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Friday, December 12, 2003

Don’t Call it a Comeback

A follow-up to last night's post on how teams making big comebacks fare in overtime:

I looked back on all the OT games played so far. I limited my search to games involving the "BCS" conferences and the A-10, Mountain West, MVC, and WAC. When you start dealing with lower conferences, it becomes difficult to get accurate game information. Below is a list of teams that overcame at least a 15 point deficit in the 2nd half to force OT.

12/6 Michigan St. vs Oklahoma (MSU down 15 with 13 minutes to go) Result: OU 80-77 12/6 Kansas St. vs. Oregon St. (KSU down 16 with 15 minutes to go) Result: OSU 87-82 12/10 Florida vs. Maryland (Florida down 17 with 16 minutes to go) Result: Md 69-68

So the team making the big comeback is 0 for 3 in overtime games. By the end of the year hopefully there will be 15-20 such games to give a decent idea of whether there's a legitimate trend here. If so, I think it would suggest that the effort needed to make up a deficit is greater than the effort needed to build a lead. Hence, the team coming back is pretty much pooped in OT and often loses.

It was somewhat arbitrary that I chose 15 points as my cutoff. If I had chosen 14 I would have included Xavier's comeback against Indiana which ultimately was also a loss. But 15 is a nice round number so I am going with that. I could go with 10, but then I saw Duke make up that deficit in less than a minute against Maryland once, so it doesn't seem like a big deal.

Posted on 12/12 at 12:10 AM
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