calltheobvious
02-02-2008, 09:42 PM
From the 7pm ET Gameday:
Rece, Hubert, Digger and Jay are talking about Memphis's poor free throw shooting overall and today against UTEP (21-41). Hubert makes the argument that he can't see anyone winning 6 straight games with no reliable perimeter game and horrible team free throw shooting. Bilas counters with a kind of regression-to-the-mean argument, or so it seemed at first. He said that one sign of a championship team is that you find a way to win even missing 20 FTs and going 1-17 from 3.
Bilas: ...and part of me is asking, if you can't get 'em in a game like this, when are you gonna get 'em?
Nothing to see here, yet. Then this line of argument:
Bilas: Now, the really good teams--if (the Tigers) miss twenty free throws--are going to get them. I don't think they're going to miss twenty free throws against the best teams. They were playing UTEP, they knew they could get away with it, and they did, but I don't think you'll see them do that against the better teams.
Jay has clearly been sitting next to Digger far too long (we'll know that Jay's in the final stages of Diggerenza when his words become so unintelligible that his ideas can no longer be critiqued). It's unclear whether this was just a case of Jay trying to fill out a paragraph with fluff or actually believing this stuff.
If the latter, it's a tough case to make. The assumption is that the greater the focus/intensity, the better the free throw shooting. If this is true, then we should see Memphis's percentage differ significantly depending on the quality of competition. Further, it should be the case that if they go into half-time believing they're in a competitive game, their shooting should improve in the second half. The statistics simply do not bear this out.
Memphis did have a woeful first half, going 2-9 from the line. But in the second half, the Tigers went only 13 for their first 25. They did manage to go 5-6 once UTEP began fouling intentionally in the last minute of the game.
Consider that they needed that nice stretch run just to put themselves over 50% in a high-volume game.
How have they done against the best of the rest of their schedule?
at OU 11-23 47.8%
at Gonzaga 19-32 59.4%
vs. Georgetown 22-29 75.8%
at UConn 14-21 66.7%
USC (at MSG) 7-18 38.9%
at Houston 21-35 60.0%
--------------------------------------
Sub-totals (w/UTEP) 115-191 60.2%
--------------------------------------
vs. The Rest 175-303 57.8%
--------------------------------------
Season 290-494 58.7%
With the exception of Georgetown (and that one game does not a trend make), the numbers don't back Jay up. Clearly there's not a statistically significant difference between Memphis's performance in games against better and worse competition. If Bill Parcells looked at these numbers, he'd tell Jay that "(Memphis) are who they are, a terrible team from the stripe." KenPom wrote recently that fouling is definitely the optimum strategy against Memphis if you're a bad team http://basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=109. I'm going to take it a step further and argue that it's the optimal strategy for mediocre teams, and selectively, for the best teams (Dorsey's FG% = 64, FT% = 35, for example). I can't wait to watch Memphis's first-round game in March against some Rider-type that packs in a 2-3 and commits 35 fouls. But I digress...
Why do commentators--even the bright ones--persist in propagating "clutchness" as a real phenomenon? Jay, you're too good for this. Please cease and desist.
Rece, Hubert, Digger and Jay are talking about Memphis's poor free throw shooting overall and today against UTEP (21-41). Hubert makes the argument that he can't see anyone winning 6 straight games with no reliable perimeter game and horrible team free throw shooting. Bilas counters with a kind of regression-to-the-mean argument, or so it seemed at first. He said that one sign of a championship team is that you find a way to win even missing 20 FTs and going 1-17 from 3.
Bilas: ...and part of me is asking, if you can't get 'em in a game like this, when are you gonna get 'em?
Nothing to see here, yet. Then this line of argument:
Bilas: Now, the really good teams--if (the Tigers) miss twenty free throws--are going to get them. I don't think they're going to miss twenty free throws against the best teams. They were playing UTEP, they knew they could get away with it, and they did, but I don't think you'll see them do that against the better teams.
Jay has clearly been sitting next to Digger far too long (we'll know that Jay's in the final stages of Diggerenza when his words become so unintelligible that his ideas can no longer be critiqued). It's unclear whether this was just a case of Jay trying to fill out a paragraph with fluff or actually believing this stuff.
If the latter, it's a tough case to make. The assumption is that the greater the focus/intensity, the better the free throw shooting. If this is true, then we should see Memphis's percentage differ significantly depending on the quality of competition. Further, it should be the case that if they go into half-time believing they're in a competitive game, their shooting should improve in the second half. The statistics simply do not bear this out.
Memphis did have a woeful first half, going 2-9 from the line. But in the second half, the Tigers went only 13 for their first 25. They did manage to go 5-6 once UTEP began fouling intentionally in the last minute of the game.
Consider that they needed that nice stretch run just to put themselves over 50% in a high-volume game.
How have they done against the best of the rest of their schedule?
at OU 11-23 47.8%
at Gonzaga 19-32 59.4%
vs. Georgetown 22-29 75.8%
at UConn 14-21 66.7%
USC (at MSG) 7-18 38.9%
at Houston 21-35 60.0%
--------------------------------------
Sub-totals (w/UTEP) 115-191 60.2%
--------------------------------------
vs. The Rest 175-303 57.8%
--------------------------------------
Season 290-494 58.7%
With the exception of Georgetown (and that one game does not a trend make), the numbers don't back Jay up. Clearly there's not a statistically significant difference between Memphis's performance in games against better and worse competition. If Bill Parcells looked at these numbers, he'd tell Jay that "(Memphis) are who they are, a terrible team from the stripe." KenPom wrote recently that fouling is definitely the optimum strategy against Memphis if you're a bad team http://basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=109. I'm going to take it a step further and argue that it's the optimal strategy for mediocre teams, and selectively, for the best teams (Dorsey's FG% = 64, FT% = 35, for example). I can't wait to watch Memphis's first-round game in March against some Rider-type that packs in a 2-3 and commits 35 fouls. But I digress...
Why do commentators--even the bright ones--persist in propagating "clutchness" as a real phenomenon? Jay, you're too good for this. Please cease and desist.