Go DEVILS!
Posted on 03/17/2011 8:36:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
March Madness is here, so for the next couple of weeks, you will not be able to turn on your TV without hearing about teams seizing momentum and players getting in the zone. We all know how unstoppable athletes can be: Once a snowball starts rolling downhill, it's hard to stop.
That may be true on a Rocky Mountain slope, but in basketball and other sports, the playing field is level. When squads or players get rolling, they don't keep rolling; they stop, and usually sooner rather than later.
Momentum is a myth. The heat of hands, even if they belong to Kobe Bryant, doesn't get much above 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
That's the conclusion of Tobias Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim in their new book, "Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won." The authors, respectively a finance professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a senior writer at Sports Illustrated, use advanced statistical analysis to demonstrate that much of what we staunchly believe about sports is not true.
Such as? You should almost always punt on fourth down. Offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships. Teams win at home because they play better on their own fields or are buoyed by supportive fans. None of these claims stands up to inspection.
But the most surprising discovery the authors made, Moskowitz tells me, is that the fabled phenomenon of momentum is pixie dust: It exists only in fairy tales, even if the tales are told by savvy coaches or Hall of Fame players. This finding, he tells me, is "the one nobody wants to believe."
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
There is no fiction like Fiction.
Although we have all seen this occur time and time again in almost every sport played, it's a myth. The latest case was the San Francisco Giants this past season.
Yes and no. There are times when there literally is momentum that self-feeds. You see this often toward the end of basketball games where a team is trying to catch up -- they either start pushing too hard, making mistakes, which causes them to push harder, or they start closing the gap, leading to the opponents starting to panic and make mistakes of their own.
It's not "momentum" as we describe it in physics, of course, but the pressure applied and how it is reacted to is what we mean by the colloquialism "momentum".
Right. So THEN all they did was outscore their opponent by 5.69 points over a two minute period.
More people trying to apply logic where no logic can explain reality.
it's folly to declare something doesn't exist simply because it can't be described. And logically pitiful. Especially when experience tells you otherwise.
Perhaps that's because the other team starts with the ball.
An example cited is that “If a team scores six or more unanswered points in the previous minute, it will on average be outscored by its opponent (by 0.31 points) over the next minute.” That means that over those two minutes one team has outscored the other by AT LEAST 5.69 points. How exactly is that not momentum? Since this is an average, it's likely some teams score more. By diluting the teams who really go on a scoring run, it obfuscates those games where the momentum really swings wildly.
Furthermore, six points can be as little as two times down the court. Can we see the stats for when a team outscores the other by 12 points or more in say two minutes? How does that work out?
Next the author uses batting averages. Of course the averages even out after a 162 game season. The year the Angels won the Series they ALWAYS got the key hit they needed to win the game in the playoffs. They gained MOMENTUM as they hit their stride.
Momentum does not mean you make every shot and stop your opponent every time down the court for some set period of time, or get a hit every time at bat. It is an event, or series of events, that makes one team start to doubt itself and the other one to believe.
But in a constantly "flowing" sport like hockey, momentum is most certainly a factor. Witness the 2010-2011 New Jersey Devils as a classic case in point. They were far and away the worst team in the NHL as of early January -- and an embarrassment to themselves and their fans as well. Since then, they've been the hottest team in the league and have a half-decent chance of making the playoffs. Even if they squeeze into the #8 slot in the Eastern Conference, they are likely to be a strong Stanley Cup contender just because of the momentum they bring into the post-season.
Conversely, these same Devils have been perennial disappointments in the past, with early playoff exits ruining what seemed to be promising seasons. I suspect a lot of this can be attributed to the fact that they were so strong in the regular season that they coasted down the stretch and hardly played any meaningful regular-season games after February.
That’s a good point. A lot of this “momentum” is psychological at its root — both for the team “on a roll” and for their opponent(s).
I picked up on the idiocy of this, too. Statistics like this are meaningless because they don't take into account how the rules of the game play into the numbers.
Here's an example: If a football team scores a touchdown or a field goal, the odds are very good that they will be outscored over the next 30, 60, or even 90 seconds of the game. And the odds of that team outscoring its opponent over those time intervals are very low. Why? Because after scoring, a football team kicks off to its opponent and therefore will not have possession of the ball for the next 30, 60 or 90 seconds unless something unusual happens (a turnover, a successful onside kick, etc.).
Being “in the zone” may be a better way to describe it. It’s psychological... the power of positive thinking. A player may be “on his game” (thinking clearly and able to block out distractions) thus causing doubt or, as Oddball would say, “negative waves” in his opponent’s mind.
When athletes reach a certain level, they are all exceptionally skilled at their craft. The playing field and all outside influences may be the same. But it’s the internal influences that tip the scale one way or the other. That also includes experience that gives one the ability to “outguess” one’s opponent.
Of course, that’s just my humble opinion.
Well I know I saw a fairly average to above average player of University of Virgina go absolutely insane one time and make at least 10 three pointers in a row, the last one from just a little past mid-court. The guy knew he couldn’t miss and everyone else knew it too and every time down the court he touched the ball he shot without a thought and he made the shot, from anywhere. It was scary. If a single player can get hot why not a team?
Go DEVILS!
Those are all good points. On a somewhat related note, I learned a while back that there’s a reason why hockey players tend to be so superstitious compared to other athletes. It’s because hockey so fast-moving and chaotic (to a certain degree) that it’s the sport where odd bounces and random events can have the greatest impact on the ultimate outcome of the game.
A team with Martin Brodeur between the pipes always has a chance.
Simply put, a team with momentum on their side is a team that is playing better than the other team. The arguers for momentum make it seem like it’s a magical quality where the coach prayed to the Win deity or got out the voodoo dolls, and the team started playing better. It’s all a mental thing. Nothing is inevitable between two teams of somewhat equal ability.
Agreed!
Case in point, the 1985 NCAA National Basketball championship where the underdog, Villanova shot a "lights out" 78.6 percent (22 for 28) from the field and beat heavily favored Georgetown.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.