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Message: [QUOTE="diggerfoot, post: 3929204, member: 1673"] ..... or fraction of a second as the case may be. Conventional wisdom holds that Williams should have intentionally missed her second foul shot. I do not believe the probabilities necessarily favor that strategy. If the fouls shot was missed, Baylor’s only option would be to heave a shot as soon as they obtained the rebound. That’s a very low probability which seems to favor the strategy. However, if they have to take the ball out of bounds after a made shot there are two independent events that have to both occur: Baylor has to successfully make an in bound pass and then make a shot. If defense was not a factor the in bound pass is made cross court to near the opponents basket. Multiplying the the two probabilities still yields a very high result. But defense is a factor. The nearer to the opponents basket the pass the lower the probability it gets completed. There is a high probability of completing the pass near your own basket, in which case multiplying the probabilities of completing the pass and making the shot stoll should be lower than heaving a shot after a rebound. There may be an optimum distance for which making the in bounds pass and ensuing shot yields a higher probability when multiplied together, but two other factors come into play. One is how good the defense plays the passing lanes. UConn is very good at this. If a team is good enough at playing passing lanes then the probabilities of multiplying successful pass and shot together will never be higher than a heave after a rebound. The other factor is what a team chooses to be a winning philosophy. Instructing a player to intentionally miss a shot means lack of confidence that the defense is good enough for the ensuing task of making the in bounds pass difficult. At times this may be the right strategy, but the better a team is at defending the more you want to nourish their trust in that, secure in the knowledge that the probabilities of two independent events favor you. The second is what kind of philosophy you adapt towards winning games. [/QUOTE]

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