NCAA Basketball Odds Effects Of The 30-second Shot Clock

Posted by Alex Murphy on Friday,June 26, 2015 2:44, EDT in

The 2015-2016 College Bsasketball Odds will be affected by a number of different rule changes. One major change is going from a 35-second shot clock to a 30-second clock. In addition to cutting the number of timeouts per team, this is another way to speed up play and boost scoring. The fact that a legion of timeouts and fouls at the end of games made them seem to drag on forever was a factor in prompting this change.

The rules committee also agreed to cut the number of timeouts in the second half from four to three and using a timeout called within 30 seconds of a media timeout as the scheduled break. The purpose of this is to eliminate those double timeouts that can happen when no natural break occurs every four minutes in each half. Data had shown that scoring dropped about five points per game in the 2014-2015 season, even though games were lasting longer than ever.

A Closer Look At The NCAA Basketball Odds Effects Of The 30-second Shot Clock

As NCAA rules committee chairman Rick Byrd said, “The areas of concern in our game have been about pace of play, about scoring, about increased physicality defensively. There are concerns about how long it takes to play our game sometimes, particularly as we’ve introduced review in the last two minutes. I think we’ve addressed all these areas as best we can.”

The 2015 NIT featured the new shot clock on an experimental basis and did not show any detrimental effect on possessions and scoring, and so the NCAA decided to move forward and use it during the 2015-2016 season for all men’s games.

If you have watched NCAA women’s basketball games, then you have already seen a game with a 30-second shot clock. The men’s shot clock was reduced from 45 seconds to 35 seconds in the 1993-1994 season. Some other changes that are designed to speed up play include a reduction from 20 seconds to 15 seconds for teams to make a substitution when a player has fouled out. Teams only get 10 total seconds to move the ball past halfcourt, rather than resetting that 10-second count if there is a stoppage for some reason. Teams also will be directed to begin more quickly after timeouts.

So how will this affect the game? You won’t see teams able to bleed quite as much off the clock near the end of games when they’re wanting to hold the ball as long as possible before taking a last-minute shot. Going to a 30-second shot clock is another step toward making the college game more similar to the pro game, which features a 24-second shot clock (and an eight-second half court violation instead of ten). There will be more focus on scoring in order to build a lead instead of trading slow baskets one at a time. That slow, grinding style that tends to mark tournament basketball in the NCAA at times will have less time to get set up in place. In particular, having only ten total seconds to bring the ball up will represent a particularly intriguing challenge.

Sources:
Sports-reference.com: http://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/coaches/rick-byrd-1.html
NCAA.com: http://www.ncaa.com/