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Tuesday, February 28, 2006

All For One

So Oklahoma pulled off an astounding fourth straight one-point victory last night. This hasn’t been done before in the limited data I have. Three straight one-point wins has only been done once since the ‘99 season - two years ago by High Point. If you have followed this streak, you have seen some examples of how luck is a large factor in determining the outcome of close games. As a further demonstration, I pulled every occurrence of a team playing two consecutive one-point games in the last eight seasons. Here were the results: 

Record   Times
 2-0       43
 1-1       84
 0-2       33

This works out almost the way a coin flip situation should. You’d expect 25% in each of the first and last bins and 50% in the middle one. Take 3 each from the 2-0 and 1-1 and put them in the 0-2 and that’s exactly what you would have. I don’t know what this proves, as the outcome of one-point games is not totally determined by luck - you’d expect talent to have some impact. It would be more instructive to look at cases where there is a big talent gap and see how the favorite fared in these games.

Line o’ the Night 

                           FG    3pt  FT   Reb
                      Min  M-A   M-A  M-A  O-T   A F S TO BLK Pts
Paul Millsap           35  8-13  0-0  4-5  7-18  2 3 1  2  0   20
Result: Win. Louisiana Tech 74, Idaho 49.

Lost in the hysteria over the scoring title is that Millsap is in a tough battle for his third consecutive rebounding crown with Hartford’s Kenny Adeleke. With this effort, it’s Millsap 13.069 rpg, Adeleke 13.037 rpg. Conference tournaments will decide this one.

Posted on 02/28 at 12:35 AM
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