There’s been a huge push to reduce the men’s basketball shot clock in college basketball from 35 to 30 seconds and it appears that the NCAA rules committee will seriously consider making that change.
According to a report from ESPN‘s Andy Katz, rules committee chairman Rick Byrd, the head coach at Belmont, said the change could be made during upcoming meetings in May.
“Now there’s a real decent chance,” Byrd said to Katz. “It’s pretty evident a lot more coaches are leaning that way. The opinion of coaches on the shot clock has moved significantly to reducing it from 35 to 30. And all indicators are pointing toward that.”
The rules committee meetings will take place in Indianapolis from May 12-15. The committee will review all data and surveys from this season on the shot clock situation. The NIT, CBI and CIT postseason tournaments all used the 30-second shot clock in March. There were also some leagues who used the 30-second shot clock during preseason games.
With many college basketball games becoming low-scoring affairs during the 2014-15 season, there was a large public outcry from fans and media members to increase the pace of play by reducing the shot clock. Some college basketball coaches are still going to milk the shot clock and run stagnant offenses for all they’re worth, but the reduction of five seconds per possession should aid in the flow of the game.
Hopefully the rules committee does the right thing and sets the shot clock down to 30. This is a necessary change that will slow down some of the criticism surrounding the current state of college hoops.