MUScoop

Is Marquette Unlucky?

Written by: noreply@blogger.com (Tim Blair)

The Marquette Warriors enter finals week with a perfect 9-0 record, and despite the winning streak this break in the action was perfectly timed.  After losing starting center Chris Otule for an indefinite period of time due to a knee injury he sustained in the Washinton game, the Ghosts of Tom Crean Tackling Dummies re-emerged at The Al, sending Juan Anderson (3-4 weeks, shoulder) and Jamil Wilson (day-to-day, ankle) into the infirmary. Just when fans were getting jazzed about the Warriors' prospects this season!  The news of the week prompted frequent guest contributor, Dr. Blackheart, to dance on the keyboard once more .... and now he asks, Is Marquette Unlucky?

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Jimmy Chones leaving for the ABA in the midst of an undefeated season…Dean Marquardt’s car accident… Bob “I Like to Watch” Dukiet losing star recruits to academics…Will Gates' blown out knee in “Hoop Dreams”…Travis Diener and the tackling dummy,…Jerel McNeil and the HIPPA finger…Trevor Mbwake, Dom James and the sinking feeling of the fans and the OrthoPods. And, now, in a matter of hours, the (possibly) torn ACL of our Defensive Stud Chris Otule, the shoulder of top rated freshman Juan Anderson, and the ankle of high potential Jamil Wilson. And, many more over the years.

“Why Marquette?” “Why always the big men?” ”Why Me?”… are the overriding fan questions ringing around our ears. How much bad luck can one fan absorb, never mind a diehard Cubs fan who is a Brewers season ticket holder, as dysfunctional as that is on the surface? In perhaps the best and earliest Marquette outlook in 30+ years, why do all the great feelings of the past week come to a crushing end? Isn’t it Marquette’s time, as ordained by our new President and AD?

The answer , of course, is “leave it to fate”. However, Pomeroy has a measure of “Luck” that, as a stat geek, I like to turn to in order to balance the emotional side of my brain with the rational. Pomeroy defines “Luck” as such: “The easiest one to understand is Luck, which is the deviation in winning percentage between a team’s actual record and their expected record using the correlated gaussian method. The luck factor has nothing to do with the rating calculation, but a team that is very lucky (positive numbers) will tend to be rated lower by my system than their record would suggest.” In other Poemroy analyses, “Luck” is most correlated to “Experience”, and Buzz has experienced guards.

Lucky Number?

Over the past ten Pomeroy seasons, Marquette has been “Lucky” in only 3 of them, including this season to date, pre-injuries. Buzz, on the other hand, has been as unlucky as it gets. MU has set school and Big East records in the number of close games that his teams have played in. Yet, MU seems to always overachieve its talent and “Luck” at year’s end. However, to date, MU 2011 is Final Four” Lucky” with an exact rating of the DW3 year at the Triple Snake Eyes rank. Until Tuesday, MU was that “Lucky”! But, things change quickly as we know and MU is now as lucky  as .

(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BN0NiNYGu0Y/TuYedoHu1CI/AAAAAAAAAvU/dd8X39rYDPM/s1600/MU+Luck.png)
 (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BN0NiNYGu0Y/TuYedoHu1CI/AAAAAAAAAvU/dd8X39rYDPM/s1600/MU+Luck.png)
So, Where Does This Lead Us Irrationales?

To drink? Maybe…but time seems to be on our side. MU is waiting the Otule ACL sprain out to see its severity, Juan’s shoulder is seen to put him out until only the start of the Big East season, and Jamil’s ankle seems to be chronic but day to day, pending recovery time and Xmas practice/therapy time. Meanwhile, MU beat one of the most talented and perhaps the season’s-end best Pac 10/12 teams in Washington, without Chris Otule. His replacement, Gardner, is an offensive dynamo in the limited minutes he can offerâ€"Pomeroy Offensive Efficiency Rating for the Ox of 124.4 vs. CO’s 92.2. Anderson, while showing flashes and providing height depth, still has only seen a few minutes. Is this unlucky? Yes, with Chris’s defense but not with his O, so DG has time to work on his game extensively, while Juice gets his chance to showcase his skills. In the end, this provides minutes to those that Buzz has had no qualms about playing in the Out of Conference anyway, making MU a stronger season’s- end team, waiting for the hopeful return of the injured. LSU and Vandy will give MU height problems, but MU’s experience will carry the day into the Big East, as my irrational mind tells me as I wish upon on northern star. MU buries the tortured artist, Judeo-Christian, Martyr syndromes, and assumes its rightful place as #1 in the country (says a fingers-crossed Cubs fan in a full body cast, but looking good it his Man Uggs). Go MU (I hope)! Regardless, I am playing my lucky 19 and 77 at the Potto Bingo Boat, but I sure wish Andre Walker picked MU over Xavier right about now.

http://www.crackedsidewalks.com/2011/12/is-marquette-unlucky.html

Cracked sidewalks is always a good read ... thoughtful premises supported by data, or data that offers support for what happens on the court and around the nation.

However, this rambling, unstructured discourse on "luck", to this reader, is disconnected from both other data, and reality. (Though one might same about the Cubs :))

The examples of luck are one dimensional. If one were to take this premises to its logical/irrational conclusion, one might as well throw in what happened to JKF and its impact on America. Just unlucky, one might suppose.

Maybe in the next article, we could go to Delphi and contact the Oracle.

In the meantime, Coach Williams has it right. No one is going to feel sorry for the Warriors because of injuries. And, hard work and good luck go hand-in-hand.

Cracked Sidewalks is great. But sometime an unlucky article sneaks into the blog :)

Quote from: UticaBusBarn on December 12, 2011, 10:39:51 AM
Cracked sidewalks is always a good read ... thoughtful premises supported by data, or data that offers support for what happens on the court and around the nation.

However, this rambling, unstructured discourse on "luck", to this reader, is disconnected from both other data, and reality. (Though one might same about the Cubs :))

The examples of luck are one dimensional. If one were to take this premises to its logical/irrational conclusion, one might as well throw in what happened to JKF and its impact on America. Just unlucky, one might suppose.

Maybe in the next article, we could go to Delphi and contact the Oracle.

In the meantime, Coach Williams has it right. No one is going to feel sorry for the Warriors because of injuries. And, hard work and good luck go hand-in-hand.

Cracked Sidewalks is great. But sometime an unlucky article sneaks into the blog :)

Do you not understand Pomeroy's statistics?  Or do you just disagree about the calculations for 'luck?' http://kenpom.com/blog/index.php/weblog/ratings_explanation/
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The new [columns] are Cons (Consistency) and Luck. The easiest one to understand is Luck, which is the deviation in winning percentage between a team's actual record and their expected record using the correlated gaussian method (http://www.rawbw.com/~deano/articles/BellCurve.html). The luck factor has nothing to do with the rating calculation, but a team that is very lucky (positive numbers) will tend to be rated lower by my system than their record would suggest.
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Thanks for the feedback, as always.  My intent was for the article to be a humor piece from the irrational fan's viewpoint, looking for some glimmer of factual hope (Pomeroy) in a "woe is me" time--again from a fan's viewpoint.  It was a bad four days, injurywise.  So, the rambling part was a device.  But, the fact that I even have to explain this is a sign enough that I was not successful.  Thanks for reading (and mostly enjoying)!  ;)

I've always thought this was a strange way to calculate "luck."  If I'm understanding the calculation correctly, MU was "lucky" to beat UW in Madison because the formula says we should have lost by 9 and we won by 7?  I always considered luck to be more like the three ball rimming out in the Virgin Islands or Crowder's three drawing nothing but net in NYC or a team that usually shoots 60% from the FT line shooting 19/20 that night and winning by one.  I guess this luck thing probably evens out over the course of a season with more data points, but I don't think it's a very good way to measure it.  Then again, I can see why MU was so "unlucky" in the calculations the past few years, as they played a ton of really good teams down to the wire only to lose by a FT miss or last second shot causing their record to be skewed down, so what do I know.

Thank you very much for your kind responses to an observation. Not to over-extend this conversation, this mathematically challenged fan finds it hard to believe in "luck", much less than it can be calculated.

Let's take an example. Dean "The Dream" fouled out of one game during his career. Unfortunately (pun intended), it came during the NCAA tournament and snapped the Warriors' 38  game win streak. Was that bad luck, or the law of  probability catching-up with Meminger?

The year before, Coach McGuire suggests to the NCAA that they "stuff it" and the Warriors go to NIT, which they win. Was that "bad", or "good" luck?

It has been a hard week. Humour is needed and appreciated. However, it strikes this observer that bad comes in threes (note the simpler math), which means the Warriors have now used up their bad luck for the season. The bad luck came at the perfect time. That was lucky. Good things will come of this as Coach Williams uses new and different rotations. And, as mentioned, I do believe Davante Gardner, who will get more playing time, can become another Wes Unseld.

In short, all of this is just going to make the Warriors a much stronger team going into the stretch. In short, all of this bad luck is really good luck :)

I've actually thought that Marquette was unlucky the past few years because the defense has been poor.  It's a lot easier to lose a greater percentage of close games if you are unable to get stops.*

*not supported by any analysis or data.

Quote from: Henry Sugar on December 12, 2011, 12:35:20 PM
I've actually thought that Marquette was unlucky the past few years because the defense has been poor.  It's a lot easier to lose a greater percentage of close games if you are unable to get stops.*

*not supported by any analysis or data.

Wouldn't it be conversely a lot easier to win a greater number of close games if your offense is very difficult to stop (as MU's statistically is)? I think Pomeroy types view close games like coin flips.

That said, my gut agrees with you. I think officials tend to let defenses get away with more down the stretch and the already good defensive teams amp it up to their advantage. Like you, I have no data to support my "feeling". It would be interesting if someone could quantify how the good O's/poor D's fare in close games vs the poor O's/good D's.

Quote from: Lennys Tap on December 12, 2011, 01:12:48 PM
Wouldn't it be conversely a lot easier to win a greater number of close games if your offense is very difficult to stop (as MU's statistically is)? I think Pomeroy types view close games like coin flips.

That said, my gut agrees with you. I think officials tend to let defenses get away with more down the stretch and the already good defensive teams amp it up to their advantage. Like you, I have no data to support my "feeling". It would be interesting if someone could quantify how the good O's/poor D's fare in close games vs the poor O's/good D's.

Looks like my hunch was off.  There isn't a statistically significant relationship between offensive/defensive efficiency and luck.

Didn't we already have this conversation in the Superbar?  (Only Marquette was the Brewers and Buzz was Zack Grienke.)

Quote from: UticaBusBarn on December 12, 2011, 12:14:38 PM
It has been a hard week. Humour is needed and appreciated.

Hard week? It's Monday.

Quote from: lawwarrior12 on December 12, 2011, 02:06:22 PM
Hard week? It's Monday.

He was talking about our injuries from last week. 

ahhh, my bad. I saw hard week and thought geez man, there's a long way to go before this one's over.