That may or may not be of any significance for the upcoming college basketball season.

It goes without saying that the block/charge call is one of the toughest calls in basketball. For the most part, unless the action is blatant you can bet that the reaction by viewers regarding the legitimacy of the call almost entirely depends on whether the call goes for or against your team.

The NCAA announced an intent to change the way the block/charge would be called over a month ago, and yesterday the rule — along with some others — were made official.

The implementation of a charge circle was supposed to help offenses by not allowing defenders to camp underneath the rim, but it just ended up being a crutch for officials, who were forced to look at multiple things (foot placement and defensive positioning) at once, and ended up calling a lot of charges that should have been blocking fouls simply because the defender was outside the circle.

The change in the rule, which will require a defender to be established in legal defensive position prior to the offensive player beginning to raise the ball to initiate a shot attempt (rather than when he leaves the floor) should help shift that balance, and won’t reward defenses for last-second slide-ins after primary defenders are beaten off the dribble. It will be interesting to see what impact that will have on teams that teach and use help defense in that way.

This move favors offense over defense. Obviously. Will there be gaming of the system by some players who will try to go to the hoop with the ball already in a raised position to sell the call (and will some coaches try to teach this)? Yes. You can bet on that. But I still think this is a good rule change — once officials get used to making the call.

Teams like Duke, that teach flopping to artistic levels will have to adjust. For Pitt, this won’t be a big impact change. Pitt’s defense — while using help defense — doesn’t attempt to slide in and draw charges for the most part (I’d say J.J. Moore was about the only exception on last year’s squad).

Coaches like Tom Izzo favored this change because it should cut down on flopping. A Tom Izzo team focuses hard on defense, but like Pitt uses a man-to-man, with help primarily. But does not try to slide-in for charges.

There are some other rule changes that may or may not actually bring about changes to the game. The most obvious will be extended use of replay.

During the last two minutes of regulation and overtime, officials can now review shot clock violations as well as who caused the ball to go out of bounds on a deflection involving two or more players.

If officials are not sure if a basket was a 2- or 3-pointer, they can signal to the scorer’s table to review it on the next media timeout (something the Big Ten did during conference play last season). In the last four minutes of the game and during overtime, officials will check the monitor immediately to determine how many points to award for the field goal.

Officials can also use monitors to determine which player committed a foul after a call has been made. Previously, they could also look at who the free-throw shooter should be.

In addition, officials can use monitors to analyze elbow contact above the shoulders, determining if it is flagrant 2, flagrant 1 or “no call.” This change will likely please coaches who felt that the original rule caused too many flagrant foul calls to be called when the actions were inadvertent.

A mixed blessing to be sure. You want the calls to be correct as much as possible, but the expansion of instant replay — especially late in games — have the potential to turn exciting finishes to excruciating slogs.

The elbow review is probably a good idea, but it will still be a struggle for some officials in the interpretation. The rule was implemented originally with good intentions. Trying to protect players from head injuries from getting clocked by wildly swinging elbows as players recklessly — and occasionally viciously — would attempt to clear space.

The problem is that the rule as implemented actually encouraged defensive players to put themselves at risk to game the rule. They would slide in even tighter on defense trying to draw the elbow contact when a player had the ball and tried to make any move — as many might recall happened to Lamar Patterson in the opening round loss to Wichita State in the NCAA Tournament. The officials had no discretion beyond calling it a flagrant one or two.

Now they will have the discretion to waive off any call. But it will be after another stoppage for video review, and should be a lot of “fun” when they subjectively get the call wrong.

Here are the other changes. Or more practically points of emphasis for officials for the coming year.

Here are the fouls the committee stressed that officials make:

• When a defensive player keeps a hand or forearm on an opponent;
• When a defensive player puts two hands on an opponent;
• When a defensive player continually jabs by extending his arm(s) and placing a hand or forearm on the opponent;
• When a player uses an arm bar to impede the progress of an opponent.

All good things as far as I’m concerned — both for Pitt and as a college basketball fan, generally. That is assuming the officials actually call them throughout the year. Teams like VCU and Louisville that rely so heavily on pressing defenses tend to try and push the limits on these sort of activities. If you watched VCU in the A10 Tournament at all, you saw them engaging in more and more of this later in the games as the officials simply got tired of calling it all the time.

That’s the problem. Officials get tired of having to make these calls. Of disrupting the flow of the game — and getting criticized by fans and media for doing so — which leads to letting more and more go in the course of a game. Over the course of the year. And then by the time March rolls around there seems to be little difference in the officiating from the previous year.

Here’s to hoping the changes stick.