Luck

[Inyatkin]

Not luck. Luck is Kemba Walker's 3-pt heave against Texas. Or running into a Florida team in 2014 who's point guard can't dribble.

The team needs to learn how to win. This is evident after watching all 3 losses. Chaos in the final 2 minutes.

You're ascribing our win over Florida in 2014 to luck? You're talking about the Final Four game, right? Not the Shabazz buzzer beater?
I hope not, because there was nothing lucky about that Final Four win.

 

[CTBasketball]

You're ascribing our win over Florida in 2014 to luck? You're talking about the Final Four game, right? Not the Shabazz buzzer beater?
I hope not, because there was nothing lucky about that Final Four win.

The tip back to Shabazz and that whole sequence was rather lucky.

 

[Leebo]

The tip back to Shabazz and that whole sequence was rather lucky.

That kind of thing is exactly what I'm talking about with bounces. Yes, DD did a great job to get his hand on that ball, so that's not lucky, but I'm sure he would tell you that he couldn't have possibly expected it to go directly into Shabazz's hands. That ball could have gone straight to a Florida player and it wouldn't have been DD's fault.

 

[intlzncster]

That kind of thing is exactly what I'm talking about with bounces. Yes, DD did a great job to get his hand on that ball, so that's not lucky, but I'm sure he would tell you that he couldn't have possibly expected it to go directly into Shabazz's hands. That ball could have gone straight to a Florida player and it wouldn't have been DD's fault.

Yes, luck is better categorized by the work 'breaks' (or 'bounces' in BB). You need to get the 'breaks' in any sport to win a Championship. It can even be pregame, with injuries, or lack thereof, to either team, draw in a tournament, which officiating crew you get, which arena you are at or crowd you are playing in front of, etc.

Then in game, you need those random things to go your way. Texas needed Marcus White's shot to get inexplicably stuck between the rim and the backboard to win that game. They may have won otherwise, but as it stands, that was a huge break for them. Same in every sport.

 

[Rico444]

The tip back to Shabazz and that whole sequence was rather lucky.

Yeah, but the game where Scottie Wilbekin had trouble dribbling was the final four game, in which we won pretty comfortably.

 

[Palatine]

Luck is the residue of hard work. -Branch Rickey

 

[Palatine]

Luck is a bank in three. -Palatine

 

[CTBasketball]

Yeah, but the game where Scottie Wilbekin had trouble dribbling was the final four game, in which we won pretty comfortably.

Scotty couldn't dribble at all.

 

[Rico444]

Scotty couldn't dribble at all.

Yeah, I'm confused. You keep going back and forth between the two games. The game where Scottie couldn't dribble was not the same as the tap back to Napier.

 

[intlzncster]

Scotty couldn't dribble at all.

Certainly not w Boat draped all over his arse.

 

[pj]

we were top 5 in "luck" rating during the 2014 run and have been bottom of the league the last two years. I don't understand it, but the way the stat is calculated shows it pretty clearly.

Shabazz Napier = luck. No Shabazz = no luck.

 

[Inyatkin]

Luck - A measure of the deviation between a team’s actual winning percentage and what one would expect from its game-by-game efficiencies. It’s a Dean Oliver invention. Essentially, a team involved in a lot of close games should not win (or lose) all of them. Those that do will be viewed as lucky (or unlucky).

UConn is 338th in this metric out of 351 teams currently in college basketball.

KenPom has us all the way up to 300th now. For whatever that means.

 

[Jerry1714]

This is the conversation I wanted to start. I'm not saying its pixies and gnomes, I'm saying that on a possession by possession basis we're more efficient than our record would indicate. Which means all of the above I think.

I also believe it indicates a likelihood to recover well from here forward.

Our metrics show we are a billion times better than 99% percent of this board says we are. The metrics are generally right, and 99% of the board is usually 100% wrong, so I feel good about our chances this year.

 

[Inyatkin]

Our metrics show we are a billion times better than 99% percent of this board says we are.

That's some solid math right there

 

[pnow15]

If poker is a game of luck, why do the same guys always end up at the final table.

 

[champs99and04]

People often conflate luck with statistical deviation. Not saying the OP is doing that, as I agree with what he says, but I think the word 'luck' carries a much different connotation, especially in this context, because it infers that you deserve something that you don't have, or vice versa.
'Knowing how to win' is a phrase that gets tossed around to romanticize results, simple as that. If the 40% three point shooter misses a shot that would have won the game, it's because he doesn't have the clutch gene, not because this happened to be one of the 6 times out of 10 that he was going to miss it. We prefer to think that there is a greater meaning, or life moral, that we can assign to statistical variation, but most of the time there's not.

If UConn hits 15 out of 25 threes and beats Georgetown by 25 on Saturday, they deserve to be commended for it. That doesn't mean we should use that one game as the baseline for what we can expect from UConn moving forward, though.

 

[whaler11]

This is the conversation I wanted to start. I'm not saying its pixies and gnomes, I'm saying that on a possession by possession basis we're more efficient than our record would indicate. Which means all of the above I think.

I also believe it indicates a likelihood to recover well from here forward.

Points for the effort.

 

[whaler11]

There are people that understand variance in sports and that the results of a game aren't a reflection on character. There are people who don't understand this.

The last thing you ever want to see is those two groups trying to discuss the topic.