I have very little experience with shot clocks, Connecticut only uses them in prep school games, and then only at the varsity level.
It seems to me that we get a lot of shot clock questions here on the Forum that may be disproportionate to the number of Forum members that may actually use shot clocks, many Forum members are only high school officials, and many states don't use shot clocks for high school games. And many of the shot clock questions seem to come from otherwise extremely competent officials (as far as I can tell from their Forum postings).
Why so many (relatively speaking) shot clock questions? Are NCAA shot clock rules (and high school shot clock rules where applicable) written in a confusing way? Do these shot clock rules often undergo "minor" changes that may make then confusing from year to year? Are officials not educated properly by their associations? Are shot clock operators not educated properly?
Here in Connecticut I can identify lots of reasons for shot clock questions. I can blame a lack of familiarity for many of our shot clock problems. I haven't had a shot clock in a game since 2016-17, and I never have more than one or two games a season with a shot clock. Shot clock rules are never discussed at our local board meetings, we're given a written shot clock handout every year and that handout is always discussed pregame in our varsity prep school games that require such knowledge (not enough education in my opinion). Of course, I can also blame individual officials (including myself) for not sitting down and memorizing the shot clock rules and fully understanding said rules as well as any other rule of the rule book. And shot clock operators are almost always students, and are often assigned the duty as an afterthought.
But for you guys who work with shot clocks every night, why so many (relatively speaking) questions?
