Stall Ball ...

[CJP]

Originally Posted by Bad Zebra

Disagree...between the additional expense (it would have to be 100% adoption state wide. That’s a MASSIVE investment in my state) and the heightened need for qualified table personnel, I don’t think it will happen any time soon.

The truth is that “stall ball” is employed ina tiny percentage of games. It only gets discussed (the need for a shot clock) because of sensationalized headlines and social media hype.

Massive investment? North and South Dakota are about as conservative as they come. If both of those states can make the change, any state can do it. Finding table personal has also been a challenge that is not really challenging. I have officiated in some very small, rural, communities and they get it done.

[Bad Zebra]

Originally Posted by CJP

Massive investment? North and South Dakota are about as conservative as they come. If both of those states can make the change, any state can do it. Finding table personal has also been a challenge that is not really challenging. I have officiated in some very small, rural, communities and they get it done.

North and South Dakota are also as sparsely populated as they come. I’m in Florida...there has to be THOUSANDS of high schools here so I think it would be a massive investment.

Maybe it’s our distracted student population or (lack of) basketball popularity, but table personnel are VERY challenging here. A shot clock will not help our cause in my opinion.

[SC Official]

This is such a solution looking for a problem.

If you operate under the assumption that this type of basketball is an abomination and should be banned, the reality is that it's only employed in a microscopic percentage of high school games. Based on social media you would think half of the high school coaches in the country employ stall ball; that's simply not true. Why don't more defenses pressure opponents that play this style of offense and force them to do something?

Cost is a big deal whether or not people like to hear it. Granted, I find it humorous to hear schools b*tch and moan about not having money to give officials a modest pay increase while simultaneously rolling out the "latest and greatest" new uniforms every year and spending a fortune to make their gyms look the best in the state. A shot clock sounds great until administrators see the price tag just for the equipment; then there are the installation costs as well as having to pay and train someone competent enough to run the thing correctly. Heck some schools have scoreboards that are so old that I'm not even sure it's possible to synchronize and wire the shot clocks; so now you're asking them to buy new scoreboards, as well. And many schools have more than one gym.

For as many issues as there are running shot clocks correctly at the small college level, those problems get magnified in high school and turn into big headaches for officials. Also there are so many 20-year "veteran" officials that I would not feel comfortable managing the shot clock and learning all the rules (in many cases they can't even manage the game clock).

What is the reward of enduring these growing pains? To be more like college? To force more (bad) shots?

Also, people forget that this is high school basketball. A coach's job is to employ the best strategy for his/her team to win. At the high school level the talent spectrum is much wider than the college level, so it's not unreasonable that the rules allow for more strategies to be competitive regardless of how "entertaining" they may be. HS sports do not exist to entertain fans nor to "get kids ready for the next level."

At most I could see the NFHS making this an allowable state adoption. I do not see it being mandated nationwide. And if it were it wouldn't be immediate; there would be a 3-5 year buffer to allow schools and states to budget properly and implement all the requirements.