How many fouls do you get in college basketball?

In a sport like basketball, fouls are bound to happen. Every player gets so many before they are disqualified from the game. While you want to use enough of your allotment to set the tone defensively, you can't help your team win if you're sitting next to your coach. Every level of basketball is different, but fouls are the quickest way to slow down the game. So how many does everyone get?

How many fouls does each player get in a college basketball game?

In the NBA, every player gets six and technical fouls don't count. Those are their own separate thing. View a technical foul like a yellow card in soccer. If you get a second technical, you are out of the contest. The league also does a pretty good job of keeping track of the number of technicals, with fines and suspensions looming. But in college basketball, you merely get five a game, and they all count...

Personal fouls include your standard common fouls, offensive fouls, moving screens, flagrant fouls, and yes, even technical fouls. Even if a game were to go to overtime, you do not start the ensuing period off with a clean set of fouls. Your ledger is your ledger, bro! It is for this reason that it is even more common for college basketball players to foul out of a game as opposed to the NBA players.

This is one of the absolute worst parts about the game of college basketball, and here is why.

With each level a player progresses, the rules should get more punitive as opposed to more lenient. While I understand that it is imperative for NBA and WNBA players to remain in the game for as long as possible for advertising revenue and whatnot, it seems rather criminal for college athletes to get only five fouls in a game, with technicals counting against those five. There are reasons for it, though.

College basketball players only play twice a week for a few months, whereas professionals play neraly every other day for the better part of a year. Defense can be hard on those legs, so allowing an extra foul here or there could go a long way toward keeping a star in the game for longer. Of course, many college basketball teams lack depth and one player being disqualified can totally capsize their rotation.

Making technicals more punitive could be an NCAA-wide behavioral thing. However, losing your team's best player for a ticky-tack foul in the final minutes of a game that is still in question does not sit well with me, especially if that game is in a win-or-go-home setting. We're not going to get it to seven fouls per players, but what about six? Better yet, let's not make technicals count against them.

In the meantime, you get five for fighting in hockey, and you only get five fouls in college basketball.