NEW YORK (AP) — Cheryl Reeve has seen a lot of improvements in officiating this season and it’s helped the WNBA have record offensive numbers so far through the first half of the season.There’s still areas that need to be worked on, but it will take more than 20 games for everything to be cleaned up.“We’ve seen great improvements on the very things that were broken,” the Minnesota Lynx coach said. “There was a level of impeding players and trying to cut off a screen. We don’t want the unnecessary physicality.” The league put together a task force, which Reeve is on, in the offseason to help clean up some of the physicality in the game. The main point of emphasis was to help players’ freedom of movement. Despite some hiccups early on, it has led to more offense as teams are averaging around 86 points a game — the highest ever. They are shooting nearly 45% from the field — also the best in league history.So far this season there have been roughly 4 1/2 more fouls called per game with 75% of them being non-shooting fouls.
“I think it’s fair for our coaches and players to be able to say we’re happy and we think positive things are taking place, but still I disagree with the calls that are affecting our team tonight,” Monty McCutchen, who is the head of WNBA officials, told The Associated Press. “I want coaches to remain advocates for their teams,” McCutchen added. “We have gotten positive feedback that we’re on the right track. we’ll continue to work through specifics when we fail that task and we’ll continue to check in with the officiating task force to make sure that we’re aligned with the expectations.”
