Most lacrosse fans are in favor of a shot clock. Very few people, if any, think the college game should remain status quo.
Count me among those who think there should be a shot clock, but 60 seconds would be too dramatic, too quickly. I believe a shot clock should be implemented, but be more than 60 seconds – perhaps 90 seconds.
My town did not have lacrosse growing up, so my first experience with the sport came as a freshman in UMass during 2006, a season that reached the National Championship Game. I fell in love with the sport and one of the aspects I instantly liked the most was the value of each possession. In basketball, there can be several possessions within a short stretch, but in lacrosse, there are much fewer. That can be perceived as a bad thing, but I see it as a positive. It adds to the drama of the game.
How excited are you when your team wins a faceoff in a big late-game situation? Would that moment feel as big if your team had the ball 50 times in the game instead of 30? I believe those extra possessions disvalue and reduce the drama of the faceoff along with many other aspects of lacrosse.
If there are more possessions within a game, it lessens some exciting aspects of the game of lacrosse, most notably, the groundball battle. Some want the value of the faceoff to be diminished, but I’m not one of those. I see the faceoff as a valuable and exciting aspect to lacrosse that keeps teams in games and adds to the excitement. But that’s a story for another day.
What I’ve noticed with Major League Lacrosse is a whole different game. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, because the MLL product is highly entertaining in itself, but it’s different. Just like the NBA feels much different than college basketball.
Clearly, college lacrosse needs a shot clock. There are several recent examples. Maryland (#8 seed) stalled Syracuse (#1 seed) to advance to the 2011 Final Four. Then in 2012, the Terps held the ball for the final 4:41 in a first-round win over Lehigh. Credit Maryland because they did so legally. They did nothing wrong. In fact, it was a smart strategy to slow down a high-powered offense (in the first case) or hold for a final shot (in the second case), all within the letter of the law.
The NCAA knew it had to do something and implemented the 30-second invisible shot clock after a stall warning for the 2013 season. Naturally, there was less stalling, but there was a lot of ambiguity surrounding how long it would take for a stall warning to be assessed. Many times, if an opponent was trying to attack goal, but a defense was just too strong, the officials wouldn’t call a stall. In not calling a stall warning, that punished the defense. Also, if after a two-minute possession, a defense forced a loose ball that was recovered by the offense, that offense would usually be allowed to hold the ball for another minute or two without a stall warning being assessed, even though it came on the same possession.
North Carolina even found a loophole in a game this year. With Johns Hopkins not pressuring, Joey Sankey was able to stand behind the net for two minutes without a stall warning being called.
None of this is meant to rip the officials. In fact, they should be praised. They were 100 percent in the right for not calling a stall warning on Sankey, by the letter of the law. They have been doing their job. The problem is leaving the initial stall warning up to judgment.
That is why the current system is not working.
The biggest goal is to avoid stalling. However, if a 60-second shot clock is implemented in college, I fear the desperation shot to avoid a shot clock violation. You see that a little bit in Major League Lacrosse, but I fear that it would be more prevalent in college, especially in the early going. A team sets up its offense and by that point, there are only 30 seconds left on the shot clock. More times than not, it should be enough time, but what if the looks aren’t there? Before you know it, the shot clock reads 10…9…8…7…
Panicked, the attackman makes a pass up top to a midfielder who is promptly double teamed, but still has to heave a shot towards goal which goes wide or the goalie easily gobbles up. That’s not the point of a shot clock, is it? Especially if those desperation shots are commonplace.
An out of the box idea would be to start a shot clock as soon as the team enters the box. Maybe it’s 60 seconds once you enter the box. It’s strange to me that in the MLL, the same 60 seconds goes on the shot clock after a faceoff win as a defensive stop down the other end of the field. By the time that team clears the ball and gets into its offense, the clock is winding down.
Witnessing my first MLL game of the summer earlier this month, I was impressed by the quality looks that the offenses were getting. There weren’t as many desperation shots as I originally thought there’d be, but there were still some. With the college game, it would be too dramatic to go from nothing to 60 seconds. Even with 90 seconds, there would still be some desperation shots, but at that point, I blame the offense (and/or credit the defense).
Going back to the value of each possession, I think 90 seconds preserves that aspect as well. Assuming 60 seconds per possession, there could be as few as 60 total possessions within a game. With a 90-second clock, there could be as few as 40 (but there would obviously be more). Twenty fewer possessions in a game could be seen as bad by many, but I see it as good. It makes those 40 possessions that much more important, edge-of-your-seat drama. An offense must score because possessions are few and far between, adding just as much pressure to the defense.
A shot clock of 90 seconds would eliminate teams holding the ball for minutes on end, yet there would be ample time to get into your offense, but not be so fast that you’re firing desperation shots that have little chance of going in.
Some people will agree with me, some won’t. I am not against shot clock at all, but for many reasons, believe it should be longer than 60 seconds. I said 90 seconds in this story as an example, but think 75 seconds could make sense as well. What do you think?
Coming down the stretch in a tight game, even if a team was down one with three minutes remaining and lost the faceoff, they knew that they would either get the ball back or the opponent would score – in which case they’d get another chance at the faceoff X. To me, it feels like less drama in a situation like that versus when a defense really has to earn a takeaway to get his offense the ball back.
