Shot clock has historically hurt college basketball scoring

College basketball isn't broken. The ideas to fix it are.

In the NCAA's never-ending quest to cater to the fan's desire of high-scoring affairs, the proposal to decrease the shot clock from 35 to 30 seconds was approved by the men's basketball rules committee May 15. The only remaining step to implement it for the 2015-16 season is ratification June 8.

Everyone outside of Steve Fisher and Larry Shyatt is searching for a way to rectify college basketball's trend of decreased scoring. With last season's 30-second-shot-clock experiment in the NIT seeing teams average an improved 70.3 points per game, this seems like the obvious step, right?

"We looked at all those figures and we looked at them closely. None of them really indicated a negative effect in terms of scoring or possessions," said Belmont coach Rick Byrd, chairman of the rules committee. "I think that people (who) were 35 second shot clock advocates could say it didn't show a huge bump, either.

"We don't think it's going to cause a huge bump. We think it's a part of the puzzle, just a piece that helps us get the game headed in the right direction."

It's unnerving the lack of historical perspective the committee and the more than 60 percent of college basketball coaches who, according to an NABC survey, are in favor of adjusting the shot clock have on their own sport.

There is, and has never been, a direct correlation between college basketball's available time on a shot clock and positive offensive production.

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Scoring in 2014-15 dipped from 71 to 67.74 points per game, its second-lowest mark since 1983. On the surface, it's easy to assume simply having a shot clock (introduced in 1985) would increase a game's scoring because it prevents a team from dribbling out the remaining time in a half, but it's not the case.

When the 45-second shot clock was adopted in the 1985-86 season, a team's average points per game increased from 69.2 to 69.4—statistically irrelevant. The following season, scoring spiked to 72.8 and would steadily increase through 1993-94, but not due to the shot clock; it was because the 3-point line was introduced in 1986-87.

In fact, the last time the shot clock was reduced (from 45 seconds to 35 in 1994-95), scoring had decreased a full five points per game within three years and has been on a decline since. The only significant scoring spike college basketball has seen since the 3-point line was 2013-14 when the points-per-game average was 71.

Why the uptick? Because the nearly record-low scoring in 2012-13 (67.5 ppg) caused the rules oversight committee to panic and request more fouls be called, making it impossible to play defense without sending opponents to the free-throw line. It's not surprising 2013-14's more than 19 fouls and 22 free-throw attempts per game were the most since 2002 (not-so-coincidentally the last time scoring had eclipsed 71 points per game).

Numbers don't lie. All shortening the shot clock will do is make points more of a luxury than they already are like it did in 1994. Defenses will vamp up backcourt pressure to shorten possessions further and fluster offenses that focus on set plays.

Scoring is down because 351 schools play NCAA Division I basketball and a lot of them aren't very good (31 teams shot worse than 40 percent from the field last year). It's down because NCAA tournament program Wyoming only needs 45 points to beat San Diego State. And that's OK.

Duke's 68-63 victory over Wisconsin in the national championship game (a score below the national average) was, according to Sports Media Watch, the highest-rated televised basketball game -- college or pro -- since Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals when Michael Jordan nailed his historic "last" shot in Salt Lake City with 28.3 million viewers.

In addition to the proposal of a 30-second shot clock were rules aimed to make the game less physical by more strictly enforcing defensive violations. At the same time, the committee wants to limit second-half team timeouts to three (among other timing concerns) to improve pace of play.

You can't have both.

College basketball this past season was more fun to watch because is flowed. There were fewer fouls and stoppages. As a result there were fewer points.

History has proven the only way to have consistently higher-scoring college basketball games is to turn them into a free-throw contest, and no one wants to watch that drag out.

Shortening the shot clock won't have an effect.

For insight and analysis on athletics around Northern Colorado and the Mountain West, follow sports columnist Matt L. Stephens at twitter.com/mattstephens and facebook.com/stephensreporting.