128: Underdogs and spurts
A look at Carolina as a double-digit underdog against Duke, plus spurts or scoring runs of six plus points.
This season’s first meeting between North Carolina and Duke is Saturday. The point spread is not yet available, but you can expect Duke to be a heavy favorite.
Both Ken Pomeroy and Bart Torvik project a Duke win with a score of 81-65.
How often has Duke been that big of a favorite against Carolina?
Since 1998, Duke has been favored by 9.5 or more points in 15 out of a possible 64 games using TeamRankings BetIQ data1.
No need to throw out the record books. Take a look at a list of these 15 games below:
Two of these 15 games occurred at Charlotte Coliseum in the ACC Tournament (1999, 2002), one at the Dean E. Smith Center (2002), and 12 were played in Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Carolina is 10-5 against the spread with three outright wins in these games. The most recent being the 13-point win at Duke in 2022 as a 11-point underdog.
As a North Carolina fan, expectations are not high for Saturday. An upset is always possible, but it’s hard to reconcile how North Carolina basketball is struggling in an era where paying players is no longer done under the table.
Scoring spurts
Last week, I wrote about how (and maybe why?) this North Carolina team has a thin margin of error. A lot has been said about Carolina playing in many one-score games and its struggles to finish games.
ESPN ran this terrific Mortal Kombat type synopsis during the game last night:
We can slice the data by 10-minute segments or focus on the final three minutes, but how does this show up in scoring runs?
Evan Miya does a great job using numbers to explain college hoops, and he measures “Kill Shots”2 or a team’s ability to go on a 10-0 run. These 10-0 runs are useful, but smaller scoring runs also provide insight into a team’s performance.
Instead of 10-0 runs, let’s use runs of six or more points to better understand team performance. Let’s call these spurts instead of kill shots. For example, a spurt is any scoring run of 6+ points (6-0, 9-0, 15-0, and so on).
Below is a table that shows the number of spurts (runs of 6+ points), the average spurt total, and the total points scored from those spurts for both opponents and Carolina in all 22 games this season.
In the middle, the table surfaces the differential from these spurts.
Carolina has a negative differential in these spurts in nine games this season, and UNC has lost six of those nine games. UNC won three of those nine games by a combined margin of five points:
The Heels beat UCLA3 by two points despite the Bruins scoring six more points than UNC in spurts. The Bruins made 13-of-22 foul shots attempts or just ~59 percent.
Carolina used a four-point play in the closing seconds to pull out a narrow win at Notre Dame despite the Irish scoring four more points in spurts.
And UNC won at NC State by two points even though the Wolfpack outscored Carolina by five in these spurts.
UNC has a positive differential in spurts in 13 games this season, and a 10-3 overall record in those games. The three losses:
Auburn pasted Carolina by 13 points in Maui back in November. Carolina only had a +1 advantage in spurts and the average in-game margin was 10.4 points.
Alabama beat UNC at home in early December by 15 points, and UNC had a +18 point differential from spurts. This is misleading as the Tide led the game for over 36 minutes and UNC had five such runs of 6+ points, but no spurt greater than 7 points.
Stanford beat Carolina 72-71 at home with a last second jumper that nearly came at the buzzer. UNC had a +6 advantage from spurts in that game.
These spurts don’t tell you why a team wins or loses, but they provide a glimpse into how often teams are stacking empty or productive possessions.
As Carolina's season continues, it’s fair to say execution at all stages of the game needs to improve, given the team has only won about 59 percent of its games.
Thanks for reading this far, and if you’re subscribed, you just witnessed the rare back-to-back posts on consecutive days for this publication. What can I say, the power of bad basketball compelled me.
Have a good rest of the week, and remember to check out this tiny app that surfaces men’s college hoops data for this season. Data is updated every morning.
UNC has been favored by 10 or more points against Duke just once - 2007, Carolina was a 10 point favorite at home against Duke. Hansbrough was bloody, UNC covered the spread winning by 14 points, 86-72.
Big thanks to Connor (@cobrastats) for help with the code to compute scoring runs. Connor puts together tons of great looking charts and graphs around Purdue men’s basketball. The Boilermakers are also fun to watch.
Free throw defense is a thing!