I suspect the blocked shots thing is one that is a bit of luck involved. While blocking shots to keep them in-bounds is a skill, I would agree (Roy Hinson was terrific at that skill), I suspect if the stats were available (I do not think they are), generally how many blocked shots stay in-bounds or go out of bounds is more random than not ... not going to say 50-50, necessarily, but random ... so ALL blocked shots going out of bounds would seem just unlucky. In some ways I compare blocked shots to fumbles: Causing fumbles and fumbling are not random, but skills, but recovering them is somewhat random. See the below discussion on fumbles.
FYI, though bad luck, and affecting the defensive efficiency stats, it IS fair to say a shot blocked out of bounds should be an offensive rebound (it does mean the offensive team missed a shot and retained the ball). I do NOT agree with the CYO coach who says a blocked shot out of bounds is like no block at all - clearly that is simply wrong ... blocking a shot prevents a FG and score, and even if the ball stays with the offensive team, they still have to do SOMETHING NEW to score, and the shot clock does not reset, etc.
For example, in college football, if you look at data over a full season of ALL college football teams, and over very long periods, like years and even decades, you will see that FUMBLE recoveries by a team in any single game, or frankly, for any ONE team over the course of ONE season, is totally random and a matter of sheer luck. I am not talking about CAUSING fumbles, but recovering them. The body of statistics show that over the course of a season for all of college football, and over the course of years, about ONE HALF of all fumbles are recovered by the defense and ONE HALF by the offense.
But you can get very tilted results for ne team over the course of one season. I looked at this for Rutgers after the 2007 football season, when it felt like RU was not recovering enough of the fumbles they caused, and seemed to lose a lot of fumbles.
So ... in 2006, RU fumbled 11 times (not random), lost 7 of them (random) ... and RU's defense CAUSED 24 fumbles (not random) and RECOVERED 16 (random - 2/3 of fumbles caused by RU were recovered). But in 2007, RU fumbled the ball 14 times (not random - 3 more times than in 2006), but LOST 12 of those 14 fumbles (RANDOM, and a ridiculous # of lost fumbles compared to actual fumbles - if RU fumbled, they lost the ball), and CAUSED 20 fumbles (not random), and RECOVERED 10 fumbles (random - about 50%).
FYI, in 2005 RU fumbled 13 times but lost just 4 ... in 2010, RU fumbled 16 times lost just 5 ... caused 24 fumbles and recovered 14 ... Just for sh*ts and giggles: In 2024 RU only fumbled 4 times (that is ridiculously low, never heard of such a low number), losing 2, and caused 14 fumbles - but only recovered 5 (just 1/3).
