The margins are thinner than you think

[PSAL_Hoops]

Rutgers was 42% from 3 that game, Minnesota 46%. Let’s not ignore the body of work.

That’s unrelated to the point I made. The situation in the Minny game was even worse. We had a 10 or 11 point lead there with 72 seconds to play and I think we had maybe 6 team fouls? It was a 1 and 1 situation of a 4 possession game.

The odds of Minny connecting on 6 straight 3s in a row was very low (and has nothing to do with us shooting better than normal from 3 that day because the point is Pike made a decision to play the odds of them making every attempt from there on in knowing how little time was left. We got burned which is extremely unlucky - but the odds would have been a heck of a lot lower for Minny if we simply didn’t let them get any shots off at all. Non-shooting fouls would only have been 1 and 1. Minny didn’t have to simply win a FT shooting contest. That had to make up a 10 pt margin in 70 seconds.

 

[PSAL_Hoops]

One thing to add - Pike does a lot of things well but closing out wins is not on the list. This season brought memories of not only the Minny loss last season, but also the way we lost that Stonybrook game.

 

[fluoxetine]

How is luck calculated? Must be a great stay for coaches to use when they don’t win or finish seasons strong. I would like to understand the calculation better to be fairs. My initial instinct is to destroy a stat that could have only been created by someone living in their mothers basement working on it into between magic card tournaments at KENPOM. Make better decisions at the end of games. Use your timeouts effectively. Make free throws. Do you know who does not look at luck ratings? Anyone playing Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday this week.

It's the difference between your actual winning percentage and expected winning percentage based on your efficiency margin. What it measures is not truly 100% luck. But it's a lot more luck than you would care to admit.

Also I would like to stand back to appreciate the irony of someone who spends a LOT of time just trolling a message board typing the words "someone living in their mothers basement working on it into between magic card tournaments at KENPOM".

That seemed to happen to us alot down the line though (Purdue felt that way, when they hit three threes in a row on what were basically desperation shots as the shot clock wound down. Same with Minnesota in their comeback). When stuff like that happens a bunch, maybe its not just bad luck.

That's silly.. it someone hits what are clearly desperation shots against you at a high rate that is obviously bad luck. You can see the shots, you can see that they are desperation end of shot clock heaves.

There was a lot of self inflicted pain in this Rutgers basketball season, but also a lot of bad luck, and often in combination. The season result itself was sort of the same as a few games..

We commit an untimely turnover or FT miss (our fault) => our opponent plays well to convert on the other end (bad luck)
We falter down the stretch (out fault) => we get left out of the tournament despite the fact that we still should have been selected (bad luck)

If you are good enough, you can survive the bad luck. If you have good or neutral luck, you can survive making mistakes. If you make mistakes and have bad luck, bad things happen.

 

[RUDiddy777]

I just don't see how you can't see how ridiculous almost every shot hofstra made. at one point dude shot a complete airball the center flailed his arm and knocked it right in. It was comical.

Pretty sure Cliff even put one in for them in the 2nd half.

 

[bac2therac]

Pretty sure Cliff even put one in for them in the 2nd half.

I know the one you are talking about