there unless you had hair on your body and a deep voice.”

Twenty conferences had experimented with the 3-pointer. The Southern Conference was the first, adopting in 1980-81 a 3-point shot from 22 feet, which proved too long. Teams made only 31.3 percent of those shots. The ACC went through a trial season in 1982-83 with a line from 17-9, which was way too close for sharp-shooters such as NC State’s Terry Gannon and Derrick Whittenburg – who would go on to win the national title without the shot – and Georgia Tech’s Mark Price. ACC teams combined to make 42.7 percent of those shots.

Of little use, presumably, were the results from the very first college game that included a 3-point shot (and 2-point free throw) from beyond 21 feet, a 1945 contest between Fordham and Columbia pushed forward by Oregon coach and rules committee member Howard Hobson. The two teams combined to make 20 3-pointers and eight “long” free throws. All set shots, no doubt.
In 1986, the committee studied the data from the conference experiments, considered endorsements from the Big Sky and the old PCAA and pondered a 64-percent disapproval rating by coaches polled on the prospect of adding the shot. The committee weighed the value of a 3-point shot from the varying distances. The rule, gaining momentum from within the committee, appeared to be a year away from being approved.

And then along came crazy Colson.

Colson, now an assistant to Memphis Grizzlies president Jerry West, was one of three coaches in their first year on the committee. He remembers being counseled by veteran committee members to bide his time and not push a 3-point agenda. Yet, as Colson listened to the discussion, he decided to call for a straw vote. He was startled to see how close it was. He called for a recess and, along with Stewart, began lobbying the more reluctant members such as Krause, who thought more data was needed, and Myers. When they returned to the room, Colson called for the vote.

“Boom, it’s in,” Stewart said. “Dr. Steitz damn near passed out. I thought he was going to fall over dead right there.

“When we left the room, somebody said, ‘Do you know we just changed the game of basketball?’”

Not everyone was happy about that. Colson remembers being cornered by Don Haskins.

Coaches from the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference voted 6-2 in December 1986 to discontinue the shot immediately. Villanova’s Rollie Massimino, two years from winning a national title, led Philadelphia’s Big 5 coaches in a midseason campaign to abolish the shot by season’s end.

“It’s ridiculous,” Massimino said at the time. “It has changed the game mentally and physically.

“If we write every coach and say, ‘I need a response by next week,’ it can easily be changed.”
And yet, here it is. Still.

Today’s players have never experienced a game without it.

“I actually saw a game, flipping through channels, on ESPN Classic, without a 3-point line,” Clemson guard Vernon Hamilton said. “It was so foreign to me.  I couldn’t imagine playing right now without it. I knew that they didn’t have the line before, but I can’t imagine the game without it.”

That first season, opinions on the shot often fell along the lines of who had a shooter and who didn’t. Crum remembers being left short-handed because his best shooters, Jeff Hall and Milt Wagner, had graduated, and incoming freshman Allen Houston had been released from his letter of intent when his father, Wade, got the Tennessee job.

“I wish it would have come a couple years earlier, when we had Scott Skiles,” said Michigan State coach Tom Izzo. “He would have scored a million.”

But the truth is, most coaches wouldn’t have known what to do with a shooter if they had one. At least not like they do today. In particular, they didn’t know how to defend the shot, which is why the overall shooting percentage of 38.4 that season remains the best in the game’s history.

Two of the coaches to reach the 1987 Final Four were among the first to understand the shot’s value.

Rick Pitino had spent three seasons as a New York Knicks assistant before becoming head coach at Providence in 1985. He had figured out both how to set up the 3-point shot and how to defend it. The Friars’ trio of outstanding shooters – Delray Brooks, Ernie “Pops” Lewis and current Florida coach Billy Donovan – would lead the nation by making 8.4 3-pointers per game.  Yet, at that time, the notion that Providence might take as many as 30 3-pointers in a game almost seemed scandalous.

The difference in philosophies between Pitino and the rest of the world was profound during the Friars’ first six Big East games that season. Five of the first six teams they faced didn’t make a single 3-pointer – unfathomable in today’s game. The Friars were 49-for-109 over those six games, their opponents 3-for-35.

“I think today, if you saw that one team made 10 3-pointers and the other made none, you’d say that was the reason the team lost the game,” Donovan said. “Back then, it was, ‘Providence can’t continue to live like that. You can’t live and die with that shot.’

“We weren’t living and dying with the 3-point shot. We were taking good shots and understanding the importance of defending the shot. That’s where coach Pitino was maybe so far ahead of his time when the rule came into play.”

Bob Knight has never been a fan of the shot, yet his teams led the nation in 3-point shooting percentage in three of his seasons at Indiana and still annually rank among the leaders at Texas Tech. He reportedly got after Steitz during that first season with the shot – Alford’s senior season – though the Hoosiers would shoot an NCAA record 50.8 percent that holds up today. After Alford went an amazing 7 for 10 from the distance during Indiana’s NCAA championship game victory over Syracuse, a smiling Knight pointed a finger at Steitz and said, “Are you happy now?”

Fans were generally delighted. The shot led to indelible memories of Paul Westhead’s high-scoring teams at Loyola Marymount, Georgia Tech’s Lethal Weapon 3, Redick, the phenomenon of getting Pittsnogled  and Gerry McNamara’s legendary shooting heroics as a freshman in the NCAA Tournament and as a senior in the Big East tournament.

Yet, a list of the NCAA’s 3-point leaders was rarely much of a predictor for post-season success, probably because it was more often adopted by the underdog looking for an edge than more talented teams that could win by out-shooting and out-rebounding opponents. Ben Howland’s motto was “recruit to shoot” while he was at Northern Arizona – and the Lumberjacks were NCAA leaders in 3-point shooting percentage for three consecutive seasons – but his teams at Pitt and UCLA have relied much less on the shot.

The 3-point shooter is typically a cerebral athlete, if the number of good shooters who became coaches is any indication. There’s Donovan, coach of the defending national champions, and Alford at Iowa and Whittenburg at Fordham. First-year Washington State coach Tony Bennett, who led the Cougars to an improbable Top 25 appearance in January, set a Division I career record by shooting 49.7 percent while playing for his father at Wisconsin-Green Bay from 1988-92. Andy Kennedy, the first-year coach at Ole Miss, made 122 3-pointers during his sophomore season at UAB, finishing fourth nationally in 1989. Under Jim Les, who led the NBA in 3-point shooting during the 1990-91 season, alma-mater Bradley is among Division I leaders in 3-point percentage.

The grumbling gradually became limited mostly to the shot’s short distance. Still, more than a few are irked that college drinking games could revolve around the number of times a college play begins with the center screening the point guard’s defender, leading to a drive, a dish and a 3-point attempt.

“It used to be an inside-out game first,” LSU coach John Brady said. “Now, I see teams penetrate, kick and fire a three. Then they’ll penetrate, penetrate again and shoot another three.”

Even Alford, who loved the shot during his short term with it as a player, finds himself frustrated by it as a coach.

“It kind of drives you crazy,” Alford said. “You do what you’re supposed to do to win a game. You work hard for 35 minutes. And all of a sudden, a missed bonus free throw and two consecutive threes, and all of a sudden, it’s a game.”

Exactly, says Whittenburg, who considers the comebacks from a glass half-full point of view.

“Now, a 20-point lead is nothing,” Whittenburg said. “It used to be that if you were down by 20, it was impossible to come back. Now if you hit three straight 3-pointers, a 20-point lead can shrink to 11 in a matter of minutes.”

To some degree, much of the debate on merits of the 3-point shot might divide along age lines.

“When you get a bunch of guys, maybe 50 or older, all they talk about is how kids don’t shoot the ball like they used to,” said Bowling Green coach Dan Dakich, a Knight disciple who’s 44. “I think that’s complete garbage. I think today, because of the 3-pointer, kids are better shooters than they’ve ever been in the history of basketball.”

And there always will be more really good shooters than there are good athletes who can shoot a little, which in part explains an Xtreme Games version of the old Loyola Marymount offense that has been run by a trio of Division III schools over the past decade and is being adopted this season by VMI.

Baucum turned to a system that strives to attempt 50 3-pointers per game after discovering as practices began that his center and point guard were suspended for the season for violating the school’s code of conduct. The Keydets also were down to four legitimate veteran players, none of them a post player. Baucum gathered his assistants to contemplate their next move.

“Shoot, if we’re going to give these kids a fighting chance, let’s do something different,” Baucum said. “And if we’re going to be different, let’s be dramatically different.”

They moved to a system in which 3-pointers are just one element among many that include traps and presses over 94 feet and 40 minutes and five-player substitutions every two minutes that resemble hockey line changes.

Though the Keydets got off to a modest 7-11 start, the record included a rare win over the Atlantic 10’s Richmond. And what will remain forever unknown is how they would have done without their drastic makeover.

And Baucum had to make this conversion without a group of natural 3-pointers. They began by spending anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour on the shot each practice.

And while they were still shooting slightly better than last season – at 31.9 percent – that average was dragged down by a group of reserves who got caught up in the fun and were shooting a combined 16.4 percent from the distance. Without those attempts, the Keydets would be shooting the 35.0 percent that Baucum has set as a team goal. The Holmes twins shot an identical 34.2 percent last season. This season, Chavis is shooting 41.9 percent, Travis 34.0 percent.

The Keydets made just 31.4 percent of their 524 3-point shots last season, attempting 200 fewer than their opponents. They passed that figure by their 12th game this season. By their 16th game, they broke the Big South Conference season record. They will shatter NCAA records for both 3-point attempts (they average 45.2 per game; the record is 34.0) and baskets (they average 14.4; the record is 11.7). Three Keydets rank among the NCAA’s most prolific shot-takers.

“I heard my assistant on the phone the other day with a 6-6 kid who can really shoot it,” Baucum said. “And he said, ‘Sean, what would you say if I told you that our goal was to shoot 50 threes a game and that you’re going to shoot 15 of them? And that the only time coach is going to yell at you is if you don’t shoot it?’”

Like Reggie Williams, the recruit just laughed.

The Keydets are being watched with particular fascination by three Division III coaches who manage to make Baucum’s efforts seem conservative. For the first eight years after the 3-point shot was put in place, the number of shots made by the leaders at the D-III level were roughly parallel to those in Divisions I and II. Then Grinnell latched onto the 3-pointer in 1994 and held on tight, leading Division III in shots made for the next 10 seasons, cracking the 20-basket mark in 2002. Redlands, which broke Grinnell’s record by making 23.8 3-pointers per game in 2005, leads the D-III ranks for the fourth season in a row. Emory & Henry ranks behind Redlands and Grinnell for the second straight season.

Steitz’s heart would have been tested by these three.

Emory & Henry took 97 3-pointers in a game. Redlands took 106. Grinnell made just eight of 80 in a game and didn’t hear a peep of criticism from its fans or the media.

“Nobody cared,” coach Dave Arsenault said. ”I tell my guys, ‘Look at the stat line. How many did we want from you? Twenty-five? How many did you get? Twenty-five? Good job. Who cares how many go in?’

“We’re much more comfortable taking an open 3-point shot than we are a contested layup.”

After Grinnell ran its high-scoring offense a few years, a couple of its math students studied its results over four years for extra credit and came up for a formula for success – they win 95 percent of the games in which they meet a five-goal plan that includes taking at least 46 3-pointers each game – that Arsenault continues to tweak and that coaches such as Baucum continue to follow. The students’ input is just one of the benefits of coaching at a top-rated, private liberal arts institution such as Grinnell.

“I’m quite sure it would have taken me another 25 years to figure it out on my own,” Arsenault said.

These Division III coaches run this system largely because at this level, it’s much easier to recruit a modest athlete who can shoot than even the great athlete who can’t shoot it a lick.

These coaches also run it because they can.

“People ask why I did this,” Redlands’ Gary Smith said. “Among the reasons would be the fact that I had tenure when I started it.”

The group is mixed on whether their style can succeed at the Division I level. Absolutely, says Arsenault, particularly in a high-altitude setting that would wear down opponents. Smith, too, would love to give it a try. Emory & Henry’s Bob Johnson now has his doubts because opponents could catch their breath during those long TV timeouts that do not exist at the Division III level.

Another concern is that the easy baskets allowed by risk-taking defenses would be compounded by Division I’s greater finishers. And, not the least of it, even the Division I coach who succeeds using this system will be subjected to the purists’ cries of heresy.

“The risks of those guys losing their jobs because they appear foolish is much greater,” Johnson said. “The risk of me appearing foolish is every bit as high for me as it is for them, but I’m probably not going to get fired.”

That’s why they’re all rooting for Baucum and his Keydets.

“They’re taking the plunge,” Smith said admiringly. “It takes a lot of guts – a lot of courage – for a Division I coach to try this.”

If it doesn’t work out at VMI, 3-pointers will continue to be launched at a staggering rate at three Division III schools.

“That line is still magical,” Arsenault said. “I make all of our drills end with a 3-point shot, because it still amazes me how, we know they’ll hurry to get there. It really is a magical line for us.”

While VMI, Grinnell, Redlands and Emory & Henry probably weren’t what the current NCAA rules committee had in mind back in 1986, they will be part of the equation when the committee meets again this spring to finally determine what the length of the college 3-point shot should be.

“I think in this May meeting, one way or another, something will happen,” said rules committee secretary Ed Bilik. “Either we leave the line the way it is, or we move it.”

The committee likely will move the line either to the international distance of 20-6 or a foot back to 20-9 to cries of “It’s about time.” Recent polls have shown that about two-thirds of coaches approve of a longer shot.

“The distance has been questioned, probably, from Day One,” said committee chairman Larry Keating, an associate athletic director at Kansas.

“It has always been too short,” Pitino said. “The rationale for not moving it back, I think, has been ludicrous. I just don’t understand it when they say, ‘The game is great.’ The game is great, but it’s not because of the distance of the 3-point line.”

But before making any decision, the committee must make sense of some confusing data.

Though the number of 3-point shots has increased almost annually – doubling from a 9.2 game average per team in 1986-87 to 18.4 last season – the average score is gradually declining. The average score dipped into the 60s – the red-alert level when the committee first adopted the 3-pointer – last season for the third consecutive year. How would making the 3-pointer more difficult improve scoring? And Bilik said that 134 games’ worth of data from exempt games that experimented with a line from 20-6 showed negligible changes in shooting percentages or the number of shots taken from 19-9.

According to Ken Pomeroy’s web site (kenpom.com), 3-point percentages over 169 exempt games in 2004 (which also included the trapezoid lane) were only slightly lower (33.7) from 20-6 than from 19-9 (34.8). The same was true of the number of 3-pointers taken in games using the 20-6 line (31.7) as those from 19-9 (32.8). And scoring went down – 133.9 for the two teams in exempt games vs. 137.1 in non-exempt games. The numbers were similar over 115 exempt games in 2005. Three-point percentages were nearly identical – 33.8 percent for exempt games, 33.9 for non-exempt games. The number of shots taken was also similar – 31.5 for exempt games, 32.1 for non-exempt. And scoring for exempt games was significantly less (132.4) than for non-exempt games (137.7).

“It makes you wonder,” Bilik said. “But that may be because as you move the line back, coaches are more selective about who will shoot the shot.”

Also, fewer players toe the line while taking the shot these days. Nine inches or a foot might make little difference to them.

The rules committee has addressed the distance of the 3-point shot on numerous occasions over the past two decades and even pulled the trigger to adopt the international line and the trapezoid lane (also used in international play) for the 2003-04 season, only to push the changes to the 2004-05 season and then scrap them entirely. The committee is no longer packaging both line and lane – this year’s questionnaires will ask about them separately – and could change one without the other. While there also is potential sentiment for widening the lane – either to the trapezoid or the wider NBA lane – it is not as great as it is for a deeper 3-point line. Fears about furthering the decline of post play are weighed against resurfacing concerns again about congestion within the lane. Though the 3-point shot has extended defenses, the painted lane remains a place only for those with deep voices and hairy chests because today’s players are stronger than they were 20 years ago.

The men probably won’t commit to the international line just for the sake of conformity, Keating said, because there is talk that the international game could move to the NBA’s distance of 23-9.

The women’s game has committed to 19-9 for the next five seasons, leaving the next move up to the men. A change might raise some cosmetic concerns over the need for a second line on most courts, though Keating said a possible answer to that problem could be a nine-inch or one-foot line. The women would shoot from the front of the line, the men to the back.

The committee – absent another crazy Colson – again will take its decision seriously, no doubt.

This is no laughing matter, though the 3-point seems to have had that affect on folks for the past two decades, going on three.