St. John's - Lucky (Basketball Prospectus)

 I fully agree that the team we watch is actually worse than the record; the Prospectus guys use per-possession scoring differential to rank teams.. which leads to interesting results (such as their love for West Virginia).  Following text is taken from the Basketball Prospectus website (http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=566):
 

I'm not sure why "luck" is regarded as such a loaded term. To say a team's been lucky doesn't necessarily detract from their performance. (If I were a coach, I'd love for my team to have that particular "problem.") On the contrary, recognizing a team's good fortune merely acknowledges what we all understand intuitively: luck plays a role in basketball, just as it plays a role in sports and in life.

Measuring that role with some degree of precision was of course pioneered by Bill James in baseball and has more recently been brought to college hoops by my Basketball Prospectus colleague, Ken Pomeroy. Where Ken's luck stat takes in the entire season, however, my own hand-crafted measure is restricted to conference play, giving us a look at how the ball has bounced for major-conference teams over the past couple months only.

In back of this measure are the last 219 conference seasons played by the 73 teams in the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, and SEC between 2006 and last year. A team's "luck" is measured here according to how far their conference record exceeds or falls short of what would be expected given their per-possession scoring margin.

Without further ado, the luckiest major-conference teams in the nation.

....St. John's (Actual: 4-11; Predicted: 2-13). St. John's? Lucky? Well, yeah, a little. Put it this way: it's an unusual for a team to lose five games by 19 points or more and then go 4-6 in their other ten.

I fully agree that the team we watch is actually worse than the record; the Prospectus guys use per-possession scoring differential to rank teams.. which leads to interesting results (such as their love for West Virginia).  Following text is taken from the Basketball Prospectus website (http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=566):
 

I'm not sure why "luck" is regarded as such a loaded term. To say a team's been lucky doesn't necessarily detract from their performance. (If I were a coach, I'd love for my team to have that particular "problem.") On the contrary, recognizing a team's good fortune merely acknowledges what we all understand intuitively: luck plays a role in basketball, just as it plays a role in sports and in life.

Measuring that role with some degree of precision was of course pioneered by Bill James in baseball and has more recently been brought to college hoops by my Basketball Prospectus colleague, Ken Pomeroy. Where Ken's luck stat takes in the entire season, however, my own hand-crafted measure is restricted to conference play, giving us a look at how the ball has bounced for major-conference teams over the past couple months only.

In back of this measure are the last 219 conference seasons played by the 73 teams in the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, and SEC between 2006 and last year. A team's "luck" is measured here according to how far their conference record exceeds or falls short of what would be expected given their per-possession scoring margin.

Without further ado, the luckiest major-conference teams in the nation.

....St. John's (Actual: 4-11; Predicted: 2-13). St. John's? Lucky? Well, yeah, a little. Put it this way: it's an unusual for a team to lose five games by 19 points or more and then go 4-6 in their other ten.

and to think I've been waiting 5 years for our luck to change

Quote from: peter on February 27, 2009, 05:51:40 PM

I fully agree that the team we watch is actually worse than the record; the Prospectus guys use per-possession scoring differential to rank teams.. which leads to interesting results (such as their love for West Virginia).  Following text is taken from the Basketball Prospectus website (http://www.basketballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=566):
 

I'm not sure why "luck" is regarded as such a loaded term. To say a team's been lucky doesn't necessarily detract from their performance. (If I were a coach, I'd love for my team to have that particular "problem.") On the contrary, recognizing a team's good fortune merely acknowledges what we all understand intuitively: luck plays a role in basketball, just as it plays a role in sports and in life.

Measuring that role with some degree of precision was of course pioneered by Bill James in baseball and has more recently been brought to college hoops by my Basketball Prospectus colleague, Ken Pomeroy. Where Ken's luck stat takes in the entire season, however, my own hand-crafted measure is restricted to conference play, giving us a look at how the ball has bounced for major-conference teams over the past couple months only.

In back of this measure are the last 219 conference seasons played by the 73 teams in the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10, and SEC between 2006 and last year. A team's "luck" is measured here according to how far their conference record exceeds or falls short of what would be expected given their per-possession scoring margin.

Without further ado, the luckiest major-conference teams in the nation.

....St. John's (Actual: 4-11; Predicted: 2-13). St. John's? Lucky? Well, yeah, a little. Put it this way: it's an unusual for a team to lose five games by 19 points or more and then go 4-6 in their other ten.

and to think I've been waiting 5 years for our luck to change

The face of luck

Peter,
Good find. You might want to pass that along to Chris Monasch.

Look, if they can't see that losing EVERY SINGLE GAME the team has lost by 10 or more except for Duke is a serious indictment of the talent and coaching, or if they can't see that this team under Norm Roberts is always turning the ball over, always shoots poorly (except in 06-07 when they were mediocre), and has been a bad defensive team in conference for the past two years... been no article can help.