The Arizona/Illinois game just ended, and Illinois had six – that’s right six – players foul out during a regulation length game. Anyone know if that’s any kind of record? I’m guessing not, but I have no idea what the record might be. I’m also guessing that it’s never happened in this big of a game.
The team record for fouls in a single games is 50 (ironically, it was Arizona in 1953) , and Illinois only had 36. The 50 in a game is pretty high – was there a limit per player back then?
BTW, I correctly predicted all Final Four teams. Woo hoo!
I doubt there was a player limit in college basketball in the 50s. I don’t think there are any now if you are the home team. There are usually just limits on the traveling squads, at least there is in football.
In high school and college basketball, you have to play shorthanded if you have too many players foul out. I assume that if you get down to zero you would lose by forfeit, but I remember reading a story in SI about a D-III team that had to play the last minute or two with just one guy. The big problem with that is inbounding the ball.
In the NBA, if you are down to just five players, they tack on an extra free throw.
The 5-foul disqualification rule was around in the 1950s. If a team committed 50 fouls in a game, it was likely playing fewer than 5 players on the court.
The record for fouls in a game by one team is indeed 50 and it was set by Arizona on 1/26/53 in a game against Northern Arizona. NAU committed 34 fouls.
However, Arizona must have had a lot of players in the game because they didn’t set the record for most players fouling out in a game. The record for that is 8 set by St. Joseph’s in a game against Xavier in 1976. Arizona’s school record is actually 7 players fouling out and that was in a 1952 game against West Texas A&M.
So, in the 50 foul game, Arizona couldn’t have had more than 6 players foul out.
Northern Arizona did set a record for free throw attempts in that 1953 game against Arizona. They tried 79. They made 46. Arizona won the game 90-70. I think there must have been a great talent disaprity between the two schools then. In 1951, Arizona set a record for greatest rebounding disparity in a game against Northern Arizona grabbing 102 rebounds to NAU’s 18.
I have to say, BobT, that I’m a complete idiot. I found the Arizona record of 50 fouls in the NCAA Record Book – right above the record for number players fouling out. If I had just read a couple of more lines, I would have had my answer.
Just to show that I can read, Arizona’s 50-foul record is the Division I record. Northern State (Division II) had 51 fouls, with seven players fouling out, against Southern Indiana on 11/15/97. In the same games the teams had a combined 91 fouls. Of course, this was a 3-OT game, so it’s not quite as good the Arizona/NAU game.
ESPN chose the Arizona-NAU game as one of the worst games of the 20th Century. The worst was a basketball game in the 1970s between Temple and Tennessee that ended 11-6.