Zoubek Intentional Miss Free Throw - Probability Analysis

[greybeard]

IProbabilities will only take you so far (of course you can't ignore them). But every situation is different - each team's strengths and weaknesses and how they match up against an opponent means that there is no right answer...

Of course there was a right answer. K was certain of it. K had coached the team to that point in space in time, he was the guy with the decisional authority, and he decided that he would live or die with a despiration shot, period.

No other decision was possible. The decision worked. If it had not, it would have still worked.

There was something grand and bold about K's decision. You're point seems to be that another decision figured out to its multiple permutations could have danced a finer line and perhaps denied Butler a chance to tie. K doesn't roll that way; chose not to in this circumstance. There is a time for fiddle faddling and there is a time to bet the pot and let the thing be done. K decided that the time for fidle faddling had past. The victory was there for the taking, or not, and he was ready, his team was ready. He didn't want no fiddle faddle victory--he and his guys were walking in the front door.

K earned the right to make that call. No one else on the planet had. No one, certainly no one here. His team came into this game with a bold offensive gambit, made great plays throughout, and having walked into the gym as men to win a championship, they were not going out having tried to win like mice. I think it was cool. Your way wouldn't have been.

[Johnboy]

1984 Orange Bowl - Tom Osborne made quite a few fans in defeat as he went for the win and failed, giving Miami its first National Championship. Had Nebraska tied the game with an extra point, the Huskers would certainly have retained their #1 ranking. Osbourne explained that he and his players didn't want to back into the championship with a tie, but wanted to win it or lose it outright.

There's no wrong answer here. I respect Coach K's decision to roll the dice and win or lose with defense, chaos and a long shot.

[devildownunder]

1984 Orange Bowl - Tom Osborne made quite a few fans in defeat as he went for the win and failed, giving Miami its first National Championship. Had Nebraska tied the game with an extra point, the Huskers would certainly have retained their #1 ranking. Osbourne explained that he and his players didn't want to back into the championship with a tie, but wanted to win it or lose it outright.

There's no wrong answer here. I respect Coach K's decision to roll the dice and win or lose with defense, chaos and a long shot.

I don't think those two situations are parallel.

[Johnboy]

I don't think those two situations are parallel.

I was responding to greybeard's statement that "having walked into the gym as men to win a championship, they were not going out having tried to win like mice. I think it was cool. Your way wouldn't have been." It reminded me of Osborne's decision not to play it safe and tie, but to win or lose "like a man, not a mouse." Not perfectly parallel, but a national title was on the line in both cases.

[devildownunder]

I was responding to greybeard's statement that "having walked into the gym as men to win a championship, they were not going out having tried to win like mice. I think it was cool. Your way wouldn't have been." It reminded me of Osborne's decision not to play it safe and tie, but to win or lose "like a man, not a mouse." Not perfectly parallel, but a national title was on the line in both cases.

Ah, OK. Well, I certainly agree that the Nebraska championship game was a clear choice of trying to win like a man, rather than backing into something. (and it's also yet another indictment of the ways college football has chosen to decide its championships. such a situation should never have been possible).

But I don't think K was trying to win like a man, rather than back into it. There was no cheap way to win in this situation. I think he just saw the window of opportunity for a victory closing and decided to gamble a bit on his best chance to win the game right then.

[devildownunder]

I watched the game again (woo hoo!) My belief is that 3.6 seconds is too much time for the intentional miss. A faster dribbler than Hayward could have gotten the ball well into the Duke side of the court for an even closer look.

IMHO, trying to make the 2nd shot and going up by 3 gives Duke a couple of extra advantages in this specific situation. Butler gets a max of 4 seconds to set up and inbound, which is the biggest risk. But they have no timeouts, and meanwhile Duke gets to set up too. Zoubs covers the inbounder, which is good for Duke even given the fact Butler could run the baseline if they wanted. If Butler inbounds in the backcourt to someone like Mack who pushes it up with the dribble, Duke has the option to trap and foul intelligently. I would be OK with a foul here, since Duke owned the defensive glass in the 2nd half and should collect Butler's own intentional miss if they make the 1st. If Butler goes for a halfcourt pass or longer, I like Duke's chances to intercept or deflect. None of the Butler players were so dominant they could create their own 3 off a one-on-one move when the D knows it's their only option.

But suppose Butler somehow manages to make a 3 at the buzzer. While Z and Lance have 4 fouls, don't forget both Howard The Hammer and Joliet Jukes also had 4 fouls for Butler, so they are at risk too. And the refs were pretty much letting them play. My sense of the game (from my living room) was that Duke would have been fine in OT, although clearly no Duke fan would have wanted to find out.

So given all that, it seems to me trying to make the 2nd free throw can only gain. If it's an unintentional miss, that scenario should play out the exact same way as it did. One could make the case that the intentional miss had an element of surprise (it surprised Clark Kellogg), but since Zoubs is not a good foul shooter, the surprise should be fairly small...

Credit Butler for setting up such a clear and controlled look at the basket by their best player. I remember watching the Bulter / Syracuse game when the Orange had a 4 point lead with less than 3 mins and thinking to myself, "Well, Butler, congrats on a nice run - you did yourself proud" and then later "wow - Syracuse completely self-destructed yet again..." I think that assessment is wrong in hindsight.

Probabilities will only take you so far (of course you can't ignore them). But every situation is different - each team's strengths and weaknesses and how they match up against an opponent means that there is no right answer...

I think the last bit of this -- "every situation is different" -- is why your case doesn't hold up next to K's reasoning. He (rightly IMO) had no interest in overtime, for a number of reasons: the crowd, lack of offensive momentum, foul trouble and the "hometown underdog" story's potential influence on the referees in a critical moment. So he decided to try to win the game right then, and adopted the best strategy for that situation.

Let's consider all that went right for Butler after Z's miss. The Bulldogs' best player got the rebound, he got it cleanly, he was able to advance the ball right away without having to maneuver around opponents directly in his path, he got an illegal screen without a foul call and he was able to get the shot off without anyone there to put a hand in his face. Even with all that, the best shot they got was a half-court heave, one that missed. I think what you saw was the best defense for K's strategy. Butler got pretty much everything it could have wanted in that situation and they still got an extremely low-percentage shot that failed.

In other words, Butler got lucky and still didn't win. When you put your team in a position where that can happen, you have done your strategic job as a coach.

[grateful_duke]

I bow down to you for coming up w/ these stats...

Intelligent sports fans? What a novel idea!

[Reilly]

... I think he just saw the window of opportunity for a victory closing and decided to gamble a bit on his best chance to win the game right then.

It was *not* a gamble by K if by "gamble" you mean the least likely outcome. Someone's rolling a dice, and you can pick 1-5 inclusive, or pick 6. Picking 6 is a "gamble" b/c it is less likely, but if you got that feeling, you got that feeling, and you go with 6 (and lose 5/6 of the time). That's a "gamble."

What K did was pick the path of most probable victory based on his assessment of Butler's chance of a set-up 3 and Butler's chance in OT. It was not a "gamble" as that word is generally understood. It was a sane, safe, most-likely-to-occur-to-his-mind decision.

You can disagree reasonably that K mis-valued Butler's chance of making the set-up 3, or Butler's chance in OT.

But based on what K has said, K chose the most probable path to his mind. It was not a case where K weighed one option, then weighed the other, and K went with the least probable b/c he "had a feeling". He played the odds. He may have mis-calculated them, which is a different matter. But he picked the "safe" path as he saw it. It goes against "conventional wisdom" but that does not make it wrong and it does not make the decision more risky, at all.

[CDu]

It was *not* a gamble by K if by "gamble" you mean the least likely outcome. Someone's rolling a dice, and you can pick 1-5 inclusive, or pick 6. Picking 6 is a "gamble" b/c it is less likely, but if you got that feeling, you got that feeling, and you go with 6 (and lose 5/6 of the time). That's a "gamble."

Technically, this is not correct. A gamble is merely any time you make a decision based on an uncertain outcome. What you're describing is also a gamble, but the connotation you're applying should be described as "playing against the odds," or "taking a longshot." In your "pick a number" scenario, both choices are gambles. If you choose 1-5, you're gambling that it won't be 6. The outcome isn't certain - you just have better odds of being correct. But even if you are playing the best odds, you're gambling.

[Reilly]

Technically, this is not correct. A gamble is merely any time you make a decision based on an uncertain outcome. What you're describing is also a gamble, but the connotation you're applying should be described as "playing against the odds," or "taking a longshot." In your "pick a number" scenario, both choices are gambles. If you choose 1-5, you're gambling that it won't be 6. The outcome isn't certain - you just have better odds of being correct. But even if you are playing the best odds, you're gambling.

I agree with you 100% ... that's why I said K's decision was not a 'gamble' as the term is generally understood (read: used).

When people say a coach 'gambled' ... they usually (it seems to me) mean the coach took the longshot, the against-the-odds choice.

Of course picking the favored path is still gambling as you note. Much (not all) of the criticism/praise of K seems to be along the lines of he went against the odds (either critiques that he was crazy for going against the odds; or praise that he's a macho gunslinger who knew when to go against the odds) ... when, in fact, K went *with* the odds and did not "gamble" (lay definition) at all, as he has set out his decision-making analysis

The only way for K to not technically gamble is to sit there passively and make no decision at all. So, yes, he gambled technically as he made a choice, but the choice he made was not the longshot, to his mind.

[bluedevildaddy]

I bow down to you for coming up w/ these stats...

Intelligent sports fans? What a novel idea!

From his comments, it appears that Coach was trying to avoid going to OT if he possibly could. I don't remember if he has said that he would have made a different decision if a better foul shooter than Brian had been fouled, (ie. JS, NS or KS) but I'm pretty sure it was a factor in his decision to have Brian miss intentionally. For the fun of it, I took a look at Brian's FT shooting performance for the season. Here are some facts to consider:

1) For the season, Brian shot 43/78=55.1%.
2) In the ACC Tourney Brian shot 7/8=87.5%.
3) In the NCAA Tourney Brian shot 8/14=57.1%
4) For the season, Brian made 2 of 2 FT attempts (resulting from the same foul call) 11 times. (I have not yet broken down how many of these were 2 shot fouls or 1&1 situations.)
5) In the ACC Tourney, Brian made 2 of 2 FT attempts twice vs Miami.
6) In the NCAA Tourney, Brian made 2 of 2 FT attempts once in the Purdue game.
7) In the final game, Brian made 1 of 2 FT attempts in the first half. These were his only FT attempts for the game prior to the last 2.
8) There were 15 games during the season that Brian did not attempt a FT. ( I thought this was surprising!)

I still want to take a look at how many times, during the season, Brian made the second of two FT attempts after making the first. I am curious what the probability was that Brian would make that second FT on Monday night when he stepped to the line! If any of you brainiacs have that answer, please pass it along!

[camion]

One thing to note is that whether the decision is to make or miss the final free throw the odds of Duke winning in regulation are much greater than 50%, probably in the 80% to 90% range. So no matter what his choice the risk is minimal, but in either case losing is a possibility. I am perfectly happy to let K choose the route he prefers and let it play out. In this case the probability box has been opened, the state function has collapsed, Schroedinger's dog died and Duke won. Good for us.

[InSpades]

When would a coach actually "gamble" then? When would a coach say... hey if we do option A we have a 20% chance to win... if we do option B we have a 10% chance to win. Let's go with option B! I'm betting most coaches have a logical reasoning for most of their decisions (whether that logic is sound or not we can debate).

I don't think the question was ever "did Coach K knowingly choose the option that gave Duke a lower chance of winning?". That would be a silly question to debate.

You can view what K did as a "high risk, high reward" type of gamble. If I gave you favorable odds to bet your entire life savings would you do it? Would you consider it a "gamble"? Even if you are heavily favored to win it's still a big risk because you could walk away with nothing. It's kind of what K did here... he put losing in regulation onto the table for a greater chance to win overall.

[Reilly]

I don't remember if he has said that he would have made a different decision if a better foul shooter than Brian had been fouled, (ie. JS,NS or KS) but I'm pretty sure it was a factor in his decision to have Brian miss intentionally.

Some Duke classmate brainiacs clarified for me -- in a week of painful but often funny email exhanges about all this -- that K's analysis does not depend on whether JJRedick or Zoubek or Billy King were at the line. I'll spare you the algebra; suffice to say it came from a classmate who graduated Duke Phi Beta Kappa. It all boils down to this:

Butler's scramble 3% VS Butler's set-up 3% multiplied by Butler OT win%

K thought Butler had a low chance of making a scramble 3; he thought they had a much better chance of making the set-up 3, and great shot in OT.

He played the odds (as he saw them). Fault K for wrongly assessing the odds (or disagree with them), but don't fault him for missing the critical factors. The FT % of the shooter (I was surprised to learn) is actually not one of the critical factors.

[greybeard]

Had nothing to do with risk taking as such.

Look, the extent to which basketball games are micromanaged by some coaches borders on obscene to me. Many walk out on the floor routinely, way out, not simply to call every "play" that their teams run, but to communicate to players while the play unfolds. WTF? Makes me want to turn the game off, which I frequently do, at least for a while.

My comment was made in reference to one poster who posited that, if K had Z try to make, and if Z had succeeded, there would have been a way for K to micromanage the last 3.8 seconds while insuring that Butler could not have tied.

That method would have required a deliberate foul by Duke. Now, without even trying to follow what the poster was saying, I said to myself, that has to be the worst LOOPHOLE ever created in sport. You win a game by making the last play a deliberate foul? Hey, you can't even do that in football, which I do not even regard as a sport.

K has said that what made this season so smashing for him was the growth of this team, especially its seniors, which by any measure is the story of the year in this sport. Taking everything else away, all the other growth issues, have you seen anyone compete like Lance and Zoubek in what would on most teams be regarded as subordinate rolls. Anybody be more in the game and make more great little and big plays than Jon Scheyer?

Is there anybody on the planet who plays at such high levels of proficiency who competes to the death like Singler and Smith?

And, you want them at the pinnacle of their season, the opportunity for a National Championship, for their coach to tell them that they have to win how? By a deliberate foul? You want Mike K (I'd try to spell his name but you'd guys would just have a good laugh) to do such a thing?

Nope, it had nothing to do with risk. It had everything to do with letting his guys defend, with the odds for them, and let them win the Championship that they had earned, or, if a ref blows an obvious call, loose at on a better look at a still wildly improbable shot, if it goes. That is what the man and the mouse reference was too.

BTW, that coach at Nebraska is not on the same planet, in the same universe, in my mind, as coach K. He would have played the deliberate foul card in a snap. Why do I say that. He pulls just such unseemly moves as a Senator, blocking the process of Senate function by the arcane and cowardly tactic of putting a Senatorial block on matters, in his case, the extension of unemployment insurance as it was about to run out for hundreds of thousands, that surely are entitled to be put to a debate and then a vote.

K and his players came into this world men and he would be damned if he was going to have them and him, at the crowning moment, win like mice.

[Reilly]

When would a coach actually "gamble" then? When would a coach say... hey if we do option A we have a 20% chance to win... if we do option B we have a 10% chance to win.

You give coaches much too much credit. They go against the odds all the time b/c they don't know what the odds are, or don't know the critical factors to look at. I'm sure there are coaches out there who think, stupidly, like Mike Greenberg of espn, that "the worst that could happen is a tie."

A football team down 7 scores as time expires. Many coaches will kick the XP and go to OT -- plays it safe -- but it is against the odds if they believe their 2-pt play would work 51% of the time and their chances in OT are 50/50. Read Halberstam's biography of Belichek, or the espn articles about Ernie Adams (Belichek's prep school friend), who sought out the Rutger's professor Sackrowitz who wrote an academic paper about when to go for 2. Coaches 'go against the odds' all the time b/c they don't know what to look for.

K may have gone against the odds here -- but it would have been b/c he did not evaluate Butler's OT correctly or Butler's relative scrambe/set up 3 correctly. He did analyze the proper, critical factors. "The worse that can happen is a tie" is not one of the proper, critical factors, but it is one that coaches often mistakenly go for, such as in the 2-point constext.

[Danke Shane]

What do you think Coach K's strategy would have been if Z missed the first FT?

[InSpades]

You give coaches much too much credit. They go against the odds all the time b/c they don't know what the odds are, or don't know the critical factors to look at. I'm sure there are coaches out there who think, stupidly, like Mike Greenberg of espn, that "the worst that could happen is a tie."

I never said they didn't go against the odds. Heck I've been saying for this entire thread that K went against the odds. All I said was that no coach is going to voluntarily pick the choice with worse odds. In their mind (which may be entirely incorrect) they are always picking the option they think will give them the best chance to win the game. Also I'm pretty sure that every coach in america knows that games can't end in ties .

And, you want them at the pinnacle of their season, the opportunity for a National Championship, for their coach to tell them that they have to win how? By a deliberate foul? You want Mike K (I'd try to spell his name but you'd guys would just have a good laugh) to do such a thing?

Winning a game by deliberately fouling is about as *fiendish* as winning a game by intentionally missing a free throw! How insane is that?! You intentionall score less points?! The insanity of it all... /sarcasm. The notion that any of the options is cowardly is entirely foreign to me. As someone famous once said "you play to win the game!" by whatever methods are legal.

[Duncan]

this cannot be stressed enough. In K's mind, if you are up 1 or 2 and they hit a miracle 3, you get beat. ALSO, IF YOU ARE UP 3 AND THEY HIT A 3 YOU WILL GET BEAT IN OT. K firmly believed that. I say he was right. So really, his problem was simple: if butler hits a miracle 3, we get beat. So, make it as hard as possible for them to hit one. that is what he did. i face this all the time coaching LL football. I go into every game thinking about if we can win in ot or not (ball is placed on the 10 yd line like high school rules). If we are favored with a size advantage from 10 yds out, i will play for ot late in the game if need be. if i want no part of Ot (especially factoring in the way the game has gone) i will be more risky with the ball late in the 4th if the game is tied. There is another thread about the play you will remember: having Z miss that shot was the biggest call ever. No one is talking about the other side of the coin. Z hits the shot and they run the base line with a well design play they have practiced 1000 times. or even if Z missed by accident:the ball is going to be exactly where they think its going to be. I also say, if that ball bounces a little more to the side and they dont get a handle in the first 2 seconds, everyone is talking about the brilliant call to miss it.

It was brilliant and took a looooooooooot of moxie

[bluedevildaddy]

"Some Duke classmate brainiacs clarified for me -- in a week of painful but often funny email exhanges about all this -- that K's analysis does not depend on whether JJRedick or Zoubek or Billy King were at the line."

Thanks for the info. Interesting stuff. I agree with K that the 'scramble scenario' is preferred over the 'run the baseline set play' scenario, but it would have taken some real 'onions' to make the same decision if Jon were at the line!