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.