To the untrained eye, a game of pro basketball and a game of college basketball can appear very similar, if not pretty much the same. Flip from game to game, and you see pretty much the same thing: a standard size ball, players on the court, a 10-foot hoop and the foul line 15 feet away from the backboard. Take a closer look, though, and you’ll start to see differences in college and professional play.
In the NBA, the game is played in four 12-minute quarter periods. The NCAA, in contrast, plays two 20-minute halves. While they play for different lengths of time, they do share an overtime period of five minutes.
The clock differs in the games as well, with a 24-second shot clock in the NBA, and a 35 second shot clock in the NCAA. For this reason, scoring in NCAA games can differ greatly from game to game as well as from team to team. Teams who employ a strong defense strategy with respect to the shot clock end up with games that score in the 50 to 60 point range. Teams that opt for an aggressive offense strategy end up with scores in the 80 to 100 range, not unlike scores posted in the NBA.
NCAA teams have 10 seconds in order to get the ball half-court after a basket; NBA teams are limited to just 8 seconds.
The court is the same size in both organizations (94 feet long by 50 feet wide), basket height, backboard distance and the foul line are all the same, as well. Look closer, though, when college and pro teams take a 3-point shot. In the NBA, a 3-point shot is taken from a distance of 23’9” (22” in the corners) and the NCAA has a 3-point shot always from a distance of 19’9”. NBA lane width is 16 feet and collegiate players’ lane is 12 feet.
There are yet more differences between pro and collegiate basketball; this discussion contains some of the basic differences in how the clock is handled as well as differences in 3-point shot differences. The differences discussed in this article are just the start; continue to read and research to learn even more about how basketball is played at the collegiate and professional levels. Knowing the differences between how the game is played at the professional level and at the college level can help you have a better understanding of what is going on at any given time during a game.
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