Decline in scoring not just tech issue, but lack of skills

College basketball is big – especially when you have the No. 3-ranked team in the nation playing in your backyard, and next door you have a re-emerging program heading toward a return to the Big Dance and a Division III powerhouse year in and year out.

But just off to the side there’s a voice saying that there’s a growing problem with the game. It’s saying that something is a little off.

Scoring is in a decline in college basketball. The average team score per game is hovering just above 68 points per game, which is the lowest average in more than 60 years.

To be sure, some of that decline is the advance of smarter, better prepared defenses. Between television and the Internet, teams can’t hide what they do on offense in the college game, and assistant coaches are using technology to break down and strategize for the game you bring on any given night.

But that’s not the only reason.

A growing number of experts are saying that there also is a decline in basketball skills.

Athletes are better prepared, better conditioned, better nourished than ever before, but their skills aren’t what they used to be.

But that doesn’t translate to the game, they claim.

Kobe Bryant talked about that earlier this month.

“European players are way more skillful,” Bryant said in an interview with reporters from ESPN and the Los Angeles Times. “They are just taught the game right away from an early age. … They’re more skillful and it’s something we need to fix.”

Bryant put the blame on AAU programs. Clark Kellogg, the top analyst for CBS Sports and a fixture of March Madness, does too.

Their claim goes something like this: Kids get into programs much too soon, so their development gets structured and supervised and, in some ways, stunted. Kids need more unstructured time with the game. They need to play more pickup games, where you’re not just playing ball against kids their own age.

They need to get back to those days when the game down on the corner had kids of all levels, including adults, and if your skills weren’t sharp, you got your hat handed to you by someone better and you had to wait your turn to get back in the game.

Kids are lacking an education from the Old School, the School of Hard Knocks – where if you don’t bring your A game, you find out in a hurry that nothing else counts.

That’s probably true in bigger cities where street basketball used to be legendary.

But that doesn’t explain that same decline in areas where street ball is less prevalent.

What was it about the game of basketball that was different 35 years ago?

For the 1979-80 season, the NBA adopted the 3-point line and further advanced the Age of the Jump Shot.

Great shooters like Downtown Freddie Brown haven’t gone away, but you don’t see nearly as many players today shooting the ball the way he did: fundamentally sound.

We used to joke about how those great shooters developed – practicing so long that they could have a shootaround in a gym with the lights out and still hear nothing but net.

But that age led to a new age. With great shooters knocking down 3-pointers, the court opened up for the slasher to cut their way to the hoop.

It’s electrifying. It’s crowd-pleasing. It’s the made-for-TV moment. It’s a SportsCenter highlight.

Good, fundamental basketball is still good, fundamental basketball.

So are basketball skills really declining? Or do players just have to develop more skills than they did before?

It’s the evolution of the game.