Just 76 years after the NBA, 58 years after women’s college basketball and 43 years after men’s college basketball instituted a shot clock, the PIAA will be doing so as well.
Beginning in the 2028-29 season, all varsity and JV boys and girls basketball games in the state will use a 35-second shot clock, approved Wednesday in a unanimous vote by the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association’s board of directors in Mechanicsburg.
The 2028-29 season was proposed as the adoption year to give schools time to raise funds for the new equipment, such as scoreboards, etc., and to train officials.
“The board has done a great job of vetting this out, looking at everything, looking at prices and talking to their member schools,” PIAA Assistant Executive Director Jen Grassel said. “We followed the process step-by-step trying to see if it was the right move for Pennsylvania, and I think that’s what they did.”
Pennsylvania joins 32 states (including Washington, D.C.) that use a shot clock.
The PIAA board passed a first reading of the proposal in July after it initially failed by one vote. Three months later, it advanced through a second reading before approval in the third and decisive reading Wednesday.
The PIAA will work out additional details about the shot clock in future meetings. The next one is Jan. 14.
“There’s some things that it implements in the rulebook that we’ll sit down and discuss, about restarts and things like that,” Grassel said. “We’ll still have discussion on that moving forward.”
Shot clocks can range in price from hundreds of dollars to $10,000-$20,000, depending on the need and fit. The approval came a day after the PIAA announced a new audio streaming network as it tries to modernize.