A CHANGE I'M 9/10 SURE IS NEEDED

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Those of us of a certain age can remember when scoreboard clocks did not register tenths of a second.

They counted down in minutes and whole seconds. If I remember correctly those clocks "ticked" every half second, which meant when the clock showed two seconds left, it might be two full seconds or it might only be one and a half. Basketball teams had to take that into account when drawing up a final play. Today, most clocks are set to count down the final seconds of each period in tenths.

That takes us to last night's Southern Cayuga-Weedsport boys game in the first night of the Cayuga County Holiday Tournament at Spartan Hall at Cayuga Community College. While scoreboards register tenths of a second, human reflexes do not. 

Weedsport trailed 55-54 with 3.1 seconds left in the game. Southern Cayuga missed the front of a one-and-one and the rebound was tied up for a held ball with 0.1 second remaining. The arrow pointed to Weedsport, but with one tenth of a second remaining, the game was essentially over. Not quite. One of the officials instructed the clock operator to reset the clock to 0.9 second.

Weedsport would need to inbound from under their own basket and try to get a shot off or draw a Southern Cayuga foul to have a chance. The rules say the clock operator should start the clock when the ball is touched inbounds by an offensive or defensive player and should stop on an official's whistle. 

You can see the problem here. We have a clock counting off tenths, but it's manually started and stopped by one human being following the command of another. 

Weedsport's inbounds pass was deflected out of bounds near half court by a Southern Cayuga defender. The clock stopped at 0.1 second remaining. Not enough time for Weedsport to inbound again and get a shot off. Game over. Nope. One of the officials instructed the clock operator to reset to 0.8 second. 

The final inbounds pass was stolen by Southern Cayuga, and this time, the clock went to zero and the game was over. 

It turned out the clock machinations had no real effect on the result, other than to replace a fantastic finish with a series of conferences and delays. The first reset from 0.1 to 0.9 after the rebound scramble was pure guesswork on the part of the official. The second actually makes good sense. The ball tipped off one hand of the defender and went immediately out of bounds. The official ruled wisely that that play should take the minimum amount of time possible, one tenth of a second. 

We also learned that the minimum amount of time between "clock operator sees ball touched and starts clock" to "ref blows whistle" to "clock operator hears whistle and stops clock" is almost a full second.

The tenths of a second scoreboard clock is simply incompatible with the limitations of the humans who have to administer the system. Get rid of it.