4-2 Game Rekindles Shot Clock Debate in High School Basketball

Something unusual occurred throughout a latest highschool basketball recreation in Oklahoma.

The house workforce, the Weatherford High School Eagles, managed the tip-off and instantly missed a three-pointer. Then the visiting Anadarko High School Warriors grabbed the rebound and slowed the sport down — approach, approach down.

For practically the whole recreation, Anadarko performed “stall ball” — passing the ball forwards and backwards in the backcourt because the seconds dripped by like molasses, followers shouted scattered boos and the cheerleaders gamely caught to their routines on the sidelines.

The closing rating, after 4 eight-minute quarters, seemed nothing just like the high-scoring video games which have outlined the N.B.A. this season: Weatherford beat Anadarko, 4-2.

The absurdly low rating has renewed debate about whether or not highschool basketball wants a shot clock to maintain the sport transferring.

Seventeen states and the District of Columbia use shot clocks in some or all highschool video games, and two extra plan to make use of them beginning subsequent season. Oklahoma rejected them final month, citing the price of the clocks, amongst different elements.

After the Anadarko-Weatherford recreation final Tuesday, some are questioning whether or not that was the fitting transfer.

“What are we doing here in Oklahoma?” Bryan Keating, the sports activities director at KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City, wrote on Twitter. “We have to play with a shot clock. The players deserve a whole lot better than this.”

The recreation examined the endurance not solely of the followers who packed into Weatherford’s gymnasium but additionally the native tv announcer, Chuck Ramsey, who repeated the names of the Anadarko gamers as they tossed the ball round in what he referred to as a recreation of “keep away.”

“Not the best friend of a play-by-play announcer on this type of offense,” Mr. Ramsey stated.

The recreation underscored one of many causes the National Federation of State High School Associations, the governing physique for many highschool sports activities, voted final yr to allow states to use a 35-second shot clock.

Proponents say the clock, by forcing the offense to attempt to rating inside a sure time frame, prevents groups from sitting on the ball to kill time, particularly if they’ve a lead with only some minutes left in the fourth quarter.

“It changes end-of-the-game situations,” stated Joe Ortiz, who has gained 4 state championships as head coach of the boys’ basketball workforce at ThunderRidge High School in Highlands Ranch, Colo. “People holding ball like that — that’s not the current game of basketball. It doesn’t make sense.”

It as soon as did.

Before the N.B.A. adopted a 24-second shot clock in 1954, the league was affected by sluggish, low-scoring video games. In 1950, the Fort Wayne Pistons beat the Minneapolis Lakers 19-18 in the lowest-scoring league game on file. Fans weren’t impressed.

After a number of years of experimentation, the N.C.A.A. adopted a 45-second clock in 1985, pushed in half by a 1978 Sun Belt Conference championship recreation that ended with a rating of 22-20. The N.C.A.A. cut the shot clock to 30 seconds in 2015.

“The shot clock was about making the game more exciting for spectators,” stated Pamela Grundy, an impartial historian and co-author of “Shattering The Glass: The Remarkable History of Women’s Basketball.”

But thrilling followers shouldn’t be all the time a precedence in highschool sports activities.

Grant Gower, assistant director of the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association, which oversees highschool sports activities in the state, stated the board voted 8-7 final month in opposition to using shot clocks in basketball.

He stated that board members cited the price of the clocks, the expense of paying somebody to function them and the coaching for referees to implement the time restrict. Prices differ, however a set of two clocks can price between $2,000 and $11,000, he stated.

“I know it will be addressed again and not in response to the 4-to-2 game but in terms of what the schools want to do,” Mr. Gower stated, including that the low rating “sure brings an awareness of situations like this that are completely within the rules of the game.”

Some have speculated that Anadarko’s coach, Doug Schumpert, a member of the Oklahoma Coaches Association Hall of Fame, was merely deploying an old-school “freeze the ball” technique to maintain his ninth-ranked workforce near third-ranked Weatherford. Indeed, Anadarko virtually gained with a three-pointer on the buzzer.

Mr. Schumpert didn’t reply to an e-mail searching for remark.

Derrick Bull, Weatherford’s coach, confronted questions on why the Eagles had not tried to entice the ball and pressure turnovers. He didn’t reply to an e-mail, however he identified in an interview with WWLS, a neighborhood radio station, that his workforce by no means trailed after going up 2-0 in the second quarter.

“Once we got the lead, we were pretty content to let them do what they were going to do because we were confident that if they were ever able to tie it, we could go down and execute and score,” Mr. Bull stated. “Even though we didn’t have the ball, we felt like we were in control of the game, as long as we had the lead.”

Mr. Bull instructed WWLS that he was “never too much for, or too much against” the shot clock.

Playing with out one may give lesser groups a “fighting chance,” he stated, however having one “improves quality of play” and makes it “more entertaining” for gamers and followers, he stated.

“I was definitely for the shot clock last night, I will put it that way,” he stated.