Adam: What problem with high school basketball will be fixed by addition of shot clock?

The reaction was so great on Dec. 28 that it might be remembered as the game that finally helped bring the shot clock to high school basketball in Illinois.

Quincy 33, Lincoln 30.

The quarterfinal game at the Collinsville Prairie Farms Holiday Classic certainly added kindling to the fire built by basketball fans who hope a shot clock soon will be introduced in Illinois High School Association games. 

Chris Duerr, sports director at KHQA-TV, immediately offered a poll about a shot clock in Illinois on his Twitter feed after the game. Seventy-five percent of 842 respondents replied they wanted one. Among the replies:

“Y’all think it’s about winning games. It’s not. It’s about equipping your players with elite skills they will use at the next level.”

“Nobody wants to watch a team hold the ball forever and still end up taking a bad shot. Not sure what is being developed. Kids don’t want to play like that either.  They will get bored and quit playing.”

“I can’t stand watching teams pass around for 45-60 seconds every possession.”

“You shouldn’t have to play defense for longer than 30 seconds at a time. No one wants to watch that.”

“Any game Lincoln is in is like watching paint dry.”

The National Federation of State High School Associations has opened the door, voting in May to allow for a 35-second shot clock to be permitted in high school basketball games by state association adoption, beginning with the 2022-23 season. (A proposal for a national rule mandating a shot clock was not approved.)

Minnesota voted in December to become the 13th state association to adopt a shot clock. Others are Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, California, District of Columbia, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island and Washington. Some states already use the shot clock. Others are implementing it in the next year or two.

To those in favor of adding the shot clock to basketball in Illinois, please answer this question.

What problem with high school basketball will be fixed by the addition of a shot clock?

Take a deeper look into the Quincy-Lincoln game.

According to the official stats posted on the Collinsville Prairie Farms Holiday Classic website, Lincoln had 38 possessions. Eleven of them lasted longer than 35 seconds. The Railsplitters had possessions of 36, 37, 38, 41, 51 and 52 seconds. Only four possessions lasted longer than 60 seconds, with the longest lasting 1 minute, 33 seconds.

Quincy had 43 possessions in the game. The two longest were 39 and 47 seconds.

Where are all of the 2 minute, 30 second possessions people were complaining about?

The game had 81 possessions. Thirteen lasted longer than 35 seconds, meaning 84 percent of the possessions would have been unaffected by a shot clock.

When Quincy trailed by as many as 10 points in the third quarter, Blue Devils coach Andy Douglas admitted his team switched from its traditional ball press to more of a matchup zone with man-to-man principles to put pressure the Railsplitters.

Lincoln led by 10 points with 4:27 left to play in the third quarter. Quincy’s defensive switch forced the Railsplitters to miss eight of 10 shots and turn the ball over twice in the final quarter and a half.

Douglas’ move helped create a dramatic finish.

Would a shot clock have improved the game? Show me how.

On that same day in Bloomington, Winnebago, the No. 1-ranked Class 2A girls team in Illinois, played a young and feisty Central-Southeastern in the quarterfinals of the State Farm Classic in Bloomington. Central-Southeastern’s man-to-man defense limited the Indians to 29 percent shooting, while Winnebago’s 1-3-1 zone strangled the Panthers into more than 30 turnovers.

The final score was 33-21. The game may have had one or two possessions longer than 35 seconds. A shot clock would have not affected the outcome.

What problem with high school basketball will be fixed by the addition of a shot clock?

Patrick Woods, the boys basketball coach at St. Charles East, joined several other Illinois prep basketball coaches called the Shot Clock Warriors to put together an online proposal supporting the addition of a shot clock to Illinois high school games that was submitted to the IHSA. He recently posted it on his Twitter feed.

The reasons for why a shot clock should be added, along with my thoughts, were:

1. It makes for a more exciting brand of basketball for players, coaches, and fans. (Exactly how will the shot clock make the games more exciting? This proposal didn’t explain how.)
2. It will increase interest among fans and improve attendance at games. (Let’s hope so. Attendance at high school games seems to be dwindling everywhere. Maybe it’s because of COVID-19. Maybe other reasons exist. Not convinced a shot clock will bring people back to prep games.)
3. A faster pace promotes better skill development of players. (No data I’ve seen proves this premise. In fact, a faster pace likely leads to sloppier play. A faster pace won’t suddenly make shots go in the basket.)
4. It improves creativity with coaching strategy and style of play. (What styles of play and what strategies are unavailable to coaches because of the lack of a shot clock?)
5. The outcomes of games will become less predictable, and it creates more opportunities for late game comebacks and upsets. (Completely disagree. The shot clock favors the more talented team. Outcomes will become more predictable. Taking away the option of holding the ball against more talented teams weakens the chances for underdogs to win.)
6. It creates more of a chance for highlight plays and more exciting end-of-game situations. (It also creates more rushed possessions and ill-advised shots because the shot clock is winding down.)
7. It enhances the flow of the game by preventing stalling and guarantees more possessions per team in each game. (Are those added possessions quality possessions? Of the thousands of games played in west-central Illinois and northeast Missouri each winter, how many of them involved a stall — especially one that wasn’t in the fourth quarter?)
8. Players, coaches, and fans overwhelmingly prefer to play with the shot clock. (Well, the polls on that subject don’t seem to be overwhelming.)

The IHSA held discussions and surveyed member school administrators on the shot clock at town hall meetings in November. The survey results, based on 600 schools responding, were:

• 19 percent supported implementing the shot clock in 2022-23.
• 47 percent supported using the shot clock experimentally at regular-season tournaments in 2022-23.
• 54 percent supported the development of a timeline to implement the shot clock in the future.

The Basketball Advisory Committee will review the survey information in April. The IHSA Board of Directors will discuss the shot clock again at its June meeting. They are expected to take action to provide further direction on a shot clock plan.

A few more thoughts before throwing your support behind a shot clock.

The Putnam County girls basketball team used a stall game to create a string of upsets to go from being the fifth seed in its own district to finishing second in the Missouri Class 2A state tournament in 1992. One of those victories was a 21-18 victory in the sectional over Palmyra. The halftime score was 2-0, but the taller but slower Panthers chose to stayed back in a 3-2 zone against the shorter but quicker Midgets.

“If they wanted us to stop what we were doing, they could have come out after us,” Midgets coach Theresa Hunsaker said.

Three days later, I wrote a column in The Herald-Whig chastising the Midgets for choosing to “play that way” to win a game. A local coach wrote to me days later, saying the Midgets’ decision to hold the ball was like pitchers choosing to intentionally walk Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco. That letter changed my mind on this subject forever.

To those who believe a shot clock helps skill development for players to get to the next level … quoting Col. Sherman T. Potter, horse hockey. Two college coaches recently spoke off the record about how the shot clock affects the development of high school players and who they look for when recruiting. One needed only three words to clarify his thoughts.

Not. At. All. 

A study by the NFHS after the 2017-18 season showed 3.4 percent of boys high school basketball players (and 4 percent of the girls) went on to play at an NCAA college or university. Should the game be changed to accommodate that tiny percentage? 

The cost of adding the shot clock to the game is real. Schools likely will spend around $5,000 to $6,000 for equipment and installation. Ask a local high school athletic director if they have that kind of money in the budget.

The job of the shot clock operator is the most difficult on a scorer’s table. That person must determine if a shot hit the rim, if a team has gained possession and whether to reset the clock. All other jobs at the table simply do what the officials tell them — start or stop a clock on the whistle, write down a basket or a foul in the scorebook, add points to the scoreboard. Maybe it’s not a statewide issue, but many local schools are strapped to find competent people to work at the scorer’s table. Many local officials worry the shot clock will add to those problems.

As more states add the shot clock to high school games, the likelihood of it happening in Illinois and Missouri grows. Let’s see how the game changes next year in Iowa and discover what happens more — better play with a faster pace, or sloppier play with more forced shots at the end of a possession?

How many games on your team’s schedule will the shot clock affect? One? Maybe two? Are basketball fans prepared for the other potential problems created by the addition of a shot clock?

The shot clock is a solution looking for a problem.