Sonny Vaccaro is a basketball guy in the truest sense of the term. This is the man, after all, who helped give birth to grassroots summer basketball, signed Michael Jordan to his first sneaker deal, and put shoe logos on college basketball coaches long before the practice became common.

For all the reasons cited for college basketball's lack of scoring and excitement, the one you don't hear about is the actual coaching.

Yet lately, Vaccaro finds himself more interested in college football -- once known for three yards and a cloud of dust -- than college basketball. Vaccaro says this past regular season of college basketball's was as "boring" as it has ever been since he entered the business in the 1970s.

Put Vaccaro in front of a football game, though, and he gets excited. Vaccaro finds that even the extra point, which is arguably the most boring play in football, interests him when Oregon considers going for two points depending on what the defense looks like.

"Football is so damn exciting," Vaccaro said. "They do different things to counteract things. There is no conceding Football tries everything. ... Basketball has gotten boring. It's indistinguishable. The coaches are so controlling."

The drama and excitement of the recent NCAA Tournament coupled with Kentucky's unsuccessful run at a perfect season can't mask the sport's problems. To be sure, this figures to be an important offseason for college basketball. Generally speaking, the game has become slow and grinding. The sport endured its worst season for points per game (67.6) since 1952 and the fewest possessions per 40 minutes since analyst Ken Pomeroy began charting tempo in 2002.

Connecticut women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma made waves before the Final Four when he said men's basketball is "a joke" because nobody can score and the sport hasn't put rules in place to help offenses. The first comments by Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan after he lost the NCAA championship game were complaints about the officiating. "It's just a shame that it had to be played that way," Ryan said.

Make no mistake, fans still tune in to March Madness. CBS said this year's NCAA Tournament was the most-watched tournament in 22 years. But the tournament is built for popularity as a made-for-TV, one-and-done drama with gambling interests at stake. Interest level is far different in the regular season, which carries less meaning for games that struggle to excite the public.

CBSSports.com interviewed nine knowledgeable people associated with college basketball for their thoughts on the state of the game:

current Auburn coachcurrent Davidson coachformer Arizona basketball playerCBS analyst and former Ohio State playerESPN analyst and former Duke playerPac-12 deputy commissioner and former NCAA men's basketball committee memberPac-12 Network analyst and former coach at Stanford, Cal and Golden State Warriorsformer Loyola Marymount, Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets coachlongtime shoe marketing executive and godfather of summer basketball

While some opinions vary and it's true that many factors get cited when trying to explain college basketball's slowdown, one overarching theme exists: Coaches. They limit possessions and use the lack of officiating calls against physical play to produce a slower, lower-scoring game.

"I think coaches are operating out of insecurity or job pressure," Kellogg said. "A number of teams play basketball that's fun to watch, but there aren't enough [of those] teams out there. They're so regimented and so robotic and so inept, it seems, at creating decent shots. It's like watching paint dry."

Consider this: College basketball and college football scores are as close as they've ever been in the modern era. Division I basketball teams scored just 38.1 points per game more than Football Bowl Subdivision football teams this year -- a gap between the sports that has decreased by 25 percent in the past two decades. Each of the last eight years produced the lowest scoring differential between basketball and football since 1950-51.

Gap narrowing As football scoring has gone up, basketball scoring has declined. Each of the last eight years has produced the lowest differential in points per game between Division I basketball and major college football since 1950-51. Year Point differential 2014-15 38.2 2013-14 41.6 2012-13 38.0 2011-12 39.7 2010-11 41.1 2009-10 42.3 2008-09 41.6 2007-08 41.2

Bilas lays out a stat that sums up college basketball today. Fifteen years ago, 189 Division I teams averaged at least 70 possessions per game; less than 30 teams averaged 70 possessions in 2015. Bilas has called for rules changes and views the sport as being in a situation where "the coaches are stars" and generally over-coach.

"Notre Dame and Duke played earlier this year in a really entertaining, high-possession, high-scoring game and it was celebrated like we saw Halley's Comet for the first time," Bilas said. "That shouldn't be. It doesn't mean every game is going to be in the 90s. Basically, in the last 25 years there has been no invention to the game."

Physical, ball-screen defenses rule

College basketball's style of play today can typically be summarized by ball screens, ball screens and -- did we mention? -- ball screens. There's nothing necessarily wrong with so many ball screens. The technique opens up the offense for pick-and-roll possibilities, a philosophy that flowed to college from the NBA and international games.

"I did a clinic in Italy several years ago," McKillop said, "and as I walked to the arena one of my friends -- an Italian guy who's an assistant with the Spurs -- had a big sheet on a house that says, 'Sex, drugs and pick and rolls.' It's an international offensive technique, and because it creates such a momentary opening, that sophistication of teaching varies at all levels."

In college, some teams run what's called "false motion" to milk the 35-second shot clock without legitimately looking to score. The concept can shorten games -- believed to be a helpful tactic if a team is less talented -- and possibly get matchups the offense wants later in the shot clock.

"If you're in the Pac-12 and you're playing Arizona, do you want to play an up-and-down game with Arizona?" said Johnson, the Arizona player who will likely soon be an NBA lottery pick. "No, you don't want to play that game. [Opponents think], 'We don't have the athletes to compete with them. But if we get in a halfcourt setting can we compete with them?' Yes, obviously. Oregon State beat us. If I was Oregon State, I'd be, ‘Yeah, let's slow it down.' Me being at Arizona, I want to go up and down."

Kellog said it "drives me nuts" that more players won't push the ball ahead with passes. "There's too much playing off the dribble in the game, not enough playing off the pass with motion, ball reversal, hard cuts, trying to get the ball off the cut," he said.

At some point during many possessions the ball screen arrives. If the play is executed properly, a defender will come and help, allowing the player setting the screen to roll to the basket, float outside for a "pick and pop" shot, or some other type of action created by the dribbler.

You don't see a lot of up-tempo, innovative teams like the ones Paul Westhead coached at Loyola Marymount in the late 80s. (Getty Images)

"I don't think the execution is very sharp," Montgomery said. "It seems to me I'm watching a lot of these teams that don't really set a good ball screen early. They ball screen and then roll up into another one when you get too late in the clock and you obviously need one."

Now imagine being the defense against this plan. You know good shooters are at a premium so you play what's called a pack-line defense to contain the lane. By packing in many defenders in the lane, you figure officials won't call all of the bumping, clutching and chucking that occurs.

"You have coaches that are teaching, frankly, fouling, because they know the referees won't call it," Bilas said. "There's nothing sinister about it. They're trying to win. But I think it's up to the sport to make adjustments as the game [has] evolved and changed."

Then throw in advanced analytics that help put players -- who are bigger, stronger and more athletic than ever -- in the right spots defensively.

"How many games do you go to where a team crosses halfcourt and two assistants on the bench are screaming to the defense exactly what the team is going to run, or screaming that a guy likes to bounce it with his right hand twice and pull up with a jump shot?" said Zaninovich, the Pac-12's deputy commissioner.

If you're a coach that likes to run a wide-open, cutting offense with Princeton-like principles, "unless you really believe in it, almost everybody is really proficient at disrupting it because they can bump, chuck and hold cutters," Bilas said. "You don't have to grab a great shooter the whole time coming off the screen. Just grab him a little and disrupt the timing of the play and take away an open shot."

Auburn's Pearl, who favors a 30-second shot clock, widening the lane and pushing the 3-point line back, expressed doubts about whether it pays for coaches to gamble with different styles of offense.

"The offensive skill level of players is not keeping pace with the work being done in the weight room and defensive schemes," Pearl said. "We're in a period right now where defensive schematics are ahead of offensive schematics, in addition to the players being more physical. It's sort of like with Buddy Ryan and the 46 defense or Monte Kiffin and the cover-two, there were periods of time in football when defense was dominating the sport and scoring was down. And right now, ball-screen defense at the college level -- and the physicality of it -- is dominating the sport."

Football evolved with rules changes. Will college basketball do the same?

Whatever happened to pressing teams?

No one is saying every college team should become the old Loyola Marymount run-and-gun teams from the early 1990s that regularly scored 100-plus points. In fact, Loyola Marymount's former coach, Paul Westhead, isn't so sure his style could work today. Even if players say they want to run that fast, Westhead theorizes many would hate the work it would take to get into shape for his running style.

"It's too easy to say this slow play is being orchestrated by coaches," Westhead said. "I hear the comments that coaches want to feel they're good organizers and want to make players like puppets for these geniuses. I think coaches maybe recognize that running equals resistance. If they were really trying to push it, after a few games, I think players would say, 'Couldn't you put in a couple plays for us?'"

Observers of the sport say there are far fewer teams pressing full court and running on offense -- the type of unique tactics that could make preparation a nightmare for opponents. Most memorably, UNLV ran to a national title in 1990; Arkansas gave opponents "40 Minutes of Hell" to win the 1994 championship; 11th-seeded VCU surprisingly reached the Final Four in 2011 by pressing; and 15th-seeded Florida Gulf Coast freelanced its way to the Sweet 16 in 2013.

"I was a pressing coach for years and years," Pearl said. "I think teams are breaking pressure better. They're better at attacking it. They don't press in the NBA, and the kids with talent, they don't want to press."

Even in college's halfcourt game, Montgomery, the former Stanford and Cal coach, sees fewer players who know proper fundamentals. He misses watching many players properly execute the mid-range jumper, two-foot jump stop, proper pivots, and dribbling with both hands.

"A lot of coaches just don't want to spend the time," Montgomery said. "I think there's pressure to win immediately. As a coach, you say, 'I can't spend the time doing that so we'll overplay pressure, do really good man defense and maybe we can win that way.' You don't see as much set offense anymore where you really can trick defenses. It takes time and intelligent kids and patience, and a lot of the best programs have players who won't be around a while."

One reason often cited for the lack of scoring is the exodus of one-and-done players and other early entrants for the NBA. That's not simply due to the obvious reason: Good players are leaving school earlier.

One-and-done players like Duke's Jahlil Okafor get a lot of the blame for college basketball's problems. (Getty Images)

"The desire of the basketball coach is to keep that player in school another year," said Vaccaro, the former shoe executive. "The football coach has that player for three years. I believe there's so much pressure on the college basketball coach to produce with his theoretical one-and-done guy that he has to be so concerned about adjusting other players on the team. It's ruined the coach's ability to think."

There were at least two notable exceptions this year. Duke's Mike Krzyzewski won the national title with freshmen -- a few of whom will soon be in the NBA -- scoring 60 of the Blue Devils' 68 points in the championship game. And Kentucky's John Calipari embodies today's college coaching culture better than anyone. Kentucky challenged for the first perfect season since 1976 by Calipari coaching a roster full of NBA-caliber players to buy into the team concept in college, even if it's for a brief stay.

"Georgetown had a certain player who could play for John Thompson, UNLV had a certain player for Jerry Tarkanian, and North Carolina had that with Dean Smith," Vaccaro said. "Calipari, in the modern world, has one-upped them. He has certain types of players that adapt to him. They want to go there. This is rare. It's almost impossible to talk about this because we know psychologically they're prepared to leave for the NBA."

But while Calipari reloads his teams each year, many schools are impacted by losing or gaining transfers. Approximately 700 players transferred to or from a Division I school after the 2014 season, meaning on average each team was impacted by two transfers.

"I would say [lack of scoring] is less to do with one-and-done than the transfer environment," Zaninovich said. "If you're that coach trying to make the tournament with that many teams out there and you feel like you're sort of undermanned, you're going to try to control the system more and keep the game close."

Making their points The highest scoring Division I basketball teams in 2015 Team PPG Coach Years at School Northwestern St. 84.0 Mike McConathy 16 BYU 83.7 Dave Rose 18 Eastern Washington 80.6 Jim Hayford 4 VMI 80.5 Duggar Baucom 8 Duke 80.4 Mike Krzyzewski 29 Gonzaga 79.5 Mark Few 26 Iona 79.5 Tim Cluess 5 Murray State 79.3 Steve Prohm 9 Davidson 79.0 Bob McKillop 26 Stephen F. Austin 78.6 Brad Underwood 2 Hofstra 78.3 Joe Mihalich 2 Central Michigan 78.3 Keno Davis 3 Notre Dame 78.2 Mike Brey 15 North Carolina 77.8 Roy Williams 12 Iowa State 77.4 Fred Hoiberg 5

McKillop has a theory: Coaches who stay at a school for an extended period tend to be more secure in their job status and can establish a culture for how they play. In other words, if a coach feels his job is safe, he has more time to teach offense and produce more points.

"Think [Notre Dame coach] Mike Brey has his guys handcuffed?" McKillop said. "He's been there a while. Guess where Mike did his tutelage? Under a great coach at Duke [Mike Krzyzewski]. I don't know if that's the answer [to the lack of scoring], but it's worth considering."

McKillop appears to be on to something. This season, nine of the 15 highest-scoring teams in Division I had a head coach who has been at his school for at least eight straight years, counting stints as an assistant.

Six of the teams in this year's Elite Eight ranked in the top 7 in offensive efficiency as analyzed by Pomeroy. And for the first time since 2008, all four Final Four teams ranked in the top 15 in offensive efficiency (No. 1 Wisconsin, No. 3 Duke, No. 5 Kentucky and No. 15 Michigan State).

This was the first tournament since 2008 that three or more No. 1 seeds reached the Final Four, so more higher-seeded teams advancing certainly was a factor. But this success also shows that offense can still win the most important games, albeit in lower-scoring games.

'We're getting the game we deserve'

So what's the answer to increase scoring for a more enjoyable game? How do coaches escape, as Westhead calls it, the "comfort of the herd mentality" by running similar offenses?

Many college basketball observers believe rule changes will have to provide coaches with an incentive to evolve. Reducing the shot clock, widening the lane, extending the 3-point line and lowering the number of timeouts are all possibilities.

This assumes college basketball can muster the leadership to convince enough people in the sport to make changes. This year's scoring decline isn't simply a one-year trend. Scoring has gone down in 11 of the past 15 seasons and has declined by 9 percent since 1995.

Seven of the 12 members of the NCAA men's basketball rules committee are coaches: Akron's Keith Dambrot, Belmont's Rick Byrd, Long Island-Brooklyn's Jack Perri, Fairfield's Sydney Johnson, Division II Caldwell's Mark Corino, Division III Southern University's William Raleigh, and Division III University of La Verne's Richard Reed.

"We shouldn't have coaches on the rules committee," Bilas said. "They have current competitive interests at stake. No multibillion-dollar business would run it like that. The coaches should have a voice in policy, but they shouldn't be making it." [Every NCAA rules committee includes coaches, not just men's basketball.]

Coaches often point to the quality of players they're inheriting -- often nurtured through AAU summer basketball -- as a reason for the game's struggles.

"There's no emphasis on fundamentals [in AAU]," Montgomery said. "Winning is not important. You look at a kid and he loses a game and it doesn't really have that bite because he has another game in two hours."

There's probably some truth to this point. Johnson, the Arizona forward, said players are not developed enough yet when they arrive to college. He found himself this season learning from Arizona coaches how to shoot mid-range, pull-up jumpers and floaters in the lane.

On the other hand, AAU has been around for several decades and the quality of college basketball wasn't always considered this poor. Plus, what choice do players have given that all evidence points to summer hoops -- not high school basketball -- as the best way to get noticed by colleges?

"The way I was raised, if you want to get better, you train by yourself," Johnson said. "I feel like AAU is a place where you can work on how fast you can play, how many athletes you can get in a gym. … It's the best setting to watch players because you have to be able to compete and run and be active in a game like that to be able to compete at a level like this."

Yet once the players come to college, they are often slowed down. Football uses innovation on offense (spread formations, up-tempo, mobile quarterbacks) to both provide entertaining games and create more parity. Basketball slows down the game in the name of parity.

College basketball could use a big dose of college football's innovation and excitment. (Getty Images)

It's not a perfect apples-to-apples comparison between football and basketball given differences in the sport, particularly how long star players stay in school. NFL draft rules give college football coaches more time to develop players than their basketball counterparts. Defections by turning pro or transferring can impact basketball far more than football, which has a much larger roster.

But it's worth considering this: As high school coaches rose into college football and changed the game from the ground up, even longtime innovative basketball coaches put on the brakes in today's climate. Westhead, the architect of run-and-gun offenses that either thrived or blew up in his face, tells young coaches at clinics they better have a longterm contract if they want to play fast.

"If you spread the court and you play fast and it looks like you're disorganized, your chance of losing your job is increased," Westhead said. "The more conservative approach you take, if it doesn't work, it looks like the players are the problem and, well, you can say we need to recruit better players."

Westhead has been fired at several jobs, most recently last year as Oregon's women's basketball coach. During some of his failures, Westhead has briefly considered whether he should have satisfied critics by playing a little slower.

"Here's the good of fast-breaking and full-court pressing: If you pull it off, you can beat anybody," Westhead said. "That's the thing I think coaches don't realize. If you were to say to a group of coaches, 'You're going to play 30 games and if you play slow or ordinary, you'll be 15-15, is that OK with you?' If they say yes, you get what you get. If they say, 'No, I have a decent team and some other teams are better than me, and I'd love to be 26-4,' you're not going to get there if you play normal. I'm not saying it's easier. It's like raising kids. You can actually control them and tell them where to go every single day. But what are you really accomplishing when they have to make decisions on their own?"

Now college basketball faces critical decisions on its own. Kentucky-Notre Dame, Kentucky-Wisconsin and Duke-Wisconsin produced memorable games at the recent NCAA Tournament. But the reality is college basketball finds itself stuck.

"The truth is we're getting the game we deserve," Bilas said. "We can fix it. Because those of us that are saying we need to make some changes, does that signal others who love the game more than we do? I love the game. But when you love something, you say when there's something wrong with it."