BRIDGEPORT - In its third year of existence, the Mountain East Conference has maintained the reputation in men's basketball as a fast, wide-open, offense-friendly league. It's a reputation bolstered when the MEC's bell cow, West Liberty, either flirts with or eclipses 100 points per game with regularity.
So what could happen when the NCAA enacts new rules in men's basketball designed to ratchet up the pace even faster and create even more offensive opportunities? Is "wider open" possible?
Some MEC coaches believe it is. Others are skeptical. And even others, who pride themselves on their defense, are trying to figure out how those new rules will affect their ability to play the way they're accustomed.
The NCAA decided this year to implement rules that it felt would restore balance between offense and defense in college basketball. This, after scoring in Division I fell to a near-historic low of 67.6 points per game in the 2014-15 season. Among them:
n The shot clock would be cut from 35 seconds to 30 seconds, and the 10-second backcourt count would not reset if a defender knocks a ball out of bounds, the offense retains possession on a held ball or a technical foul is called on the offense while the ball is still in the backcourt.
n The restricted area under the basket - the semicircle that is the boundary between a blocking call and a charge call - has been moved from 3 feet to 4 feet away from the hoop.
n Hand-checking and body-bumping on defense will be called a lot tighter.
Those rules would force teams to get the ball up the court quicker, but would also allow them greater freedom of movement and a clearer driving lane to the basket.
"I think it'll be a more exciting brand of basketball," MEC director of officials Mike Eades said. "I think it's pretty exciting [in the MEC] now, but I think it will make it an even better and more fan-friendly-type game, where guys are flowing and moving."
Scoring isn't a problem in the MEC. All but two of the league's 12 teams averaged at least 74.6 points per game last season, led by West Liberty's 100.5. By comparison, in the 18-team Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference, which includes teams like East Stroudsburg, Gannon and Clarion, 13 teams averaged fewer than 74.6 points per game in 2014-15.
Much of the talk at the MEC men's basketball media day was of the change in how officials will call defensive fouls. It wouldn't just be a matter of on-ball defense, but off the ball as well. Officials will keep an eye on screening and making sure cutters have the ability to get to where they're going.
All of that should let MEC teams do more of what they're used to, West Virginia State coach Bryan Poore said.
"That's kind of what this league has been anyway, an offensive league," he said. "You've got to score in the 90s to win. This is going to make it even more offensive, which should make it more entertaining, I think. I'd rather watch a 95-90 game than a 45-40 game any day of the week."
That environment is right up the alley of Urbana coach Rob Summers. A former WVU player under former Mountaineers and current Michigan coach John Beilein, Summers spent time this past summer in Ann Arbor discussing some of the finer points of Beilein's offense.
In his opening media day remarks, Summers said his team wants to run and keep up with the pace of the other programs in the conference. The Blue Knights did a pretty good job of it last year, ranking third in the MEC at 82.4 points per game. Summers thinks the rule changes are a good fit for the conference's style.
"Every coach up there said it, and it sounds cliché, but the talent, the wide range of teams and the talent we have is something that's going to allow teams to sneak up on people," he said. "It's definitely a league we should be excited about."
West Liberty coach Jim Crutchfield looks at it from another angle - what the new rules would mean for defense. As teams try to acclimate defensively to those new guidelines, they might not get there right away. That could lead to more whistles, more free throws and more breaks in action, exactly what the NCAA is trying to avoid.
Crutchfield thinks the new rules were intended to revitalize the slower Division I style and not for teams like West Liberty or a conference like the Mountain East.
"We're already what people want to see," Crutchfield said. "Our games are more exciting. I don't know if they can enhance our league more than it already is. If they end up blowing the whistle a lot more and stop play a lot more, it can actually detract from our game."
University of Charleston coach Dwaine Osborne oversees one of those defensive-minded MEC teams working to ply its trade and stay within the new rules. UC finished second in the league last season in scoring defense (67.2 points allowed per game) and led the MEC in allowing teams to shoot just 41.7 percent from the floor and 32.8 percent from 3-point range.
"Obviously it makes our job more difficult to do things the way we like to do them," Osborne said.
The Golden Eagles don't want to lose what Osborne considers their identity, so they'll spend plenty of time recalibrating how they play defense in order to remain stout, yet keep the whistles out of the officials' mouths.
"The biggest thing is the physicality of things, not being able to bump cutters, things like that ... the freedom of guys not just with the ball but without the ball, just being able to run through wherever they want to go, it's just going to be difficult," Osborne said. "We'll do the best we can and see if we can adjust, and I feel like if we can be up in the top two or three in defensive categories, we'll have a good year. If not, it'll be a struggle."