Insane High School Basketball Playoff Game From Minnesota [Archive]

Tom B.

03-04-2016, 11:36 AM

This is why I love this time of year. Check out this ridiculous high school basketball game from Minnesota (link below, with embedded videos), in which the following sequence of events occurred:

Buzzer-beating three-pointer to force overtime.

Two clutch free throws force second overtime.

Steal and bucket force third overtime.

Kid hits a 75-FOOT SHOT at the buzzer to force a fourth overtime.

Buzzer-beating three-pointer to win at the end of the fourth overtime. (It actually looked like his toes were on the three-point line, but the shot wins the game either way.)

http://deadspin.com/bananas-boys-basketball-game-goes-to-4th-ot-on-full-cou-1762805369

COYS

03-04-2016, 12:55 PM

Thanks for sharing. I cannot possibly think of a more ridiculous end to a basketball game that I've ever seen or read about. Just wow. There is an argument made to be made by the fans who were in the stands for that one that they just saw the most insane sequence of buzzer beaters in the history of basketball.

It's just nuts. What are the odds of ever seeing that again? If we're generous with the percentages, we could say that the three last-second three point shots were all 40% shots. At least one of them was well defended and the last one was off the dribble (usually a MUCH lower percentage shot than a catch-and-shoot), so maybe 35% is a better measure. Taking out the probability of having a game in which other sequences of events line up perfectly to set up those three buzzer beaters and we could say that there is probably around a 4.3% chance that the players would hit three of those shots in a row. But put that full court shot in there (it really was more than 3/4 court) and the numbers of just hitting four shots at the buzzer (nevermind setting up those shots with all the other events that have to happen in a game for buzzer beaters to be possible) plummets. I can't imagine the average high school basketball player hitting that shot any more than 2% of the time . . . and THAT might be generous. Now the chance of the players hitting all four of those buzzer beaters in a row is down to .08575% (0.35 x 0.35 x 0.02 x 0.35). We could watch that EXACT game 1,000 times and still not see this sequence of events again. I have no way of knowing what the percentage is of games that go to four or more overtimes is for all of basketball. I did find a stat that 4% of NBA games go to overtime but I can't find anything more specific for 4 overtimes. I did, however, find a stat for overtime totals in the 2005-2006 NBA season (http://www.82games.com/random21.htm) and was able to calculate that the 15% of overtime periods end in a tied score. So, using that number, there is a 4% chance any game will go into an overtime, a 15% chance that an overtime game will go into a second OT, 15% chance of a third, 15% chance of a fourth OT and, just for the the heck of it, let's say another 15% that the fourth overtime will ALMOST end tied, setting up the chance for the game winning shot. That would mean that 0.002025% of basketball games will go to four overtimes and have a tied score with almost no time on the clock at the end of the 4th overtime. And of those games, there is a 0.08575% chance that they would involve three buzzer beating threes and a buzzer beating full-court shot.

Based on these lightly researched, back of the envelope calculations, we could roughly estimate that there is a 0.000174% chance of ever seeing a game like that again. So fans could claim that this game was truly one in a million. Wow. And I still suspect that my shot percentages for some of those initial three pointers are a little high. And that full court shot percentage guess of 2% might well be too high, as well.

Anyone is free to critique my statistical analysis. I was a humanities major, after all =).