087: Gotta make shots
A look at the shooting splits of team's left in the Elite 8.
A single-elimination tournament can cook your brain. Fans are superstitious. Media generate narratives. And it can be hard to reconcile with what is luck and what is unlucky.
Michael Lopez, Greg Matthews, Ben Baumer wrote a paper a few years ago1 that tried to answer the question, “how often does the best team win?”
It was from the professional sport perspective comparing the NBA, MLB, NFL, and NHL. The paper found that in the NBA in a seven-game series, the better team won about 80 percent of the time.
But what about in those other professional leagues?
In the NFL, a “best-of-11” series is needed to match the NBA’s better team advances rate of 80 percent.
In the NHL, a “best-of-51” series is needed.
And in MLB, an astounding “best-of-75” series is needed.
I don’t know what it would be for the NCAA Tournament, but I imagine its sort of like the wisdom of Jon Bois’ take on watching playoff hockey:
why watch overtime playoff hockey when you can simply snort cocaine and ride a motorcycle out of a helicopter
I don’t know if you need guards to win in March or if you need a top-25 kenpom offense or defense, but I am confident in one thing. You got to make shots.
Of course, there is more to it than that, but consider through 58 NCAA Tournament games, only six teams have won when putting up a worse shooting performance than its opponent2. This is using effective field goal percentage where we account for three-point shots being worth more than two-point shots.
Here are the team shooting splits for all teams that remain in the NCAA Tournament as of today. This is a three-game sample size, so please consider that before you jump to conclusions3.
Elite 8 defense
Seven of the eight teams remaining are holding teams under 35 percent from three-point land, only Illinois opponents have made better than 35 percent (22-of-60 from three so far).
Clemson opponents are 14-of-75 from three-point land. That’s ~19 percent.
Over half of opponent’s shots against NC State are from three, yet, opponents have made only ~24 percent of those shots.
Duke’s played the best free throw defense as teams have made 24-of-46 from the foul line.
Elite 8 offense
Seven of the eight teams remaining all have an effective field goal percentage of 53 or better. The exception is Tennessee as the Vols have made only ~46 percent from two and ~34 percent from three.
UConn has made only ~31 percent of its three-point shots, which is scary given the Huskies have dominated teams so far.
NC State's three-point rate is the lowest amongst all remaining teams. The Wolfpack has made ~53 percent of its two-point shots so far.
This is surface level analysis
The got to make shots mantra is simple. If you shoot better than your opponent, you’re likely to win the game.
What is lost though is how offense and defense are connected.
Think of field position in football. A turnover in your own territory can give an opponent a short field, which means its more likely to score. While basketball is not played on a field, a missed dunk or missed layup can make it a lot harder to get back and play defense.
Volleyball is played on a court too. Think of how consecutive points prevent your opponent from getting a side-out. This gives the offense an advantage to set rotations and hold serve. The same is true in tennis.
And in basketball, when you can score on consecutive possessions, it makes playing defense a bit easier.
Randomness in sports is hard to reconcile. It’s downright impossible in March Madness. A wide-open three-point shot can be missed and a desperation heave can be banked in to force overtime.
You can run a red light and be fine. You can go on green and get into an accident.
Things happen.
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I didn’t read the whole paper, and you don’t need to either. This blog post from Michael Lopez is a great summary.
Defining a shooting performance using effective field goal percentage. Tennessee has won two of its three games so far with a worse eFG than its opponents.
Not optimistic anyone will listen to this advice. We live in a time where if you want to believe something, it’s never been easier to find information to support that belief.
I find it hard to look at these figures as predictive/causal of winning. Is a team that has been making more shots (and allowing less) over this short sample actually performing better, or just lucky?
Of course, you addressed this in your caveats. I’m curious how much predictive value you personally think eFG% has in this context.