Advertisement
basketball Edit

How Colorado is statistically one of college basketball's unluckiest teams

Colorado guard Jalen Gabbidon reacts to a foul call against Washington State
Colorado guard Jalen Gabbidon reacts to a foul call against Washington State (Nigel Amstock / CU Sports Report)

It seems counterintuitive, perhaps even blasphemous, to suggest that luck plays any kind of role in the result of an athletic contest, a forum in which skill, tenacity and dedication are meant to be on display and rewarded.

Indeed, sports are something of a meritocracy, but within them, good fortune and misfortune alike can be found.

Let’s look at basketball. A ball can take a strange bounce off the rim. A player who’s a horrible shooter can inexplicably catch fire one night. A bang-bang block-or-charge call can go against a team. When those metaphorical coin tosses are added up, they can shape the outcome of games and define seasons.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying the 2022-23 Colorado men’s basketball team, with a 12-9 record heading into a matchup Thursday night at Oregon, is an unlucky group. At least that’s what the numbers say.

For years, statistician Ken Pomeroy’s indispensable website, KenPom.com, has had a luck rating for all Division I teams. Heading into Wednesday night’s games, and of 363 squads at the highest level of men’s college basketball, Colorado is 330th in luck.

How, exactly, does one measure luck? Pomeroy’s explanation for it is relatively straightforward. Luck is the deviation in win percentage between a team’s actual record and its expected record based on various metrics. A team with a better record than most of its other measurements would indicate is lucky and a team with a worse record than all of that other data is unlucky.

With fewer than 50 days until Selection Sunday, the Buffs, unfortunately, find themselves in the latter category.

“Our record is not where we want it to be,” guard KJ Simpson said. “We definitely feel as a team and as a program that we're definitely better than what our record says. We talked about it today. I think we had three close games or just a one-possession game that we had a chance to win. It just didn't go our way. We take those three games away and maybe those are wins. Now, we're 15-6 and that's a completely different thing from 12-9. We try not to pay attention to our record. We just keep playing, just keep playing because we know we're better than what it says.”

How a team fares in close games is often one way a strong squad can have a mediocre record or a middling squad could have an impressive record. The Buffs haven’t been particularly snake-bitten in tight contests. In games decided by three points or fewer, they’re 3-3. In games decided by six points or fewer, they’re 3-4.

It goes beyond that, though. The website Shot Quality, which, as you might guess, breaks down games to measure the quality of the shots a college basketball team takes, states that based on the looks that Colorado creates for itself, it should have a 14-7 record. Instead, the Buffs are two games worse than that. Right now, the difference between those two marks is fairly immense, as a 14-7 squad is likely firmly in the NCAA Tournament conversation while the other seems much more likely to end up in the NIT.

To some players, where Colorado is right now isn’t anything to be upset over, even as the Buffs are at 4-6 in Pac-12 play.

“I don't understand where the narrative comes from that our record is so terrible or whatever,” guard Jalen Gabbidon said. “We're a young team who's had a lot of big wins. We've been in every single game and competed really hard in a lot of games. We are starting to put together what it takes to win. You see a lot of teams in college basketball now are going through that process of understanding what they need to do to win games. We're on that same path. There’s no team that scares us. There's no team that we don't come into a game thinking ‘We're going to beat this team.’ We feel confident going into the last 10 games that we have that formula down and it's just a matter of executing every single good day.”

It’s those big wins, namely in Nashville against what is now a top-five Tennessee team, that exhibit what many of the advanced metrics state – that this is a good team capable of notable accomplishments.

Of course, there are the gutting, confounding losses, as well, most notably against Grambling and Cal. In those games, a typically excellent Buffs defense, which ranks 20th among all Division I teams in defensive efficiency, allowed the Tigers and Golden Bears to shoot 41.2% and 53.8%, respectively, from 3-point range. For the season, Grambling ranks 229th among all Division I teams in 3-point percentage while Cal is 322nd. They’re outliers that didn’t necessarily have much to do with how Colorado was playing defense. The shots that so often clang off the rim for those teams were falling on those nights.

Fortunately for the Buffs, luck isn’t a permanent fixture. That rating could be an encouraging statistic for Colorado – it’s a sign that it could be due for better days ahead, with 10 games remaining in the regular season.

In the meantime, players are trying to not allow the close losses and disappointments to weigh too heavily on them.

“I hate to lose more than I love to win,” Simpson said. “When we lose, I get so upset. I don't hang my head or pout or nothing. I'm obviously encouraging the team. But it is kind of frustrating when you lose those really close ones when you really should have won, especially in a lot of games when we did it to ourselves. That's when it gets frustrating. If we go out there and we play our game and it just doesn't go our way, sometimes it's hard to hold your head high. It definitely is frustrating at times.”

Advertisement