Miami and Duke Trade Scoring Runs in College Hoops

Yesterday's Miami (FL) at Duke men's basketball game, won by the Hurricanes 78-74 in overtime, featured many examples of hot and cold streakiness. Miami darted off to a 9-2 lead, only to have the Blue Devils outscore the Canes 20-10 to take a 22-19 lead. Miami then responded by going on a 23-6 run to close out the first half and lead 42-28 at the break. The Canes upped their lead to 48-32 early in the second half, before a Duke 16-2 run put the Blue Devils back in the game. Things were tight the rest of the way and, of course, it took overtime to decide the outcome.

Ultimately, however, the lasting impression will likely be how Duke went 0-for-6 on free throws in OT (see overtime play-by-play sheet). As shown below, three players -- two of them above 80% free-throw shooters coming into the game -- each missed a pair from the stripe.

Duke Players' Free-Throw Percentages Within Different Time Frames

Player	For the Season  (Before  Miami)	Regulation  vs. Miami	Overtime  vs. Miami
Seth Curry	.887 (63-71)	1.000 (4-4)	.000 (0-2)
Austin Rivers	.684 (65-95)	.714 (5-7)	.000 (0-2)
Quinn Cook	.812 (26-32)	1.000 (2-2)	.000 (0-2)

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To estimate the probability of the six consecutive overtime misses, we simply multiply the individual miss probabilities on each shot (two for each player). Each player's miss probability is 1 minus his long-term free-throw success rate (in this case, I'm using the players' season-to-date FT percentages prior to the Miami game). The calculation, using the miss probabilities for Curry (1 - .887), Rivers (1 - .684), and Cook (1 - .812), is:

.113 X .113 X .316 X .316 X .188 X .188 = .000045 or roughly 1 in 22,000.

The usual cautions apply to analyses such as the present one. It is post hoc, selected after the fact only because of the unusual nature of Duke's free-throw misses. To paraphrase the words of one statistician, presumably no one asked before the overtime started, "How likely is it that Duke will miss all of its free throws in the extra period?"  Finally, although 1 in 22,000 seems pretty improbable, if one considers all the basketball games that have been played -- in the U.S. and internationally; high school, college, and pro; men's and women's -- perhaps a slump like Duke's was bound to happen at some point.