Shot clock malfunction

[M&M Guy]

I was watching that game, and noticed the problem as well. Actually, what happened was the after resetting the shot clock after a shot, both the game clock and shot clock stopped for a period of time, then started again. The shot clock ran down to 9 before Donnie Gray blew the whistle to stop play. Ed spent a long time at the monitor, determined that 11 more seconds should've run off the clock, then made the determination that it wouldn't be fair to penalize the team with a shot clock vioation since the team didn't know the clock should've run down, so they only took off 6 seconds off both the game and shot clock, and played from there. As it turned out, there was a shot clock violation anyway after 3 seconds.

That is what the announcers were told. I really hope there was another reason.

[Nevadaref]

Originally Posted by M&M Guy

I was watching that game, and noticed the problem as well. Actually, what happened was the after resetting the shot clock after a shot, both the game clock and shot clock stopped for a period of time, then started again. The shot clock ran down to 9 before Donnie Gray blew the whistle to stop play. Ed spent a long time at the monitor, determined that 11 more seconds should've run off the clock, then made the determination that it wouldn't be fair to penalize the team with a shot clock vioation since the team didn't know the clock should've run down, so they only took off 6 seconds off both the game and shot clock, and played from there. As it turned out, there was a shot clock violation anyway after 3 seconds.

That is what the announcers were told. I really hope there was another reason.

If that's true, then I don't agree with Hightower's decision. A team had already possessed the ball for longer than the allotted time. He gained definitive knowledge of this and that 11 seconds of playing time should have elapsed, yet only removed six seconds from the clock! So he just disregarded those five additional seconds of game action and declared them to have never occurred. If your account is accurate, then he knew that the time which he was setting wasn't correct. I don't see how he could purposely make the game clock wrong and believe that he was doing the right thing.

We each have our individual opinions of what constitutes fair and that is what makes such situations difficult. Personally, I think that what he did in trying to be fair to the offensive team was very unfair to the defensive team.

The offense already had the ball for more than their allowed amount of time, even though they couldn't see a display which advised them of that. That is a mitigating factor, but still they had to have a sense that they had had the ball for too long and needed to try for goal. On the other hand the defense did exactly what they should have done for more time than is required by the rules and they couldn't see a display either. They had to be thinking that they had been playing good defense for a heck of a long time.
Therefore, giving the offense even more time than what they had already used, which was determined to be clearly in excess of their permitted amount, doesn't seem right to me.

But hey, he's working D1 and I'm not, so guess whose opinion matters?

[M&M Guy]

Originally Posted by Nevadaref

If that's true, then I don't agree with Hightower's decision.

I agree as well, but that is why I also said I hope there's another explanation. I didn't actually count out the amount of time the clock was stopped, so I don't know if it really was 11 seconds or not. I was only paying a small amount of attention to the game, and focused in when there was that big delay. I'm only going by what the announcers said, and we all know how credible they can be when it comes to officiating and rules.