mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
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02-09-18 05:56 PM - Post#247041
In response to SomeGuy
Correct - you can look at game scripts (the average margin a team lead's by throughout a game - think of it as the area under the curve) and see that the winning percentage at each increment of game script winning margin rises. That is to say, the longer and more you lead by during a game, the more times you're expected to win. A more technical approach that leads to the same result is to look at whether - in games that are close in the final minutes - the original projected winner wins at about the same rate or if the outcomes tend to shift more toward 50/50 (it's the latter). If the better team were more likely to win close games, we'd expect to see the winning percentage to stay the same as it started or even increase.
Both demonstrate that the closer a game is toward the end, the more randomness reigns.
What definitely *isn't* true is that any single-digit win is just luck and should be written off. That's crazy. In general, the better team will win close games - it doesn't immediate revert to a coin flip. It's just that the later in the game it gets with the game still close, the higher leverage each possession becomes and one crazy thing that happens on a possession can shift win percentage odds in a massive way.
Penn has posted both the best record and the best efficiency margin in Ivy play thus far. When those two align, it generally means that the team that has played best to that point is leading the league. I think that should be the most important takeaway here.
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