You don’t blunder into lucky 7-8 games running. UCLA underachieved and suffered with injuries and came together late. Yes, Michigan could have had its act together in seven or eight ways and won the game–we were the superior squad. But merely lucky they were not. They scrapped and they had a player emerge like few ever have in the tournament. And they will be good going forward.
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I think you’re missing my point
Of course you do. (And UCLA had been on a four-game losing streak entering the tournament).
People have a real problem with luck, and they tend to see patterns where none actually exist. Hence, giant, expensive, profitable casinos.
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No, I get your point. The ineffable “they wanted it more” that somehow can’t be quantified but is used to explain low-probability outcomes, because some people have a real aversion to saying “yep, they got lucky.”
Sports wouldn’t be very exciting if the more skilled team always won. Luck is a very real thing, and the goal of a good coach is to minimize the role of luck when you have a skill advantage and maximize it otherwise.
UCLA should be commended for playing a slow-paced game – tied for their slowest of the season, and Michigan’s slowest by two possessions. When you’re the less-skilled team, you want as few possessions as possible, so that luck plays as big as role as possible.
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That’s a talented team. Attributing their late season success to mere luck is absurd. Eli, you may note, was having none of such excuses.
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I didn’t once say “they wanted it more” or anything vaguely like it.
What I’m saying is that inferior teams can outplay superior teams because athletic performance doesn’t get repeated like a metronome beat.
That’s not “luck”, it’s sports.
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And therein lies the fallacy. I didn’t say they weren’t skilled. They were less-skilled than Michigan, and if they played 10 times, Michigan would likely win between 7 and 9. Therefore, they got lucky to win the game, because the odds were against them.
It’s not intended as an insult.
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So I’m giving way too much credit to ESPN’s predictive metric and their margin of error is significantly higher.
wrt to the low percentage shots I should have said low % shots cease being bad shots if you make them at a high enough clip. Yes, it’ll be smaller than a layup but if that’s 45% instead of 55% you might take that chance. Luck will be involved but so will skill.
To your point, from Dylan’s recap:
UCLA loves mid-range jumpers. The Bruins are ranked 3rd nationally in mid-range volume and 4th in mid-range accuracy.
Mid range two are “bad shots”. They are significantly less bad shots for UCLA.
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They also think luck means their is no skill involved. A 30% shooter going 10/10 is insanely lucky. A 40% shooter going 8/10 is also lucky, just far less so.
UCLA was good enough that they were able to take advantage of their luck, a lot of teams would have still lost with UCLAs luck.
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No one is doing that.
They had three overtime games and another two point win. The margin of error is pretty damn small when you’re talking about 60+ possession games that are separated by one possession at the end of regulation. Luck plays a factor in every game and in such a close game like those it can literally be the difference between winning and losing.
UCLA gets credit for being good enough to put themselves into a position where luck plays a role in deciding the outcome. That’s the best you can do when you’re playing against clearly superior teams. Texas Southern could have gotten twice as much luck as auCLA and they still wouldn’t have won a game.
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UCLA luck against Michigan was not their offense, it was Michigan having a terrible shooting night.
Against Gonzaga they were lucky to have an outlier shooting performance in conjunction with Gonzaga having a poor night from three and the FT line.
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Our offense didn’t run marginally like it did the whole year. The “bad shooting night” didn’t occur in a vacuum.
Two overtime games and a two point victory. A ball bounces the wrong way in one of those three games and it is a different story.
Just as Michigan getting a lucky shot against Houston made that run a different story.
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Wow… this thread has really gone off the rails. So many people arguing so many different things incorrectly and correctly. 
A lot of arguing that X is true so Y is false when they aren’t related.
I wish there was another word to use other than “luck” for some of these discussions because it has a negative connotation. Maybe randomness?
An example of how UCLA has benefitted from “luck” is that teams shot 63.2% at the free-throw line against them in the NCAA Tournament which is the lowest FT% allowed among the final 16 teams in the NCAA Tournament.
Similarly, you could say a team like Michigan was a bit unlucky because teams shot 82.7% at the FT line against them. The highest percentage among the same group.
Winning two overtime games and a 2-point game with the best “free-throw luck” is a pretty strong example of luck.
It doesn’t mean UCLA doesn’t have good players, or that UCLA didn’t deserve to win the games but it is still something that is valid to point out. It is something that explains how the Bruins got to the point that they did.
Juzang and Jaquez playing multiple career games in a three week span doesn’t hurt either. That’s an outlier that probably should be called something different than luck, but I’m not really sure what to call it.
(I’m also not sure how any of this relates to a WP graph.)
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Also probably a statistical anomaly for a team to give up two half court buzzer beaters in three games.
Someone used the word “unlikely” and that sounded right.
Fantastickery
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UCLA can have a great game plan and play great defense and still get a little lucky. Unfortunately for us that is what happened Tuesday.
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