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Mass. uses the 30-second shot clock for high school (boys and girls). At a gym last week, the scorer told me just before the tap that the clock at one end "didn't really work." I had him run it down and a number of the light elements (not bulbs, exactly, but light "lines" that form the numbers) were not working. It made it impossible to tell exactly how much time was left. The clock at the other end was better -- but not perfect. We asked for an alternate timing device. There was none. So we called the coaches together, explained the problem, had the timer run the clock down so the coaches could see the problem and asked the table to shout out the time at 10 seconds. We had no problem all game.
A few nights later, a different clock problem. Midway through the first half, we get buzzed by the table. The clock is resetting to 20 seconds, not 30. The two clock "experts" keep pressing buttons to reset it properly, but nothing works. We finally tell the coaches that we will play with the clock and insturct the timer to reset the clock when it reaches 10 seconds -- and then let it run off. At halftime, my partner starts fidgeting with the buttons and figured out the problem: to reset the default timer to :30, you need to press "time" twice. The timer was pressing it once, which resets the time as directed, but does not reset the default. Apparently, when the scorer reset the clock in the first half because of an error, he hit the button twice and did not know it.
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