2019–20 NCAA Division I men's basketball season

On June 5, 2019, the NCAA announced that its Playing Rules Oversight Panel had approved a suite of rules changes that its Men's Basketball Rules Committee had recommended the previous month. These changes took effect in 2019–20 for all NCAA divisions, with one exception.[2][3]

• The three-point line was moved from its prior distance of 20 feet 9 inches (6.32 m) from the center of the basket to the FIBA standard of 6.75 meters (22 ft 2 in). The NCAA published diagrams on June 17, 2019 reflecting the new three-point line, including its distance from the sidelines near the corners of the court. In the corners, the three-point line is exactly 40 ¹⁄₈ inches (102 cm) from the sidelines, resulting in the shortest three-point distance being essentially identical to the FIBA standard of 6.6 meters (21 ft 8 in).[4] This change took immediate effect in Division I, but was delayed to 2020–21 for Divisions II and III.
• On offensive rebounds in the frontcourt, the shot clock is now reset to 20 seconds instead of the full 30.
• Any derogatory on-court comments regarding a player's race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability result in a flagrant-2 technical foul and automatic ejection.
• Two new rules apply during the last two minutes of regulation and the last two minutes of any overtime period:
  • Coaches are allowed to call live-ball timeouts. Previously, coaches were prohibited from calling live-ball timeouts at any time.
  • The list of calls that can be reviewed via instant replay expanded to include basket interference and goaltending.

• May 9, 2019 – The NCAA announced its Academic Progress Rate (APR) sanctions for the 2019–20 school year. A total of nine programs in eight sports were declared ineligible for postseason play due to failure to meet the required APR benchmark, including the following Division I men's basketball team:
  • Detroit Mercy
• June 3, 2019 – The Sun Belt Conference, which a year earlier had announced a series of radical changes in its men's basketball scheduling format that would have taken effect with the 2019–20 season,[5] announced that it had placed those changes on hold. The Sun Belt will proceed with one element of the plan, namely an expansion of the conference schedule to 20 games. In its announcement, the conference noted that the original plan had been based on data related to the RPI, an NCAA tournament selection metric that had been replaced by the significantly different NET effective with the 2019 tournament.[6]
• June 18 – The ASUN Conference officially announced that Bellarmine University, currently a member of the NCAA Division II Great Lakes Valley Conference, would move to Division I and join the ASUN effective with the 2020–21 school year.[7]
• June 20 – The Summit League announced that the University of Missouri–Kansas City would return to the conference on July 1, 2020 after seven years in the Western Athletic Conference.[8]
• June 21 – The Boston-area sports news website Digital Sports Desk reported that the University of Connecticut (UConn) was expected to announce by the end of the month that it would leave the American Athletic Conference to rejoin many of its former conference mates in the Big East Conference in 2020.[9] The story was picked up by multiple national media outlets the next day.[10][11]
• June 27 – The Big East and UConn jointly announced that the school would join the Big East; though the official announcements did not specify a time, it was expected that the Huskies would become members in 2020.[12]
• July 15 – Binghamton rising sophomore forward Calistus Anyichie drowned in an incident at Buttermilk Falls State Park near Ithaca, New York. The incident was being investigated as an accident.[13]
• July 26 – Multiple media reports indicated that UConn and The American had reached a buyout agreement that will lead to UConn joining the Big East in July 2020. The exit fee was reportedly $17 million.[14]
• August 5
  • The NCAA issued a set of rules that outlined new certification requirements for agents who sought to represent college underclassmen who declare themselves eligible for the NBA draft but wish to maintain college eligibility while evaluating their draft prospects. The new requirements were that the agents hold a bachelor's degree; have been certified by the NBA players' union, the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA), for at least three years; hold professional liability insurance; and pass an in-person exam administered each November at the NCAA headquarters in Indianapolis. The bachelor's degree requirement was immediately dubbed the "Rich Paul Rule", as it was widely viewed as preventing Paul, who represents LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Ben Simmons, and Draymond Green, among others, from representing underclassmen because he does not have a bachelor's degree.[15]
  • The Horizon League announced that Purdue University Fort Wayne would leave the Summit League to join the Horizon League in July 2020.[16]
• August 12 – After widespread criticism by media and NBA players, the NCAA amended the so-called "Rich Paul Rule" regarding agent certification. Agents such as Paul who do not hold bachelor's degrees but meet all other NCAA requirements will be allowed to represent underclassmen if they are in good standing with the NBPA.[17]
• September 30
  • California governor Gavin Newsom signed the Fair Pay to Play Act into law, which upon taking effect in 2023 will prohibit public colleges and universities in the state from punishing their athletes for earning endorsement income. The bill places the state in direct conflict with the NCAA's current business model, which prohibits college athletes from receiving such income. At the time the bill was signed, several other states were proposing similar laws.[18]
  • A group of Louisville Cardinals players who were not involved in the NCAA rules violations that caused the team to be stripped of its 2013 national title and 2012 Final Four appearance reached a confidential settlement of a lawsuit against the NCAA. One portion of the settlement was authorized to be revealed—while Louisville's team records remained vacated, all honors and statistics for these players were restored. Most notably, Luke Hancock, who was a plaintiff in the suit, was once again officially recognized as the Most Outstanding Player of the 2013 Final Four.[19]
  • Officials at Tarleton State University, current members of the Division II Lone Star Conference, announced that the school had accepted an invitation to join the Western Athletic Conference. Full details, including the joining date, were expected to be revealed in the following days, but were delayed by more than a month.[20]
• October 4 – Officials at the University of St. Thomas, a Minnesota school that will be expelled from its longtime athletic home of the NCAA Division III Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) in 2021, announced that the school had received an invitation to join the Summit League upon its MIAC departure. In order for St. Thomas to directly transition to the Summit, it must receive a waiver of an NCAA rule stating that Division III schools can only transition to Division II.[21]
• October 22 – The Associated Press preseason All-American team was released. Michigan State guard Cassius Winston was the lone unanimous selection (65 votes). Joining him on the team were Marquette guard Markus Howard (57 votes), Louisville forward Jordan Nwora (47), Seton Hall guard Myles Powell (46), and Memphis center James Wiseman (32).[22]
• October 29 – The NCAA board of governors voted unanimously to begin the process of changing institutional rules so that college athletes can profit from their names, images, and likenesses, while still maintaining a distinction between college and professional sports. The proposal calls for each of the three NCAA divisions to draft new rules consistent with this mandate, with a target date of January 2021.[23]
• November 8 – The NCAA ruled incoming Memphis freshman star and preseason All-American James Wiseman ineligible because his family had received moving expenses from current head coach Penny Hardaway in 2017, a year before Hardaway was hired by the school. Despite his not having been employed by Memphis at the time, the NCAA considered Hardaway to be a Memphis booster because the former NBA star had donated large amounts to the school's athletic program more than a decade earlier. Memphis and Wiseman received an injunction to halt the NCAA's ruling from a local judge, and Wiseman played in the Tigers' season opener later that day.[24]
• November 12 – The Western Athletic Conference officially announced Tarleton State's entry into the league effective July 1, 2020.[25]
• November 14 – In the next major development in the Wiseman story, he dropped his lawsuit against the NCAA, and Memphis declared him ineligible and withdrew him from play. The school also announced it would seek reinstatement from the NCAA.[26]
• January 21 – The Kansas State–Kansas game was marred by a bench-clearing brawl. In the final seconds of a game that Kansas would win 81–60, State's DaJuan Gordon went up for a layup that was blocked by Kansas' Silvio De Sousa. After the block, De Sousa stood over Gordon, leading to an altercation that escalated into a bench-clearing melee. During the brawl, De Sousa and several other players threw punches, and De Sousa held a chair above his head until it was taken from him by a Kansas assistant. Kansas did not wait for the Big 12 Conference to take action, announcing the next day that De Sousa would be suspended indefinitely, pending the Big 12 review of the incident.[27]
• January 22 – The Big 12 issued suspensions for four players involved in the previous night's Kansas State–Kansas brawl. De Sousa drew the longest suspension at 12 games. Kansas teammate David McCormack was suspended for 2 games, while Kansas State's James Love and Antonio Gordon were respectively banned for 8 and 3 games.[28]
• February 7 – The Big South Conference officially announced that North Carolina A&T State University would leave its longtime home of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference for the Big South effective with the 2021–22 school year.[29]
• February 18 – The NCAA announced that it was considering a proposal that would allow student-athletes in all sports a one-time waiver to transfer to a new school without having to sit out a season. This would place all NCAA sports under the same transfer rules; currently, first-time transfers are only required to sit out a season in baseball, men's and women's basketball, football, and men's ice hockey. The existing criteria for the waiver would be extended to these five sports—namely, a player must receive a transfer release from his or her previous school, leave that school academically eligible, maintain academic progress at the new school, and not be under any disciplinary suspension.[30]
• Responses to the COVID-19 pandemic:
  • March 9
    • The Associated Press released, what would be their final, top 25 of NCAAM Division I Basketball poll. It featured Kansas, Gonzaga, Dayton, Florida State, and Baylor in the top 5 respectfully.
  • March 10
    • The Big West Conference announced that its men's and women's conference tournaments, with women's play starting on March 10 at Walter Pyramid at California State University, Long Beach and men's play starting on March 12 at the Honda Center in Anaheim, California, would be closed to spectators.[31]
    • The Ivy League canceled its 2020 men's and women's conference tournaments, both originally scheduled for March 14 and 15 at the Lavietes Pavilion on the campus of Harvard University. Regular-season champion Yale was named the Ivy League's automatic qualifier for the NCAA Men's Tournament.[32]
    • The Mid-American Conference did not initially cancel its men's and women's tournaments, which had begun on March 9 with first-round games at campus sites, but announced that the remainder of both tournaments, to be held at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland from March 11–14, would be held under what it called a "restricted attendance policy". The only individuals allowed to attend games will be credentialed institutional personnel, credentialed media and broadcast crews, team party members, and family members of players.[33] The conference would later cancel its tournament on March 12 (see below).
  • March 11
    • The NCAA announced that both the men's and women's entire NCAA Tournaments would be conducted with "only essential staff and limited family attendance"[34]
    • The Gazelle Group, organizer of the College Basketball Invitational, canceled the 2020 CBI. The company stated that it intends to resume the event in 2021.[35]
  • March 12
    • All Division I conference tournaments that had yet to be completed were canceled, even those in progress.[36]
    • Some schools—most notably Duke and Kansas—suspended all athletic travel indefinitely. Both the Blue Devils and the presumptive top overall seed Jayhawks had been expected to decline NCAA tournament bids before the cancellation of the tournament.[36]
    • The NCAA announced that all remaining winter and spring championships would be canceled for both men's and women's sports in all divisions.[37] It is the first cancellation in the history of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament.[37]
  • March 13
    • The Florida Senate passed a resolution declaring Florida State national champions for the 2019–2020 season. The resolution, introduced by Republican Joe Gruters, passed by a vote of 37–2.[38]

Two schools joined new conferences for the 2019–20 season. Both moved between Division I and Division II, with one joining Division I and the other leaving Division I.

In addition, two existing Division I teams assumed new athletic identities.

After the 2018–19 school year, Long Island University (LIU) merged the athletic programs of its two main campuses—the Division I LIU Brooklyn Blackbirds and Division II LIU Post Pioneers—into a single program that now plays as the LIU Sharks.[69] The Sharks inherited the Division I and Northeast Conference memberships of the Brooklyn campus, with some sports to be based in Brooklyn and others at the Post campus in Brookville, New York. Specific to basketball, LIU announced that the unified men's and women's teams in that sport would be based in Brooklyn.

On July 1, 2019, the University of Missouri–Kansas City (UMKC) announced that its athletic program, formerly known as the UMKC Kangaroos, would officially become the Kansas City Roos, with "Roos" having long been used as a short form of the former "Kangaroos" nickname.[70]