LONE TREE — Stall ball is dead.
A shot clock is coming to Colorado high school basketball at the varsity level in 2026-27, passing by a vote of 40-30 at Tuesday’s CHSAA Legislative Council meeting at the DCSD Legacy Campus.
The 35-second shot clock applies to all classifications, boys and girls.
Since the National Federation of High Schools officially approved the shot clock in 2021 and other states began implementing it in 2022-23, Colorado basketball coaches and fans have been pushing for the shot clock here.
That movement started to gain serious traction in 2023 when the basketball committee surveyed CHSAA member schools to gauge interest. It was voted upon in January’s Legislative Council meeting but failed, mostly due to financial concerns from smaller and rural school districts over implementation costs. That proposal called for a shot clock across all levels of play and all classifications.
According to the basketball committee’s proposal on Tuesday, the financial impact per school ranges from $3,000 to $10,000, depending on each gym’s current electrical structure. Making the shot clock varsity-only requires schools to have a shot clock in just their main gyms, and not in their auxiliary gyms, thus saving on cost.
“I get that pushback (to an auxiliary shot clock), and I don’t know that we need to have it at all levels right now,” Chaparral athletic director and basketball committee member Rob Johnson said. “This gives us some time to figure it out, and maybe someday we’ll get there.”
The shot clock should increase the pace of play at the varsity level, while also making the ends of close games more exciting. Previously, teams with a slight lead in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter would often run a clock-kill offense, especially in the state tournament. With a shot clock, that won’t be possible anymore, as it will force offenses to run their sets within the allotted 35 seconds.
“This rewards good defense, and it doesn’t matter what time of the game, this also forces offenses to execute,” Johnson said. “There’s plenty of times I’ve seen a team poorly execute an offense, fumble it, reset, and the defense can’t get a stop because they run out of gas. This is going to improve every aspect of our sport and this is going to make coaches better, too.”
The basketball committee argued that adding the shot clock will also better prepare Colorado high school players for college basketball, where the shot clock has long been standard. The committee also had two other proposals prepared on Tuesday regarding the shot clock, one for Class 6A and 5A, and another for just Class 6A, but those became moot after the passing of the varsity-only proposal.
While the state will have to wait a few years for its official implementation, Johnson says a pilot program may be coming sooner than that. That pilot would require approval through the CHSAA Legislative Committee, and officials would need to be trained for it.
“Our coaches in (the Continental and Centennial Leagues) are champing at the bit to get this going, and even some other leagues might do the pilot with us,” Johnson said. “That will be something we probably shoot for not next year because it’s going to take time to get them put in, but maybe for that 2025-26 season. … Whether that’s league play only, or maybe Class 6A only, it’s definitely going to be a discussion point.”
Still, this may not be the end of the shot clock debate.
CHSAA associate commissioner Bethany Brookens says there’s a possibility that smaller school districts might bring an amendment forward in the next Legislative Council meeting, in January 2025, to exempt themselves from the shot clock requirements.
“I’m hopeful that it can move forward in a productive and positive direction with the membership, although I’ve already heard some schools will be bringing a proposed change next January,” said Brookens, who oversees basketball. “It’s never-ending, but I’m hopeful that we can at least start planning for the future with this passing.”
In other basketball news out of the meeting, there are a few changes to the sport’s postseason format. Most notably, Class 6A and 5A’s postseason bracket is expanding from 32 to 40 teams, with the top 24 teams earning a bye in the first round.
Also, the Class 1A regional seeding process will be tweaked; Class 3A and 2A districts are eliminated in favor of moving to a seeded regional format; and Class 4A will extend its season by one week to also move to a seeded regional format.
