Abstract
Have you ever watched a sporting event, seen your favorite team slowly pull away from or fall behind its opponent, and wondered when the proverbial fat lady would sing? Have you ever predicted a game was essentially over because you thought the lead was insurmountable only to have to eat your words? Is there such a thing as a lead large enough that the game is, for all intents and purposes, over? To gain insight into questions such as these, I have attempted to quantify the safety of leads in men’s college basketball. Interestingly, the motivation for this study came from Bill James. An ever-increasing number of people interested in quantitative sports analysis are familiar with James and the pioneering work he has done in assessing the value of baseball players (as well as a slew of other interesting baseball-related work). However, in this case, James wrote an interesting column, titled “The Lead Is Safe: How to Tell When a College Basketball Game Is Out of Reach.” In it, James offered a heuristic for determining whether a game is out of reach for the trailing team based on the margin (the difference in the two teams’ scores), the time remaining, and who had the ball. His stated the following:
Published Version
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