Crazy stats from the Michigan game

[JasonEvans]

This probably belongs in the post-game thread, but it is just too much fun to not give it a home of its own.

In her writeup on the game, the wonderful Laura Keeley says --

Duke’s 79-69 win against Michigan was never that close--

Statistically speaking, Duke’s lead was 100 percent safe with 1:59 left on the clock, as the Blue Devils were up 66-50. That means 28 percent of the Wolverines’ points—19 of 69—were scored in garbage time.

Let’s take a look at whose stats received the most artificial padding at the end:

Mitch McGary, 4-for-4, 8 points, 3 rebounds
Nik Stauskas, 0-for-0, 1-of-2 FT, 1 point
Zak Irvin, 1-for-3, 3 points
Caris LeVert, 1-for-2, 2-of-2 FT, 5 points
Glenn Robinson III, 1-for-1, 2 points

LeVert still carried an offensively-inept Michigan throughout, finishing with a career-high 24 points, and the 19 that came while the game was competitive still led the Wolverines. But McGary’s 15-point, 14-rebound double-double came long after his team had already lost. Subtracting out his garbage-time flurry, McGary went 2-of-6 from the field for 7 total points.

That brings Michigan’s field goal percentage from the first 28 minutes to 39.1 percent (18-of-46). As noted in the game story, Duke’s defense was, again, much improved, even though the final stats don’t fully reflect that.

Lies, damned lies and statistics.

What jumped out to me was not the stat padding by the Michigan players, but the amount of points scored in the final 1:59 of play. Michigan scored 19 points and Duke scored 13. That's 32 combined points scored in 1:59 or a point every 3.7 seconds.

Put another way, extrapolated over an entire game, that would mean both teams combined for 645 points. The final score would have been Michigan 383, Duke 262.

Of course, given all the FT involved in that pace of scoring, it would probably have taken them 10 hours or so to play the whole game!

-Jason "somewhere, Paul Westhead is smiling at the notion of a 645 point game" Evans

[BD80]

This probably belongs in the post-game thread, but it is just too much fun to not give it a home of its own.

In her writeup on the game, the wonderful Laura Keeley says --



What jumped out to me was not the stat padding by the Michigan players, but the amount of points scored in the final 1:59 of play. Michigan scored 19 points and Duke scored 13. That's 32 combined points scored in 1:59 or a point every 3.7 seconds.

Put another way, extrapolated over an entire game, that would mean both teams combined for 645 points. The final score would have been Michigan 383, Duke 262.

Of course, given all the FT involved in that pace of scoring, it would probably have taken them 10 hours or so to play the whole game!

-Jason "somewhere, Paul Westhead is smiling at the notion of a 645 point game" Evans

Would the teams have had enough eligible players to foul at that rate for an entire game?

[Duvall]

Respect, Zak Irvin. Bench guys gotta get what they can.