The Minnesota State High School League's Board of Directors approved the requirement of a 35-second shot clock for the boys and girls 2023-2024 basketball season earlier this month.

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Cathedral Activities Director Emmett Keenan joined me on WJON this week.  He says this has been in the works for the past 16 years and Cathedral has used them during their Christmas tournament.  He says what he likes most about shot clocks is:

"It rewards you for playing good defense."

Keenan says other benefits of the shot clock include game flow and tempo.  He says eliminate teams from stalling when leading at the end of games grabbed some headlines but that type of thing doesn't happen very often.

Keenan says the cost of the shot clocks and installation would roughly cost $5-6 thousand dollars to purchase and another $1-2 thousand dollars to install.  Keenan says he's not sure exactly how much they cost now because they haven't had to look into adding them because they already have them.  He estimates that they would pay workers $30 to $35 to operate the shot clock per game which would equate to less than $1,000 a year for boys and girls games combined.  Keenan says he would push for the shot clocks to be used for Junior Varsity games as well.  He says they would need to train this person to do this but it shouldn't be that tough if that person knows the game.

If you'd like to listen to my conversation with Emmett Keenan it is available below.

 

 

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