The Holy Land of Hoops

The NCAA in all the other post-season tournaments is using a 30 second shot clock as a test...

Last night was the first game with that- NJIT beat New Hampshire 84-77.

The final tempo was 70 last night's game- signifigantly above normal for both teams. NJIT prior was a 66.6, NH was 64. NJIT scored more points only twice this year vs D1 teams. NH scored more than 77 points only once this year vs D1 teams.

NJIT only had 5 games all year long with more possessions than last night. NH had only 4, and 3 of those were OT games.

So looks like it did what they were wanting it to do. Will be very interesting to see if that trend continues.

Didn't know the CIT was using a 30 second shot clock. I do like the NIT is going from 3 foot to 4 foot arch under the basket. Doesn't sound like much, but it is, just flip on any of the games on the world wide leader and see for yourself.

MUPanther wrote:Didn't know the CIT was using a 30 second shot clock. I do like the NIT is going from 3 foot to 4 foot arch under the basket. Doesn't sound like much, but it is, just flip on any of the games on the world wide leader and see for yourself.

Yeah think they all are doing it to get that much more data. Instead of 31 games, more like 78-79 games I think.

Saw Pittsburgh lost tonight in the NIT. Their tempo for the year was 61.3 #321. With the 30 second shot clock, that was up to 64 tonight.

So Pitt loses their last 5 and 10 of last 16 games. They may be the former Big East program that I think is going to drop the furthest from their peak. After Jamie Dixon's first 8 years- where he had 3,9,5,3,4,1,3,1 seeds- winning at least 10 conference games every year- he's had 2 non tourney years and the 2 he went to- 8,9 seeds.

after last night the minor tournaments have had 16 games. Average scoring in those 16 games- 73.47 ppg. Thru end of Feb teams had been scoring 67.4 ppg.

Yeah, I think it's safe to say the 30 second shot clock is going to be reality next season.

stever20 wrote:after last night the minor tournaments have had 16 games. Average scoring in those 16 games- 73.47 ppg. Thru end of Feb teams had been scoring 67.4 ppg.

Yeah, I think it's safe to say the 30 second shot clock is going to be reality next season.

It would be interesting to see a scoring comparison to NIT games in year's past. I've always felt the non-NCAA tournament games were played a lot more loosely than regular season games and scoring was higher in them anyway - same for CIT and CBI. I think it's very possible they go to a 30sec shot clock, but I think it is a bit premature to make any kind of judgment using a couple of NIT games as the rationale. I could just as eailyy use the BYU-Ole Miss game as an example as to why they should keep it at 35secs. Correlation does not equal causation.

Just looking at the ken-pom projected scores shows that you are right- but still this years difference is much bigger than last years...

last years 1st night NIT games- teams averaged scoring 73.88 ppg. They were projected to score 70.27. So about 3.61 more per game. Avg scoring for season was 70.25- so 1st rd NIT games about 3.63 more per game.
this years 1st night NIT games- teams averaged scoring 72.11 ppg. They were projected to score 66.33. So about 5.78 more per game. Avg scoring for season was 66.85- so 1st rd NIT games about 5.26 more per game.

So you are right, however it's about another 1.7 points per game higher than last year when looking at average scoring. And keep in mind, this is per team. So last nights games were about 10.5 more points per game scoring compared to this years average.

Also would have to say last years overall scoring average had something to do with the free throws shot at the start of the season- kind of added some points that otherwise wouldn't have been there...

Thought Ken Pom brought up a pretty interesting thought. Everyone says a negative about the shot clock going down is the offenses rushing and not getting great shots. What does that do? Give the defense a chance to get more chances against a team that isn't set up yet. Leading to more baskets.

I would say it's a 95% chance we're going to a 30 second shot clock. I really think it's been almost a foregone conclusion quite frankly. The fact the data at least initially supports it just makes it that much more so.

It's pretty simple math. Shorter shot clock = more possessions = more points.

Any decrease in offensive efficiency is not going to overcome the number of additional possessions. And historically there hasn't been much decrease in offensive efficiency anyway when you shorten the shot clock. The shorter clock results in more fast breaks and secondary breaks.

Also, none of the teams in these tournaments have had any time to implement new offensive sets for the 30 second clock. So you might expect scoring to increase even more next year since teams would have time to tweak their offenses.