Welcome to Play-by-Play Theater, the semi-regular very irregular feature where I mine play-by-play data from the past four-plus seasons to discover the wacky things that happen in darkest corners of the college basketball schedule. Christmas week is not a time for major breaking news, but last Saturday there was an unusual occurrence worth documenting for […]

If you ever want to feel invincible, I recommend checking out the life actuarial tables provided by the Social Security Administration. You can look up your age and figure out how many more years the average person at that age figures to live. According to the tables, at age 40 I can be expected to […]

This is a weekly digest documenting the biggest upsets, craziest comebacks, and Alan Williams news of the past seven days. Biggest upsets 1. New Orleans 71, UTEP 69, Monday. (2%) Whenever I see an upset of this magnitude, I am forced to wonder if there’s something wrong with the ratings that feed the predictions. New […]

Sometime during the North Carolina-Kentucky game, Dick Vitale mentioned that he would be in favor of allowing a player to accumulate six fouls before being disqualified. It was probably around the time that five Kentucky players had at least two fouls in the first half. I’ve heard a few folks suggest this remedy as the […]

This is a weekly digest documenting the biggest upsets, craziest comebacks, and Alan Williams news of the past seven days. Programming note: The past week was finals week for most schools. Thus, action of the noteworthy variety was limited. So work with me on what follows. Biggest upsets There was not a single upset of […]

Sometimes I’ll be watching a game and it’s noted that a team is playing small. Often this means a team is going with three or maybe four guards. But sometimes that terminology is thrown around when the 6-6 wing is moved to the four and he’s playing alongside a 6-11 center. I understand the terminology […]

One of the issues that came up with the previous analysis of early season trends in this space was just how much the lack of charging calls is affecting the historically low turnover rate we’ve seen so far. This is not something that can be answered definitively using publicly available data. We can isolate fouls […]

This is a weekly digest documenting the biggest upsets, craziest comebacks, and Alan Williams news of the past seven 14 days. Biggest upsets These teams have been reading some Malcolm Gladwell lately. Yes, David can beat Goliath on occasion. 3. Illinois-Chicago 74, San Diego 70 (9%), Nov. 26. UIC had previously lost by 20 at […]

The ACC/Big Ten challenge commences in a few hours. Last season’s challenge ended with each team winning six games apiece. You might think that means it was a tie, but this site recognizes the ACC as the defending. Because, really, ties are not what basketball is all about. And if the powers aren’t going to […]

Evaluating a coach’s ability is a difficult thing. On either end of the spectrum, sure, it’s not too difficult. Obviously, Mike Krzyzewski is very good at leading a program, and we can find a coach or two in recent years that ran a program with great resources into the ground and assume they were not […]