{"id":1634,"date":"2019-03-31T17:35:53","date_gmt":"2019-03-31T17:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/?p=1634"},"modified":"2019-03-31T17:35:53","modified_gmt":"2019-03-31T17:35:53","slug":"to-foul-or-not-to-foul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/?p=1634","title":{"rendered":"To foul or not to foul"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The sting still hurts.\u00a0 I can&#8217;t stop thinking about it.\u00a0 So, why not blog on it.\u00a0 It was my premise that I hate Matt Painter&#8217;s decision to foul with 6 seconds while being up 3 points.\u00a0 But lets be fair &#8211; if Purdue had got the defensive rebound on the missed FT, the Boilermakers would be heading to the Final Four and people would be talking about how smart it was of Painter to foul.<\/p>\n<p>It is easy to play arm-chair coach after you know the results of the decision.\u00a0 I can say it is the wrong decision because I saw after that decision was made, Virginia did tie the game.\u00a0 But who knows &#8211; maybe Virginia would have hit a three pointer if they had defended &#8211; and the overtime still happens with the Cavaliers prevailing.<\/p>\n<p>Then, my friend Dave sent me down the rabbit hole.\u00a0 He texted me that a stat study showed playing defense was the right decision.\u00a0 \u00a0And he is right &#8211; both John Ezekowitz and Ken Pomeroy did studies on this.\u00a0 I will use Pomeroy&#8217;s study &#8211; since he is known as one of the premier college basketball statisticians, and because his study had more data points since he accumulated data over more seasons.<\/p>\n<p>Pomeroy found 814 games where a team got the ball down 3 points between 5 to 12 seconds.\u00a0 \u00a0138 of the cases, the leading team decided to foul.\u00a0 In those cases, 5 times that leading team ended up losing in regulation, while 11 went to overtime.\u00a0 If you made the assumption that overtime was a 50\/50 event, fouling in this situation led to a 92% winning percentage.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, for the 676 cases where the leading team defended &#8211; they only lost twice in regulation (on the dreaded four point play where the three pointer went in &#8211; and they got fouled giving them the chance to win the game).\u00a0 Another 76 games went to overtime &#8211; leading to a 93.5% winning percentage.<\/p>\n<p>What does this information tell the Lunatic&#8230;&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It is crazy hard to hit a three pointer when the defense knows your only choice is to shoot a three pointer.\u00a0 It appears as though some coaches already have planned defenses for this to make it even more difficult.\u00a0 But you are not looking at the normal 30-40% three point percentage that teams take during the normal parts of the game.\u00a0 Pomeroy mentioned later in his study that teams only hit 16% of these types of three-pointers (and remember for the most part, these only tie the game).<\/li>\n<li>What if you could develop a defense that does this better &#8211; the reason coaches foul is that a team can&#8217;t tie the game from the FT line &#8211; but the problem is it lets the other team get closer without time coming off the clock.\u00a0 What if you could create a defense that double-teamed the ball at the expense of allowing the opponent to have any two-point shot that they want.\u00a0 You end up with the same result as the FTs &#8211; except more time has been taken off the clock and there is no chance of an offensive rebound leading to a bad result.\u00a0 I bet a good coach could make that 16% Pomeroy observed be even less.<\/li>\n<li>I still think there are more risks to the fouling strategy.\u00a0 Pomeroy noticed that 5 out of 138 cases ended with a loss in regulation.\u00a0 Stranger things happen because of the dynamic the fouls create.\u00a0 You have extended the game.\u00a0 You have the defensive rebound situation that happened to Purdue &#8211; that could have just as easily ended in a three-pointer&#8230;\u00a0 But even if they make both FTs, there is still 5-6 seconds left and now your lead is one point and they are going to foul you.\u00a0 If you miss one of the FTs, you have now given the other team basically the same amount of time, but now this time, a three-pointer wins the game and they can still drive to the basket to force overtime.\u00a0 Sure &#8211; they have to go the distance of the court &#8211; but most teams can do that with 5 seconds.<\/li>\n<li>That being said, while there is a slight edge towards defending, you are looking at two strategies that end up with relatively the same results.\u00a0 So, while painful, you can&#8217;t really second guess this decision &#8211; teams lose either way at a relatively equal rate.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And then there is one last more painful realization this information gives.\u00a0 With 6 seconds left in the game, Purdue had a 92% chance of making their first Final Four since 1980.\u00a0 And they were in the unlucky 8% chance that ended their season.<\/p>\n<p>This exercise didn&#8217;t help the Lunatic at all &#8211; while the stats show the Lunatic is probably\u00a0 right, it is not by enough of a margin that it matters.\u00a0 And it puts into focus that at that\u00a0 fateful moment in time last night, my Boilers had a 92% of making the Final Four.\u00a0 \u00a092%!!!!!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The sting still hurts.\u00a0 I can&#8217;t stop thinking about it.\u00a0 So, why not blog on it.\u00a0 It was my premise that I hate Matt Painter&#8217;s decision to foul with 6 seconds while being up 3 points.\u00a0 But lets be fair &#8211; if Purdue had got the defensive rebound on the missed FT, the Boilermakers would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog2019"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1635,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634\/revisions\/1635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}