Too much time on my hands...
Posted: June 19th, 2022, 9:37 pm
In an effort to quantify KenPom's ranking of bad luck (USU finished dead last), I reviewed the games from last season for USU and the teams that finished ahead of the Aggies in the standings.
I decided (completely arbitrarily) to define a close loss as a case where the winning points were scored on the last 5 seconds (though it turned out that 3.3 yields the same outcome).
By this definition, the UCD game is not included even though the margin was only three since the timing of the points was such that I eliminated it. In the case of OT games I only looked at the last part of the final OT, even though the game was obviously close.
I was curious how often a team loses on, essentially, the opposition's final possession.
On the whole it's pretty rare. It only happened in 5 games over the course of the whole MWC season - in and out of conference.
During OOC:
Wichita State two FTs with 3.0 seconds left to beat UNLV by 1.
SMC hit 2 FTs with 0.9 seconds left to beat USU by 2.
In conference:
BSU hit a 3 with 1.4 seconds left to beat USU by 3.
WYO hit a basket with 3.3 seconds left to beat USU by 2.
In the MWCT:
CSU hit a basket with 1.8 seconds left to beat USU by 2.
This is probably a big part of feeling raw about last season - close but unable to close the deal 4 separate times
No single win among those four games changes much about the season. But smarter play and better defense in those final possessions would have really been nice.
I decided (completely arbitrarily) to define a close loss as a case where the winning points were scored on the last 5 seconds (though it turned out that 3.3 yields the same outcome).
By this definition, the UCD game is not included even though the margin was only three since the timing of the points was such that I eliminated it. In the case of OT games I only looked at the last part of the final OT, even though the game was obviously close.
I was curious how often a team loses on, essentially, the opposition's final possession.
On the whole it's pretty rare. It only happened in 5 games over the course of the whole MWC season - in and out of conference.
During OOC:
Wichita State two FTs with 3.0 seconds left to beat UNLV by 1.
SMC hit 2 FTs with 0.9 seconds left to beat USU by 2.
In conference:
BSU hit a 3 with 1.4 seconds left to beat USU by 3.
WYO hit a basket with 3.3 seconds left to beat USU by 2.
In the MWCT:
CSU hit a basket with 1.8 seconds left to beat USU by 2.
This is probably a big part of feeling raw about last season - close but unable to close the deal 4 separate times
No single win among those four games changes much about the season. But smarter play and better defense in those final possessions would have really been nice.