I will acknowledge I’m phobic of the word “luck”, as saying “UCLA benefited from free throw luck against Michigan” could easily be re-worded as “Michigan performed badly in something completely under their own control”, or more generally “Michigan played badly”. But we AREN’T saying that…:because, well look at the name of the site.
I played sports my whole life, I played D1 sports - when I played badly I never felt I was “unlucky” - I felt I played badly.
One team playing well and one team playing badly happens regularly, because humans aren’t machines.
But we are not the players. Michigan’s players did not say UCLA got lucky because they are the ones that missed the FTs. There’s really no other way to describe a team having the opponent shoot 10-20% worse than their average from the FT line for 5 straight games while also going to OT 3 times and another 1 possession win than saying they had some luck on their side.
That’s not taking anything away from UCLA since they played extraordinarily well also. UCLA’s players should not feel like they got lucky nor should Michigan feel they lost because of bad luck. Really the Michigan game specifically did not have much luck, both teams took awful shots the entire game.
UCLA lost four in a row prior to the Tournament, then played their best games of the year at the right time. Call it what you will, but luck in some form played a role in their postseason success.
Right the truth is in the middle right? They aren’t the team that lost four straight or the team that won 5. Teams go through these stretches (in 2013 we sort of limped into the tournament). Players gain and lose confidence, have personal problems, get a bad nights rest, etc…stuff happens outside the numbers.
This why I have an issue concluding that variance from a statistical norm is “luck”…these are humans, stuff happens. Maybe we were nervous on the line!
I think there were definitely times where concerns outside sports made it so the sport wasn’t the biggest thing on my mind, and that impacted effort. Sometimes I was too aggressive, sometimes I was too passive.
Yeah, your problem is just with the word luck – mostly.
If variance from the statistical norm happens four times in a row in a similar way, that’s considered luck. Just use another word if it makes you feel more comfortable with it.
No one is saying that the other teams didn’t have an impact on missing their free throws… It is just fairly lucky for four teams to have the same issue in a row.
Oh, my gosh, that is such a complex question. Why did you play bad? There are so many reasons and even combinations of reasons about why an individual or a team may play badly while another team is on fire. Obviously if one team is clearly the better team and the other just isn’t very good, well, there’s your answer. But if teams, or individuals, are evenly matched in talent there are just so many factors that may be involved in one playing well while the other has a bad night. As mgl says, and this is SO true, humans aren’t machines. Even if they were though, machines break down, too. Maybe that was your point.
OK, so how’s this. Watching the women’s championship. A ball goes out of bounds, clearly off the Stanford player’s toe. There is 2:03 left in the game. Can’t go to replay, 2:03, so even though it shouldn’t be, the ball goes to Stanford. It’s an absolutely critical time in a very close game. Luck? Or no luck?
It is always interesting to me how humans (almost all of us) are unwilling to attribute to luck what is random variation. We are hard wired to search for patterns in data and describe causes to things that are just random noise.
The craps dice are not hot.
The roulette wheel is not due to hit black.
It is just in sports we really want to explain things by using terms like hot and cold and choking that can be accurately described by luck and chance.
Was I the only one watching the women’s championship? Stanford wins despite appalling coaching. Simply amazing to put so much of the endgame in the hands of Williams, who was so thoroughly awful all day, it boggles the mind. Tara V had multiple other talented players who the final possessions could have run through. Nah, let’s give it to the girl who has six turnovers, has shot terribly, and has made terrible decisions all game long. Wow.
That last Stanford possession was just, wow. Williams dribbled away like 3 out of the 4 final possessions and missed the 8 footer on the other one.
Most maddening? All Stanford had to do was not turn the ball over. On one of those final possessions, all you had to do was at least get the ball to hit the backboard! Stanford had an overwhelming size advantage that they failed to exploit during most of the stretch. Get it to the backboard and it’s 50/50 at least you get the offensive rebound! Instead, they committed a garish turnover that was almost a game tying and one because Williams dithered until it was too late. Stanford is lucky they recruit well and big because their coaching was a dumpster fire down the stretch.
I realllly hate to belabor this at this point so this will be my last statement.
I guess what I’m saying is that there are plenty of things that are both not random and also unquantifiable that occur between the ears of any athlete - especially teens/early 20 year olds.
I’ve always liked Torvik’s “FUN” (Factors Unexplained by Numbers)
