PIAA votes down shot clock proposal ahead of 2025-26 high school basketball season
Pull the plug. No shot clock is coming to Pennsylvania high school gyms next season.
That’s the verdict after the PIAA steering committee voted against a shot clock proposal during Tuesday’s board of directors meeting, according to state media.
That means the yearslong debate is likely to continue, even though shot clocks will not be in Pa. gyms for at least the 2025-26 season.
Butler girls coach Mark Maier said he’s “100% for the shot clock,” and the only arguments he feels one can make against it are about cost and staffing, particularly for smaller schools.
“I think it would be higher scoring, it’ll improve offenses,” he said. “I know how I coach, if we have a lead with four minutes to go ... we’re not taking a shot, and that’s boring.”
The National Federation of State High School Associations in 2021 voted to allow state associations to adopt a shot clock. According to the NFHS, 31 states and Washington, D.C., have adopted it as of this spring.
According to SportsRadio 96.7’s Bob Greenburg, the PIAA surveyed member schools, and while a majority of respondents (55%) supported a shot clock, about 30% of schools did not reply to the survey.
Maier said he and boys coach Matt Clement voiced support for the shot clock when Butler athletic director Bill Mylan asked them their responses for the PIAA survey in the spring.
Asked what one rule change — beyond a shot clock — he would make if he were named PIAA czar of basketball, Maier said he’d want the WPIAL to allow every team to make the playoffs, like they did in 2021 after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Then he added a second decree: abolishing the two 30-second timeouts in each half and giving each team four 60-second timeouts each half instead.
“I don’t even know why we have (two) 30-second or (three) full timeouts,” he said.
