Shot clock arrives For AHSAA games
The shot clock, part of college basketball for the last four decades, is migrating to Alabama high schools.
The Alabama High School Athletic Association announced April 15 that it is mandating a 35-second shot clock starting with the 2026-27 season.
Stall ball is out. The AHSAA previously had allowed games to use a shot clock only if both head coaches agreed to it.
The cost will be a key factor.
Deshler has a shotclock system that was used in the annual post-Christmas Bracy Invitational and around four other games last year. It cost about $3,200 to install and the school paid $25 per game for someone to operate it, boys coach Brian Pounders said.
“That’s not cheap,” Belgreen Principal Megean Berryman said. “We’ll have to start budgeting for it now. We’ll have to find some creative ways to raise some money.”
Colleges started using a standard 45-second clock in the mid-1980s that was changed in the early 1990s to 35 for men and 30 for women. A decade ago, the men also changed to 30 seconds.
The shot clock is meant to force action since some teams, faced with what they feel are near-impossible odds, use delay tactics to maximize their chances.
The lowest-scoring AHSAA game in history was in February 2015 when the Bibb County boys beat Brookwood 2-0. An AISA girls championship game in 2014 ended 15-2. The losing team’s three previous losses all season were to the winning team by 20-plus points.
