I think it's been brought up here before, but after last week's games we now rank 356th of 358 D1 teams on KenPom in regards to our "luck" rating. This refers to how much worse our actual record is compared to what our record should be given our overall offensive and defensive ratings. At 68th overall in KenPom, we're the highest-ranked team in the country that has a sub-.500 record for the season.
This is nothing new, however. We've been ranked well below 300 for the last 5 years now in this luck metric, and we could spend a lot of time debating when luck really isn't luck anymore and how much it points toward deeper issues with coaching, player confidence, etc. That said, anecdotally it does seem like it happens way too often that somebody makes a 3/4-court shot or throws up a prayer with 1 on the shot clock that banks in, or we hear the announcers say something like "that guy was 0 for his last 28 from 3 before that went in!" Or every time we just need one more shot to fall it doesn't go in, despite getting good looks.
So yes, we're unlucky to some extent. But I also feel like this stat could almost be better framed as underachievement vs overachievement. Our results have consistently vastly underperformed our objective true ability, for 5 years now! There's only so much true bad luck that can be involved over that kind of sample size.
Interestingly, the #1 team in luck rating this year is Providence, who held on to beat us after we made a late run. They have marginally better offensive and defensive numbers than us, but they are 18-2 and ranked I think 16th in the polls despite being only 46th in KenPom.
This is nothing new, however. We've been ranked well below 300 for the last 5 years now in this luck metric, and we could spend a lot of time debating when luck really isn't luck anymore and how much it points toward deeper issues with coaching, player confidence, etc. That said, anecdotally it does seem like it happens way too often that somebody makes a 3/4-court shot or throws up a prayer with 1 on the shot clock that banks in, or we hear the announcers say something like "that guy was 0 for his last 28 from 3 before that went in!" Or every time we just need one more shot to fall it doesn't go in, despite getting good looks.
So yes, we're unlucky to some extent. But I also feel like this stat could almost be better framed as underachievement vs overachievement. Our results have consistently vastly underperformed our objective true ability, for 5 years now! There's only so much true bad luck that can be involved over that kind of sample size.
Interestingly, the #1 team in luck rating this year is Providence, who held on to beat us after we made a late run. They have marginally better offensive and defensive numbers than us, but they are 18-2 and ranked I think 16th in the polls despite being only 46th in KenPom.
