Salt Lake City resident Ken Pomeroy’s popular website, kenpom.com, tracks all sorts of metrics in college basketball, like offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency.
One of the categories is a “luck” rating.
According to Pomeroy, the luck rating is “your close game factor. Statistically, a team should go .500 in one possession games. The luck rating is the deviation between a team’s actual winning percentage and the expected from the above metrics. If teams are winning more of the close games they are considered ‘lucky.’”
BYU is ranked No. 355 out of 363 Division I teams when it comes to luck.
Intuitively, that makes a lot of sense.
For example, the Cougars have dropped two one-point games to nationally ranked Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s. BYU basically lost both of those contests on almost the final possession.
And the Cougars have been competitive in almost every game this season. But BYU has a mediocre 16-14 record to show for it.
Saturday, the Cougars lost another close game at Saint Mary’s. BYU trailed by just one point with less than two minutes remaining before falling 71-65.
Coach Mark Pope doesn’t put much stock in the luck factor.
“If you depend on luck, it means you’re kind of giving away your power to affect change. I try to stay away from that because I want our guys to be empowered,” he said. “It’s kind of the same thing with the refs. You want to run away from giving the referees any power over your belief on your ability to impact the game. You’d never want to say, ‘Well, the refs cheated us,’ because it means you can’t actually control the outcome of the game. I want us to believe that. I feel the same way about luck.”
Meanwhile, Pope pointed out one of the frustrating byproducts of losing close games.
“I will say that some of these guys’ accomplishments and progress have been masked by barely not being able to finish,” he said. “It’s multiplied exponentially the emotional burden the guys have had to carry because they’ve put forth some tremendous performances where they just, literally, one stop away from celebrating a really incredible win. Those have some staying power. Instead, it turns into a double-down emotional loss. I don’t think that’s luck. We’re just barely not good enough to reap the rewards and really recognize our growth in a tangible way, in a public way. That’s been challenging.”
The Cougars host San Francisco Saturday (8 p.m., MST, ESPNU) in their regular-season finale.
Does senior guard Rudi Williams feel that his team is unlucky?
“I just feel like sometimes there have been games, like Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s at home, where we gave it our all and we put ourselves in a pretty good position and then one guy makes a 35-footer or a guy makes a fadeaway,” he said. “I would agree with that. Sometimes we kind of get unlucky and get the short end of the stick. But it’s just the way the game goes.”
At the same time, Williams understands that there are certain things that are in his team’s control that have impacted the outcome of games.
“Just doing stuff earlier in the game to maybe prevent that from happening. Maybe if we make a free throw or two, maybe we won’t be down or we won’t be up two if a guy makes a 3,” he said. “Just to protect ourselves a little bit, knowing that we might have some bad luck on our end late in the game. Or just score more points or get more stops. That also helps. We don’t want to leave it in the hands of fate or in the hands of the refs. We’ve got to make sure we can finish the game and we can win it and come out on top.”
San Francisco (17-12, 6-8) at BYU (16-14, 6-9)
Saturday, 8 p.m. MST
Marriott Center
TV: ESPNU
Radio: BYU Radio/1160 AM